Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast
The podcast is sponsored by Seydel harmonicas. Check out their great range of products at www.seydel1847.com.
If you would like to make a voluntary contribution to help keep the podcast running then please use this link: https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour.
Visit the main podcast webpage at: https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com/
Contact: happyhourharmonicapodcast@gmail.com
Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast
The Green Bullet interview
Michael Pettersen And James Waldron join me on episode 98.
In this episode we talk about the iconic Green Bullet microphone, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2024.
Michael is the Director of Corporate History at Shure microphones , and he tells us about the early design of the mic, what it was used for and about how it took years before Shure became aware that it was such an important mic for harmonica players.
James runs SimpleMics.com, where he rebuilds vintage harmonica microphones, including for some illustrious customers. James provides a harmonica-centric perspective on the Green Bullet and some detail on what is under the hood of the mic.
Both Michael and James help debunk some of the myths about the Green Bullet, as well as sharing their deep knowledge of its element, shell and other inner workings of this most legendary of harmonica microphones.
Links
Green Bullet mics website:
https://greenbulletmics.net/
James’ Simple Mics website:
https://www.simplemics.com/
Versions of the Green Bullet:
https://service.shure.com/s/article/what-are-the-different-versions-of-the-green-bullet?language=en_US
https://service.shure.com/s/article/history-of-the-model-520-green-bullet?language=en_US
Convert Green Bullet to use with XLR cable (low impedance):
https://service.shure.com/s/article/putting-an-xlr-on-the-green-bullet?language=en_US
Add a volume control and on/off switch:
https://service.shure.com/s/article/adding-a-volume-control-to-a-520d-green-bullet?language=en_US
Shure 520DX model:
https://www.shure.com/en-GB/products/microphones/520dx?variant=520DX
Videos:
Shure video on how the Green Bullet became the sound of blues harmonica:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlLniCG0lCw
Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com
Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB
or sign-up to a monthly subscription to the podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/995536/support
Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ
Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram
Michael Pettersson and James Waldron join me on episode 98. In this episode, we talk about the iconic Green Bullet microphone, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2024. Michael is a director of corporate history at Shure Microphones, and he tells us about the early design of the mic, what it was used for, and about how it took years before Shure became aware that it was such an important mic for harmonica players. James runs simplemics.com, where he rebuilds vintage harmonica microphones, including for some illustrious customers. James provides a harmonica-centric perspective on the Green Bullet, and some detail on what is under the hood of the mic. Both Michael and James help debunk some of the myths about the Green Bullet, as well as sharing their deep knowledge of its elements, shell, and other inner workings of this most legendary of harmonica microphones. This podcast is sponsored by Seidel Harmonicas. Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Seidel Harmonicas. Hello Michael Patterson and James Waldron and welcome to the podcast Thank you, hi there So we got both of you on today to talk about the Green Bullets, the legendary microphone used with harmonica for a long time. So first of all, let's introduce yourself. So Michael, you work for Shure and you are the director of corporate history. Sounds like a great job.
SPEAKER_01:It is a great job. I prefer the term sage, actually. Yeah, I'm starting my 47th year at Shure. So I've had six careers here and have basically migrated into becoming the corporate historian. Yeah, it's a great job. I never intend to retire. Besides, my wife doesn't want me home all the time anyway.
SPEAKER_00:Fantastic. So the director of corporate history, so Shure obviously take that very seriously to give you such a role. So, you know, what sort of role does that have in Shure?
SPEAKER_01:Well, we'll be 100 years old in 2025. So we're planning some celebrations for that. We have an archive here of one of every product that we've made since 1932. That's when we started manufacturing products in 1932. I give tours of the company as well. Also involved in Shure's philanthropic arm as well, giving away products and so forth. But we're an interesting company because we're held by a trust. All the trust is held by the employees but we're actually run for the benefit of charity. Very unusual situation.
SPEAKER_00:Oh really? The whole company is run for the benefit of charity? Yep. That's fantastic. Is that something which was from the beginning or is it a more recent thing?
SPEAKER_01:That was what Mr. Schur set up. Mr. Schur and Mrs. Schur. So Mr. Schur ran the company and owned the company solely 1925 to 1995. Mrs. Schur owned the company and ran it from 1995 to 2016 and when she passed away that's when this kicked in but they were always very philanthropic they didn't spend money on themselves they gave it away to the communities and humanitarian efforts and cultural efforts and he wanted to make sure that went on when he was gone and when she was gone and it is so we're quite proud of that
SPEAKER_00:yeah fantastic so when people buy a Shure microphone they're giving money to charity then essentially yes fantastic yeah so yeah so you mentioned Shure is a hundred years old and shortly so but the other milestone which was sort of celebrating here is that the the green bullets that the 520 model of the green bullet which we'll be discussing today is 75 years old next year that's correct
SPEAKER_01:yeah introduced in 1949 though our first bullet-shaped mics go back to 1939 but the bullet-shaped mic the first one that had a controlled magnetic unit inside of a controlled reluctance element was the green bullet from 1949
SPEAKER_00:so we'll just introduce james now so hi james so you have a microphone company where you rebuild vintage mics from new and vintage parts and it's called simple mics.com
SPEAKER_02:that is correct i started simple mics about 11 years ago i've been a blues harmonica player since i was 15 so we won't even go into how long ago that was so i began rebuilding microphones phones using uh Shure components certainly the elements most of the time on the inside of these pieces and I sell specifically to blues harmonica players all over the world in fact last month I sold to five continents in one week
SPEAKER_00:wow great and you're in a band called walk that walk
SPEAKER_02:yeah
SPEAKER_00:so there's a fantastic website which is called greenbulletmics.net there'll be a link on the podcast page which was written by a guy called Dave Cott which has got a tremendous amount of information on it all about green bullets and microphones in general but especially about well obviously about green bullets and yeah so we're going to draw on some of that information so you you host that website for Dave don't you so you've got you've had some involvement with that website yourself
SPEAKER_02:yeah greenbulletmics.com as it was originally is probably the most most thorough repository of information that would be important to blues harmonica players as it relates to microphones so they focus primarily on the green bullet and they talk about Dave talked about pretty much every aspect you could imagine so he could not afford to keep the site running about five years ago so I guess I'm philanthropic as well I build websites as my primary day job. And so I thought that information should stay out there and available to people because it was so useful to me. So I created a new website because somebody in Japan had bought the domain name. We got it all together, made it a little more visually pleasing and easy to navigate. And Dave was very thankful. And I think the rest of the Harmonica community was also very thankful.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I've got to say, again for anyone who wants to get more information on specifically around the harmonica elements the green bullet this is an essential read i did i read the website from cover to cover when i was doing my research for this i couldn't stop the loads of amazing information which really cleared a lot of points up in my head so obviously we'll try and cover some of that during the conversations today but obviously we won't be go down to the uh the level of detail that's on there so obviously people should go and check that website out is um it's amazing so uh yeah good job there james keeping it going so great so let's talk then michael about the history of the green bullet and yourself with that. So again, we're talking specifically here about the 520 model, which is the one we all know and love related to the harmonica. But as you've already mentioned, there were bullet-shaped mics before that. But the 520 model came out in 1949, as we've touched on already.
