Sennheiser

Company rumour at Sennheiser says the MD 441 came out of a bet: build a dynamic that sounds like a condenser. Fritz Sennheiser started out in a farmhouse lab at Wennebostel, near Hanover, in 1945, and the MD 421 he put out in 1960 has barely changed since. We’ve got MD 421s and 441s, MKH condensers and HD 800 headphones passing through in numbers.

The MD 421 is the one you’ve seen on every tom, every bass cab and every radio desk: a cardioid dynamic with the five-position bass roll-off collar, more than half a million made and still in production. The MKH series started in 1962 with RF condenser circuitry that shrugs off humidity, the MKH 416 arrived in 1975 and became the boom and voiceover mic by default, and the HD 800 of 2009 sits at the top of the headphone range (Sennheiser bought Neumann in 1991, so the two share a factory at Wennebostel).

The dynamics come through in every flavour: MD 421 U-5s, N-1s, HLs and MkIIs, MD 441 U-3s singly and in pairs, MD 211s and MD 403s, plus the e604, e901, e902 and e906 drum and cab mics. On the condenser side we see the MKH 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 and 80, the MKH 800 and 8050, the MKH 416 and the AMBEO VR ambisonic mic, and the headphones run from the HD 280 PRO to the HD 800 and HD 800 S.

If the pair of MKH 40s or the particular 421 you want has gone, tell us via Find Me Gear and we’ll flag the next one. Every mic and every pair of headphones is checked and cleaned here before it goes out, ready to ship UK-wide.