Musician’s Friend has resurrected their “Stupid Deal of the Day” promotions where they pick some mass-produced music thing and sell it very cheap. Recently, the SDOD was an MXL v250 Mic for $59.99 I saw this promotion being shared all over Facebook and one of those people contacted me and asked if it would make a good donor mic to mod.
The v250 is a typical low-cost transformerless MXL mic. It has a Small Diaphragm Capsule (despite looking like an LDC) and a mass-produced Schoeps-style circuit board. The body is essentially a BM-800 but with a very nice Headbasket. It also features a threaded base which can screw into various Spider type shockmounts. The mic comes stock with a hard mount only.
For this mod, I did a straight-up rebuild using the jaSb board with the optional internal pattern switch. The capsule was replaced with my usual k47 style using my own mounting cradle. I could also transformerize these with my new BFM board and transformer mounting system.
To The Bench
The rebuild was pretty straightforward. Being a brand new mic, I wrapped the body cylinder in paper to avoid scratching the (very thin) finish. The old guts were removed and the new stuff went in. I already had one or two jaSb boards built so this went pretty quick and easy.
The final Assembly was simple too. I really like the nice big headbasket on the v250. Everything fit just fine and the initial technical and listening tests were done with no issues.
Off to the Studio to do an “After” recording
While letting mics burn in, I like to record something with them. Usually, I do an Acoustic Guitar recording to just see if they have the sound. This one’s got it for sure.
The v250 is a fine mic to mod. As BM800 style bodies go, this one is nicer than the typical.