SPEAKER_01:That's correct. Just recently... We have about 500 boxes of offsite storage where we haven't looked at them since 1955. So I'm going through those boxes. And just recently, I found one that basically gave me the name of the person who designed the first bullet microphones. His name was Herb Palmleaf, and he worked at Shure in 1957. By the way, it wasn't really designed after a bullet. It was designed after the headlight structure on some of the 1930s cars, which also looked like bullets. But the very first bullet-shaped Shure microphone was a Model 5, and that was from 1939. It had a ribbon microphone inside, a ribbon element inside.
SPEAKER_00:And was that shape specifically so it was good to hold in the hand? Because the original sort of green bullets, they weren't sort of designed to necessarily be held in the hand, were they?
SPEAKER_01:No, they just looked cool. You know, streamlining was a whole thing in the 30s. It was the harmonica players that basically figured out, hey, these fit in their hands real well. As Schur was completely unaware that these things were being used as harmonica microphones phones for many many many years
SPEAKER_00:that was incredible when when you told me that and on that point as you say you sent me an advert an original advert for the uh for the green bill and there's absolutely no mention of harmonicas right you sure had no idea that it wasn't so it wasn't marketed towards harmonic players at all
SPEAKER_01:no to a radio public address systems very things like that you know we were just pretty much unaware of it i started assure in 1976 and one of my responsibilities in sales was that when the product was thinking about discontent being you discontinued, we would send notices out to the dealers that bought them saying, hey, here's your last chance to buy these. I was responsible for sending a notice out to a dealer's late 70s saying the green bullet was going away. Why was it going away? Because the target market that we thought two-way radio dealers and so forth just weren't selling many of them so we we sent out this this message and somehow this got to the harmonica players and this is way before email right we got phone calls we got postcards we got letters basically saying you guys are dummies this is the best harmonica microphone in the world and we were just kind of taken aback by that we just didn't know
SPEAKER_00:you know looking at the timing in the years you know when did the green bullet start becoming popular with harmonica players are we aware of that is that something james that you might be able to help with
SPEAKER_02:well the earliest uh photographs that I've seen of harmonica players are really from about the same time that microphone was released in 1949, 1950, 1951. There's a lot of photographic evidence of players using bullet mics as early as that. So Shor was really unaware because they didn't discontinue it to the late 70s. People have been using them for 25 years beforehand.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. The reason is our primary business Business back then, as far as what was giving us the most money, was phonograph cartridges. It was very profitable. We were making hundreds of thousands over the years. And we really weren't paying attention to small niche markets like the Green Bullet. Simple as that.
SPEAKER_00:And does it suggest that maybe the harmonica players were buying them secondhand and not new because you weren't aware of them? And like you say, you were going to your dealers and your dealers weren't telling you harmonica players were buying. Does that suggest that they were maybe being bought secondhand?
SPEAKER_01:It's feasible. They certainly were a lot less expensive than our Unidyne microphone. Our most famous microphone, the Elvis mic, the birdcage mic, that was probably four times as much. But James might have some comments on that.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I think the microphones that were cheap were the ones that they would use because they were inexpensive. Primarily the Green Bullet and its main competitor for the harmonica microphone world was the Aesthetic JT-30.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, agreed. Going back to the history then and what it was originally built for then, Michael, so reading the literature about this, you know, they were designed certainly for speech reproduction. Was that the main reason, the main design for them originally, yeah?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, two-way radio. One of the things I like, though, so if you see, anytime you see, I think they probably rerun the television series MASH in the UK. They certainly do here in the United States. They do, yeah. Watch Radar there. He's got a 520 on a desk stand that he picks up and talks to the camper. It's got the grip to talk where he grabs it and pulls it, you know, the switches on the back of the microphone. That would be a typical example of that. You know, a paging system at an army camp, in a school, two-way police and fire. It was just a kind of general purpose speech mic.
SPEAKER_00:Were there lots of them around when they came out? It was a relatively successful product. But this idea that it's used for speech, you know, obviously your mouth would be off it, whereas, you know, harmonica players would cup the green bullet for that sort of distorted sound that it brings. So, you know, I mean, how does that sit, do you think, James, with the responsiveness of the green bullet to the harmonica versus speech?
