Oktava ML-11m

MoMics View

The Oktava ML-11m is an excellent sounding cardioid ribbon microphone that was built in the USSR in the late 1950s and early 60s. Despite looking like a cross between a bombshell and an RCA 77, the internal design most closely resembles RCA's KU-3a, with two large upright magnets and a tube to the rear of the ribbon which connects to an acoustic labyrinth in the heart of the microphone. Beneath that is a low noise toroidal transformer which is of decent quality. An equalisation network of an inductor and capacitor is wired in series with the output, acting as a bandstop filter, presumably to aid speech intelligablilty for broadcast use.

We have dated the production of this model based on photos of surviving mics, which range between 1958 and 1962.

Michael Vladimirsky of the now defunct Microphones.ru website (with a little bit of help from the Wayback Machine) stated the following... "Since 1956, the ML-11, an analogue of RCA 77D, went into production,; since 1958 - an interesting development of this mic, ML-11m."

The ML-11m was superseded by the ML17 cardioid ribbon microphone, which was smaller and lighter.