SPEAKER_02:I think that, once again, because they're inexpensive, they were being used for harmonica playing, but if you look at a lot of the different band photographs from certainly the south side of Chicago, they're using the bullet both as the vocal mic and as the harmonica mic they take their hands off you can see them on stands see the green bullet on the stand and they're singing into that microphone and then they grab a hold of it and you know compress the air going through it and give it that kind of distortion that the players enjoyed and you know it's totally different than what you would want a nice clear vocal mic to be especially when you touch it and grab it and you know bang it around the first person that we credit using amplified microphone is Little Walter. It's
SPEAKER_00:interesting you should say Little Walter because from the research that I've done, I didn't see conclusive evidence that Little Walter played with a green bullet. Is that right then? You know for sure that he did?
SPEAKER_02:I've seen photographs. Once again, it's very difficult to tell when you're looking at a photograph of a harmonica player cupping the mic if it is in fact a green bullet or it is a JT-30 because they look pretty similar from the rear. If you're looking at it from the front, it's very easy to tell, but from the back, it's a little less obvious. I have a great photograph of Junior Wells playing through a green bullet where you can clearly see what it is.
UNKNOWN:Thank you.
SPEAKER_02:The green bullet as we know it has the sure controlled magnetic or controlled reluctance element inside, but they also made some earlier ones with crystal elements inside, which are also highly, highly sought after now for blues harmonica players across the planet.
SPEAKER_01:yeah that was a model the model 7 and then it became the model 707 later yeah
SPEAKER_02:and those crystals i i still come across them working at full power which is pretty amazing
SPEAKER_01:it is truly amazing
SPEAKER_02:but i think i've been doing this for 11 years and i found five maybe in the last 11 years that worked and Once a harmonica player gets a hold of them and starts breathing heavy into it, the crystals tend to dissolve or fail in any one of a number of different ways.
SPEAKER_01:And Neil, regarding the crystals, Shure and Astatic got their crystals from the same place. It was a place called Brush Development in Cleveland, Ohio. And they had all the patents and they had all the ways to make them. And so everybody who made crystal microphones in the United States back in the 30s and 40s and 50s bought them from Brush.
SPEAKER_00:Right. So the static elements of the MC151, is that an element then, a crystal element that Shure used as well?
SPEAKER_01:It wouldn't have been the same. The crystal itself would have been the same, but then once the manufacturer got it, we came up with different levers and different ways to hook it up to the diaphragm.
SPEAKER_00:Just finishing off on the players who used it. So we've said that there's, like you said, James, there's photographs. We know that some of the great players were definitely using green bullets. Do we have any idea like who the first person who used a green bullet or recorded with a green bullet? Is there any sort of history about recordings using the green bullet, anything like that?
SPEAKER_02:That's a very curious question. I don't have an answer to that when you're talking about Basically, all the great blues records were being made at chess. And I suppose if I looked at some chess photography to see if Little or Big Walter were recording, I'd get a better idea about that. I really don't know. It sure doesn't know.
SPEAKER_01:The other thing they know is that a lot of recording engineers, they didn't want their secrets to be found out. They didn't want other people to know what mics they used and how they mic'd it at. So a lot of that stuff, they kept quiet. That's a
SPEAKER_02:good point.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:And also the other point is that the green bullet might not necessarily be something that they'd record in a studio with, might they not? Because they might want to use, you know, kind of condenser microphones to do that, mightn't they?
SPEAKER_02:But think about also in the 50s, we didn't have pro tools. So there weren't a lot of board effects that you could put in. So to a certain extent, if you wanted that dirty Chicago blues sound from your harmonica, then you would probably be using some form of bullet mic, even in the studio. well
SPEAKER_00:the green bullet again we've touched on that it was used as a vocal mic it was used in kind of public address systems radio the green bullet is a you know is immune to high temperature and humidity it's very durable whereas obviously the crystals are not and then they break easily as we've touched on already and they were kind of used in military settings as well which you know kind of made them more um more more um you know hard-wiring things yeah so that was one of the attractions on them as well
SPEAKER_01:yeah yeah controlled magnetic or controlled reluctance they mean the same thing um were developed during World War II. And so that was one of the technologies that came out of World War II.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so you touch on an interesting point there. So the difference between controlled reluctance and controlled magnetic, so a CR or CM microphone or element, is something that I wasn't that clear on, but after doing my research with the amazing Green Bullet Mic Net website again, I think I'm clear now. So let's touch on that now. So my understanding is they are pretty much the same. The controlled reluctance came first, and then the controlled magnetic came The only real thing that I can
SPEAKER_02:see as difference is the little tin hat on the diaphragm. The other aspect of it is that they changed the color of the labels in between. So from 1949 until somewhere around 1953, the labels were controlled reluctance and the labels on the back of it were black. So harmonica players referred to those as black label Schuers. Then in like 1953, 1954, they changed the label. They didn't change the construction. There's still that little tin hat on the diaphragm. And they still called them controlled reluctance, but they had a white label. Those came out around 1952 or 1953. But then they only lasted until that little tin hat only lasted until 56, maybe somewhere around there. And then they changed the name to Controlled Magnetic. They had white labels on the back. And as late as 1960, you would still find an element with that little tin hat on it. But in 1960, from then on, it was always glue. Those are the things that I can figure out when dating the elements. There's also a code on the back of each of these that denotes the month and year that they were manufactured. So when I'm When I'm selling a black label to a harmonica player, I'm saying, OK, this is from December of 1951 because I can read the codes on the back. And it's hard. You can't fake it. If somebody knows what they're looking for, they're looking for that black label. They're looking for that little tin hat. And they're looking for the date code on the back.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, see, those are details that Schur wouldn't even have. That's why it's good to have James here for those type of details. But in all of our literature, I've never been able to find any reason of the change from reluctance to magnetic. The specs don't change, nothing. But I can certainly see Mr. Schur, who liked, Mr. Schur was a precise man regarding words, and he always said, use a simpler word if it'll do. I could see him one day, he goes, no one understands reluctance, we're just going to use magnetic. I could really see that happening.
SPEAKER_00:That's interesting though, isn't it? Because it seems that we do have a solid reason for thinking the difference between the magnetic and reluctance is this tin hat, as you call it, James. But from Shura's side, it sounds like they didn't necessarily make that change of purpose. Are you sure about that, James? Can we close this topic around that is the difference between the CR and the CM?
SPEAKER_02:Some people claim that the CRs had thicker or more windings in between the magnets. There's a transformer and a bobbin, and some people claim that the bobbin was using either thicker wire or more winds around the bobbin. This is kind of a curious idea, but I've never taken apart one of these to find out if either
SPEAKER_01:one of those claims are correct. It could be, and again, we simply wouldn't know. As you imagine, with the$100 years we uh history we can't keep all the drawings
SPEAKER_02:of course and there was there was another subtle change when somebody who knows what they're looking at the bobbin itself in the controlled magnetic and controlled reluctance was made out of you know it's it's kind of like bakelite and then after they switched from control reluctance that bobbin became plastic yep And so you can tell by the color of
SPEAKER_01:that bobbin. Plastic was far easier to obtain than Bakelite. Bakelite had problems as well, but yep. I'm
SPEAKER_00:sure. But there's nothing on the code numbers about the difference between CR and CM elements. No. So effectively for people who want to know whether they got a CR or a CM, would they know, or is it just a case of they're more or less the same? There might be a very slight difference in tone between them.
SPEAKER_02:Well, what's interesting about CRs and CMs and the dates they were manufactured, because they were pretty much the same manufacturer, build from 1949 until they were discontinued in 87 is that when it was yeah around then yep and so the the unique aspect from a harmonica player's point of view is that every element itself even if it was made side by side with another element in the factory can sound different agreed when you're playing it with a harmonica and cupped. Some of them have a deep, rich bass sound. Some of them have a kind of a squeaky bass sound. Some of them sound better in the high areas, the high tones, and some of them sound flat. Some of them sound crisp and sharp. From a harmonica player's point of view and someone who wants to buy a harmonica mic, the best way to do that, because there is such variety is to try the thing in person. And that can be troublesome if you live in Malaysia and your microphones are being built in Newbury, Massachusetts.
SPEAKER_01:Let me just add something about that. And that's a good point, James, because we have people say, I've got an SM58 from the 1970s. I really like it. It sounds so much better than a new one. Okay, that's fine. You have to realize with microphones, diaphragms move millionths of an inch. It doesn't take much to change that movement as far as a weight shift or anything else, or even just like spit getting on there and some dust getting on it. You know, it doesn't take much to change the sound of a mic.
SPEAKER_00:But it sounds a little bit like instruments, right? If you go and buy a guitar, right, they'll all sound different, even though they're sort of made in the same factory with the same wood, but they just have their own sort of quality. So it sounds like that's, you know, how it works with microphones as well.
SPEAKER_01:About 15 years ago, Shure was going to buy a Steinway piano for our performance area here. And I was on the team. Oh, what a great thing. We went to a Steinway showroom. They had eight Model B Steinways there. And they all sounded different.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, when you think about the complexity of a piano too, you can understand. Right. But if you take apart, you know, a Shure Element or a 520 Green Bullet, there's plenty of parts there that could be different as well. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:And as well as the mic itself, it's also down to the player as well, right? I heard this story about how Bill Evans went, funnily enough, to a piano sort of conference and various great piano players played this one piano and then Bill Evans got up and it just sounded so much better when he played it. So, you know, there's a lot of it down to the player as well isn't it not just the mic
SPEAKER_01:absolutely
SPEAKER_00:absolutely so there we go so hopefully we cleared up between the cr and cm they're pretty much the same um so so not not to uh worry too much about those so You mentioned there already, James, that we had originally the black elements made, and they were made black-coloured, and then we had white elements coming, I think, in the 1950s, was it, a few years later. Yeah. And there's a lot of talk about the elements and the black ones being the best ones because they're the original ones. But I think we can probably dispel that myth and say that it's not really true to say that the black elements are better than the white ones or some of the later ones.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, quiet. I won't be able to sell them for as much as I do. I mean, black label elements are in large demand primarily because they're hard to find. They were only manufactured for four or five years. So people want that original tone because, oh, it was the original piece. But some of the Shure later models that were made in Mexico are also very high output and they sound great. And so if you take any two elements and put them side by side and play them, you may or may not be able to hear a difference. So I call the dual impedance ones that were made in Mexico the poor man's black label. However, if you ask 30 harmonica players who have played a black label versus a later Shure Element, maybe made in the 60s, 70s, or 80s, they all swear that the bass response on most black labels is superior to anything made past 1957. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:keep in mind this also, Neil. You know, when you make a product for as long as we have, our suppliers change. You know, we're an assembler, right? We don't go out and mine the aluminum and make the bakelite. So your suppliers change. They go in and out of business. They would change the way they do things and so forth. There's lots of variations there. that can slip in. Let's say that the black labels do have more base response for whatever reason. And let's say it's because of the thickness of the diaphragm on the edges, for example, or they're more compliant on the edges. Well, that's what you get from the supplier. And if that supplier starts to make it a different way, or if that supplier goes out of business, or we got to buy a new adhesive, There are so many variables in there that people don't realize it until they become a manufacturer and just started to realize it. You've probably got, you know, 50 different suppliers that give us parts to make up one green bullet.
SPEAKER_00:sure yeah and so you made the point there james that you know people are sought after the black labels they cost more money i actually do own a black label myself from 1952 i mean do you think they're better or i mean from from what i was reading on the on the green bullets um uh mike's net website is you know it says that there's variability between the elements so really you have to sort of try you know one white label might be better than a black label i mean what do you think are black labels better
SPEAKER_02:once again it's you know they differ individually each element how However, I have to say that at equal strength as far as volume output goes, I believe the black labels do have a stronger bass response. I play one. Most of the people that can afford one want one, but I test each one that I get. And so I've probably played 700 different black labels and they all are different. But generally speaking, they're better.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and as you say, Michael, that might be down to a component maybe makes it more bassy or whatever. So it does make sense that they might be better because they were manufactured in a certain way and then changed.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and better, I would just say, this is subjective. It's music, you know, and consequently, I agree completely, James. Try them out. If you like the way that one sounds, wonderful. I'm not going to argue why it sounds better. You say it just sounds better to you.
SPEAKER_00:And I think people are obviously searching for, you know, a great mic to play blues harmonica with, and it can be lots of trial and error, right? You can spend a lot of money getting not a very good microphone. So going to someone like yourself, James, and there are other microphone providers, you know, probably is the way to go, isn't it? Because you might be paying more, but you've done the work to find the good elements and to sort of endorse it as a good, strong output mic here.
SPEAKER_02:It's true. You have to trust your vendor, especially if you're buying something over the internet. It's impossible for you to try to test them over the internet. People often say, well, can you give me an audio sample of that? And I'm like, well, you're just introducing more variability. It's like the microphone that I'm using, my computer, the compression of the sound information. So it's nearly impossible. So you have to trust that the person you're buying it from says
SPEAKER_01:this is good. Also, I didn't look up the tolerances on what do we use, but I would guess we probably have an envelope that's maybe plus or minus 2 dB. That would be my guess. Maybe even as wide as plus or minus 3 dB. But that means that If you've got a range of plus or minus 2 dB, that means that on the top end, it could be 4 dB hotter than at the bottom end or vice versa. So any manufacturer, you can't make everything exactly the same, particularly for a microphone. It's basically relatively inexpensive. So you've got just the tolerances of manufacturing.
SPEAKER_00:Let's touch on this topic of hot microphone elements now. So that's a word that's used a lot when people are describing, you know, the mics that they're selling, that they're hot. And so you very frequently see meter readings shown against, you know, a microphone. And again, from what I've read, these meter readings don't necessarily mean a lot. It's not just, that's not the only factor that sort of contributes to the sound of the mic. Shows
SPEAKER_01:continuity, in my opinion, that's all it shows. James? What
SPEAKER_02:do you think? Yeah, I agree. People put way too much respect on what the output is for uh ohms and honestly i've had some that read you know 900k ohms that sound better than something that is 1300k ohms so it really from a musical standpoint means nothing
SPEAKER_00:yeah and i think people have this idea that if it's got a strong output that you know it's loud and as if it's quiet there's something wrong with it and it's not projecting very well but that's not the case right that's not the only factor of the sound that we're looking for
SPEAKER_02:no that's true uh certainly It changes according to the embouchure and the style of playing that the person is doing. Their skull's bone structure, even, you know, the resonance that comes through their harmonica into the microphone. There's so many variables there. To a certain extent, it's a dart at the board.
SPEAKER_01:And, you know, in 2023, gain is cheap. just turn it up
SPEAKER_00:they might be good at this juncture just to explain um how does a microphone element actually work which
SPEAKER_01:type of microphone element
SPEAKER_00:well in this case the green bullet one yeah
SPEAKER_02:I'm going to let Michael take this one. It's too technical
SPEAKER_01:for me. Okay. It's fairly simple. Let's look about how a moving coil microphone works, like a Unidyne. Or there was a moving coil version. In fact, the current Green Bull mics are moving coil. So you've got a diaphragm, typically about the size of a quarter, made out of mylar. You've got a coil of wire that's glued to the back of that diaphragm. And then it sits surrounded by a magnet, basically. And as the diaphragm bounces... the coil of wire moves slightly, again, millionths of an inch within that magnetic field, and that induces a signal in the coil of wire. So in this case, it's a moving coil because as you talked, the coil moves. Interestingly enough, in a controlled magnetic, or reluctance doesn't make any difference, The diaphragm still moves, but the coil remains stationary, and the magnet remains stationary. And what the diaphragm does is it has a little pin on the back, and that moves, for lack of a better term, a little tiny diving board that's made out of a ferrous material, some type of iron. So the diaphragm moves, the drive pin moves, and that moves that little ferrous material, and that disrupts the magnetic field. And by disrupting that magnetic field and moving it slightly, that also induces a signal in the coil of wire. So the aspect of a controlled magnetic microphone is that the coil of wire does not move. And because it doesn't move, you're not putting any stress on the actual leads, which makes it why it's better for a military aspect of it. So in short, the coil is stationary, the magnet is stationary, and all that moves is a little tiny ferrous iron wire. diving board that disrupts the magnetic field. That's about the easiest way I can describe it.
SPEAKER_00:And so the sound of the harmonica going into the green bullet in this case is converted into an electrical signal, which then goes to the amplifier. The amplifier then converts that back into sound through the speakers. And then we get all these questions about impedance and things, and it goes on to the measurements and the ohms that we were talking about with the meters that are often shown for these. And that's what it all relates to when and we see these meter readings and impedance.
SPEAKER_01:So a low impedance can always feed into a high impedance. A guitar amplifier by nature, because originally they were tubes, and tubes by nature have high input impedances. So you can always go a low impedance into a higher impedance. The problem with a low impedance microphone is that it has a very small output level, and you'd have to turn it up louder. So basically we made high impedance microphones to have a higher output level so they would drive these high impedance tube amplifiers better. Yes, a high impedance microphone has, on average, probably 15 to 20 dB more output than a low impedance mic.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and so obviously Shure make many microphones, and some of which are used by harmonica players as well as the Green Bullet. Obviously, we've got the SM58, which is used traditionally kind of acoustically and by lots of chromatic players and other people as well. And then we've got the SM57, the 545 as well. These are all dynamic microphones,
SPEAKER_01:right? Yeah, moving coil, I think is best. Dynamic can actually refer to moving coil, controlled magnetic, or ribbon, because they all act like a dynamo. They all have a magnet. So I like the term moving coil magnet. and controlled magnetic and also uh ribbon let's not forget about paul butterfield right james he was one of the first ones to use the the unidine three microphone for uh
SPEAKER_02:yeah and uh you know of course he had some of the best tone uh on the planet indeed
SPEAKER_00:And so these are the microphones we mentioned there. These are low impedance ones, yeah?
SPEAKER_01:The Unidyne 3s inherently are low impedance. The current version of the 520 is actually dual impedance. There's a transformer in there and you can select it to be low impedance or select it to be high impedance.
SPEAKER_00:So you sent me some information, I'll put a link on, you can convert a green bullet to be low impedance and high impedance. Is that just the new models which have that ability?
SPEAKER_01:The first one was the 520D, which was 1981. That was a controlled magnetic still, and that had a dual impedance output on it as well. The current one, the 520DX, which you've got the volume control and is a moving coil. It's not a controlled magnetic, also has a dual impedance. It's just basically what transformer you put inside of it.
SPEAKER_00:And so if you were to use a green bullet as a low impedance, you would plug it into a PA and not a tube amp, is that?
SPEAKER_01:Like an XLR connector.
SPEAKER_00:Right. So what difference would that make to tone? Obviously, it would sort of be cleaner because it's not going for a tube amp. What's the difference with the microphone? Would it be sort of more suitable for cleaner vocals? Well, one of
SPEAKER_01:the advantages of low impedance signals, you can send the cable... 1,000 feet if you want. You're not restricted. High impedance tend to be unbalanced, and you can't really run the cable more than about 20 feet or you start to roll off the high end. It's a factor of the capacitance of the cable. I'm not a harmonica player, not a harp player, so James might talk about that.
SPEAKER_02:You're absolutely right about the high impedance rolling off if you have too long of a cable. For instance, I made three microphones for Roger Daltrey of The Who, and they wanted a 30-foot cable. And I had to fight with them and say, you're going to ruin the sound of the microphone if you put a 30-foot cable on this. And so they finally acquiesced and let me max it out at 20 feet.
SPEAKER_00:So is that about the limit, James, that people should use with the the green bullets, the high impedance green bullets, 20 feet cable. Absolutely. Yeah. And what about wireless systems nowadays?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, that's a good question. A lot of the wireless systems that first came out were low impedance and they would use XLR connectors. So you could take it from your microphone and go right into the soundboard with it. Although there's a whole crop of new ones in the last four or five years that are, they use quarter inch, uh, guitar jacks and they're reasonably high impedance by themselves because I play one and it goes right into my amp and I don't notice a huge amount of difference in
SPEAKER_01:the output. You know, you go back to the 50s, right? So you've got this green bullet microphone. It's high impedance. You're going directly into the circuit of your guitar amp and you get a certain sound. When you substitute a wireless system, now you're going into the transmitter. You're not going directly into that guitar amplifier. So now, if you're distorting something, you're distorting the input on that guitar transmitter or on the wireless transmitter that may not sound the same as distorting the input on the guitar amp. That's
SPEAKER_00:true. So why are those systems becoming more popular and people like to roam around playing their morning car? I do own one myself, a Line 6 one, and again, it seems to work fine. I don't notice a massive difference, but you would say that it would take something away then, do you think, Michael, from the output of the mic? It's a
SPEAKER_01:different input circuit. Maybe it sounds better, maybe it sounds worse. You're not going to hurt anything by doing it, but it's not the same as connecting it directly to your guitar amp.
SPEAKER_00:So probably your advice would be you're better plugging directly into the amp, at least to get the true tone of the an amp yeah
SPEAKER_01:try it do a comparison you know and if your ear doesn't hear anything great
SPEAKER_00:yeah um it's probably because we're going half deaf and playing music to amplify is too loud
SPEAKER_02:it's also you know you have to try it just like michael said but there's a player that i make microphones for his name is shane sager and he is the uh harmonica player for sting And he uses a wireless system when he's playing straight blues. And his wireless system is made by Sennheiser. It's an XLR input. But at the amp end, he puts an impedance matching transformer. There we are.
SPEAKER_01:Steps
SPEAKER_02:it up from low impedance to high impedance. Yeah, that makes sense. And plugs that directly into the amp. Yeah, that makes sense. His tone is exemplary, but it may be different than if he was just plugging a cable in. Right.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Hopefully we've cleared up some myths around impedance and an output and that sort of thing. So it's going back to the green bullet specifically. So we talked about some of the history and obviously the black label and the white label elements. And so we got the 520D. That's the one which you could first do the conversion, right, Michael, between the low and high impedance. And that was first made in the U.S., but then it moved across to Mexico. I have here from 1980 and the R44 element.
SPEAKER_01:I can't speak to the element number at to look it up, but my notes here say that 1981 was when we first made the 520D, and we did not open our facility in Mexico until 1985. The one thing that I would like everyone to know is that that facility in Mexico which still operates is a Shure facilities with Shure employees with Shure equipment. It's not like we outsourced all that. So there was nothing that changed except for literally the location that we made it at. And the label. And the label. Don't read too much into the labels, though. I was telling Neil, sometimes we just run out of black labels or white labels, and we use whatever we have. That's right. I understand.
SPEAKER_00:So the ones that were made in Mexico, what's so from 1985, it sounds like. So I think you've said already, James, that, you know, some of these elements are down to, you know, reputed to be great elements, right? And you've definitely found good ones made from that time upwards that can compare to some of the previous black and white labels.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. There's prejudice amongst players that the older elements sound better, but the reality is the ones made in Mexico, we're actually using a little bit, they're more consistent because the I'm assuming that the manufacturing techniques came up with better machines to make these things more similar than they were before. I like the output and the crispness of the Mexico elements that, you know, the model number is the 99S556, I think, and they sound great. But because they're kind of looked down upon, the price of those pieces for harmonica players is lower, which I think is a bonus. If I get somebody who says, I want that 1950s Chicago crunch, and I only have X amount of dollars, and I'm like, okay, well, we can't sell you one with a black label in it. but we can sell you one of these for$65 instead of$250 that came from Mexico and sounds virtually the same, especially to an untrained ear.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and he's right. Actually, the consistency of the Mexican facility is better than it was in Evanston, but it wasn't because of the people or the skill. It's just that manufacturing techniques got better. Simple as that.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely, yeah. Technology and all these things. I think one thing that people definitely do get mixed up with a Mexican facility is we've got the 520DX model, which is a different microphone, because it is a dynamic element. Is this
SPEAKER_01:correct? It's a moving coil. And what happened was we had gotten down to the point where the only... The only controlled magnetic we were making was the 520, and we simply couldn't come up with enough parts with that to make our suppliers happy. And they were going to say, well, we've got to charge you 10 times as much. So we just said, we're going to try to make a moving coil that sounds as much like a controlled magnetic as we can. And we spent a lot of time doing that. Can you do it exactly? Of course you can't do it exactly because there's different elements. But we tried to make it sound as much as we could like the original one with the controlled relay. So
SPEAKER_00:all the ones now made from this point onwards, I think from 1997 I have, are the DX models, are there no other?
SPEAKER_01:That's correct. They've been all moving coils since around 1997.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so let's talk a little bit. Now, we've talked a lot about the elements. Let's talk about the shells, which is obviously the characteristic shell of the green bullet is that famous look. You mentioned, James, obviously the ecstatic JT-20 is a sort of similar sort of bullet shape. But the green bullet, it's made of die-cast zinc. It's obviously green. You know, so what about the shell? How important is the shell and how it's put together? I think the gasket is really important, isn't it? It's all sealed up really well.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know. I'll listen with great interest to what James has to
SPEAKER_02:say. Well, the green bullet being iconic, everyone wants a green bullet, especially to begin with, because it's a pretty safe bet that you're going to be able to hold on to that. I think the addition of a volume control and the DX was a Terrific edition. And it makes it easier on stage for you to control feedback. And if the sound man is yelling at you, you can turn it down. If it's time for your solo, you can turn it up. The shell form factor is the same. It's heavy. It's made out of cast zinc. It's excellent in a bar fight. But a lot of people think it's too heavy. So that is one of the downsides of that cast zinc style, is they think the body of itself is a bit too heavy. Personally, I think the weight is fine for me. I play three hours in a row for our gigs, and my arms don't get heavy. I suppose I've been used to it for playing this way for 30 years.
SPEAKER_01:You know, James, you don't want that body to resonate. See, that's why, that's part of the reason is that if it resonates. Yep.
SPEAKER_00:So, so we get, you know, shells being made out of, you know, sort of wood and maybe plastic and other materials. So there's something about the, about the zinc and like you just said there, Michael, the weight of it that is contributing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. The only thing you want to be vibrating in that microphone is the diaphragm. So you don't want other things to be vibrating and resonating. So, you know, the wood stuff I've seen, I see beautiful. Beautiful microphones. I just don't know how that wood's going to, you know, will it resonate and cause response characteristics that you don't want. Very possible.
SPEAKER_02:Good point. I've got a question for Michael. Yeah. How important is the air tightness of the shell?
SPEAKER_01:Ah, that's a good question. I mean, it's basically an omni mic. If it was a directional microphone, the space behind it would be really critical, but it's not. So this is just 47 years of history of it. Important, yes. Critical, I would say no. The better you seal it up, the more that omnidirectional pattern is going to be consistent. So I can't give you a number between 1 and 10, James. I think that the aspect of making it a good seal is important. Is it going to change the sound a lot? Probably not.
SPEAKER_03:It's
SPEAKER_02:curious because rebuilders like myself, there's a couple of pinholes in a sure green bullet that some people will leave open because they say it needs to breathe a little inside. It's called barometric leak. There you go. And myself, I plug those holes up with a bit of epoxy because I feel like the tightness in the solid block of air behind that diaphragm changes the tone a little
SPEAKER_01:bit. So you're okay with that, but imagine now you take that same microphone you've got up in an airplane. Right. Now you've got a complete pressure difference, and it's going to press outward on the diaphragm. Now, you know, is it enough to damage it? We probably don't know, but the barometric leaks are small like that, so you can have these small changes of air pressure over a long period of time. As long as you keep it at sea level, Newberry, you're probably fine. But if you take it to Denver, you might have an issue.
SPEAKER_02:That's a really interesting point. I have a player friend who is in Denver, and I spent the weekend with him. I'm going to ask him if he has ever had any issue with that and what his perspective on the barometric pressure changes would be.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. All omni mice have a barometric leak somewhere. It's just to make sure that the pressure stays the same on both sides of the diaphragm. Got it.
SPEAKER_00:So I want to pick up on an important point you touched on there. So volume control, James, I think there's some people think that maybe the volume control would take something away from the mic, but I think that's definitely not the case, right? As well as it's well fitted, a volume control is pretty essential, right, for the reasons that you gave earlier on.
SPEAKER_02:I like a volume control and I don't think that it makes a big difference in the tone, but it's another electrical piece that is between the diaphragm and your amp. So, I mean, it makes perfect sense to me that it would change the tone? Does it change the tone dramatically? I don't think so, but there are many harmonica players who would hit me in the head with a green bullet because I'm wrong.
SPEAKER_01:It does form an RC circuit where the capacitance of the cable interacts with the resistance of the volume pot, and it does have a roll-off at some point. Now, can you hear that roll-off? Probably not, but it does. If you look at it on a strictly electronic level, it does affect it somewhat.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I guess you've got to weigh that slight difference against the advantages of having volume control. Exactly. Interesting, yeah. So there's, we touched on, you know, some of the history of the blues harmonica and, you know, who played it and everything. So there's a nice, there's a nice video which Shura put out, which sort of talks about that. Michael, I'll share that link again on the podcast page, but it talks about why it became popular and it interviews Sugar Blue and obviously he's playing through it, through a green bullet on that as well. So, you know, it fits in your hands well. The high impedance means it works with guitar amps. It was affordable when released. You know, you can hold the harmonica close to the elements as well to help drive it. So some of these are some of the reasons why people, you know, harmonica players started taking them up in the first place.
SPEAKER_01:All very practical reasons, right?
SPEAKER_02:People will change. They'll use one microphone for a couple of months or a couple of years and they'll change and they'll see if they like their tone better. And for instance, myself, I switch between two different mics. Not so much of, oh, this sounds way different than the other one. Just tiny little reasons to change in a performance.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, and we've talked about, you know, some of the competitors to the, um, the green bullet, obviously the, the, the static JT30, which is, wait, is that only a crystal mic or is it, you know, obviously you can put different elements in it. So if you're changing those, James, are you, are you, are they pretty much always crystals or?
SPEAKER_02:Crystals are so hard to find and they're so fragile that I'm afraid to ship them. Oh, wow. When I have a good crystal on hand in my shop and I put it up for sale, I say it's local. Because I don't trust the different shipping companies to treat it with the gentle care that it needs to not break.
SPEAKER_00:So crystals are well sought after by Harmonica Place. So why don't Shure manufacture new crystal mics? oh god they're
SPEAKER_01:he's giving you all the reasons humidity heat in the late in the 50s uh crystal started being replaced by a ceramic called barium titanate that didn't have any of those problems I don't think they sounded quite the same. I don't know of anybody who's putting ceramic elements into loose harmonica microphones. That might be something to look into, James, if you ever find any of those ceramic elements. Yeah, if I
SPEAKER_02:could afford to build the tooling.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We got crystals, I think. The last ones we built were probably 1969 or 1970, and it was good riddance because, you know, first of all, brush had been bought and sold and bought and sold, and our suppliers were going away. We weren't interested in learning how to grow the crystals and cut the crystals and so forth. And I'm not sure if anybody makes crystal mics anymore. I don't know where you would get the crystal elements to do that.
SPEAKER_02:There's some cheap crystal elements out on the internet and they just have such a limited tone range that they're
SPEAKER_00:useless. So in your experience of selling microphones then, James, you'd say that there aren't really... Well, there are some crystal mics available, obviously, but you recommend it against them by the sounds of it and they're just not going to last is the feeling.
SPEAKER_02:That's my personal feeling. There's a player named Dennis Gruenling who would... Oh yeah, I know Dennis. He's a... primarily a crystal player and he's also a fellow builder and his microphones generally come with crystals but he has been having as hard of time finding originals as we have but he has found some new old stock japanese made crystals yeah probably from the 60s that he bought a big pile of and so he rebuilds with using those crystals so he's not using original brush crystals either unless he finds a couple that are alive
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we recently have vintage microphone collector contacts all around the world. And we all help each other out and we all know each other. And James, I'm glad I know you now because I'm sure that you can help me out in the future as well and vice versa. But there was a guy out in California that recently, a guy came to him who had bought a storage unit that was unpaid for and he bought everything in there. And there was new old Shure crystal microphones in there from the 40s. That's a find. Yeah, in the box, hang tags, everything. And they were our Model 730s, which are the round circular microphones. There's a famous photo of Billie Holiday singing into one of those. Yep. So I basically, he wanted something from the archive that had an extra one, so we did a barter trade. And I've got these two things. And they work perfectly. It was really my first time I got to hear a pristine sound. Crystal and Mike from the 40s. They sounded pretty darn good.
SPEAKER_02:It's interesting... that some people like the lo-fi sound of a green bullet when they're using vocals. I'm a huge Elvis Costello fan, and he's using a Shure 520 DX right now to sing Hattie O'Hara's Confidential. Really? I see it every time I go see him, and I'm like, geez, he might be better with an old ratty crystal instead of that DX, which is probably a little too much clearer for her. And And then also there was a song called Cannonball in 1993 by the Breeders. The beginning of it goes and that's done through a Shure 520 DX as well.
SPEAKER_01:When Dylan was on tour with his wonderful harmonica playing, quote unquote, I think he uses a DX as well, but you know.
SPEAKER_00:So just the last thing to cover then, it's just back to the green bullets solely here, is how you best look after them. A few things that was interesting when I was doing my research for this, I didn't realize, a couple of things I picked up, you shouldn't really put them with your, you certainly shouldn't store them in your amp because the magnets from the amp might cause them some damage. Is that right?
SPEAKER_01:The only thing I could think about is that it is feasible that the magnetic field from the big speaker could somehow magnetize that ferrous lever inside there. I would say that's probably, yeah, you probably shouldn't do that. I can't tell you that I can say it's going to ruin it, but I could see maybe it's not such a good idea.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's a reason. So probably best not to permanently store it in your arm, but you'd be okay to rest it on top of your arm, say, during the gig. So obviously dropping them, even with the resilient, tough green bullets, never a good idea, right?
SPEAKER_02:You know, what I've found with the green bullets and with the control reluctance, control magnetic elements is they're virtually indestructible. If you drop it, the thing that's most likely to fail is the wiring to and from the element as opposed to the element itself.
SPEAKER_01:It Agreed.
SPEAKER_00:So you can drop it and you can hit people on the head with them as well. Hammers are
SPEAKER_01:cheaper, but you know, if you want to do it, that's okay.
SPEAKER_00:So another thing is, you know, some things that can go wrong with them is that I read that the glue on the diaphragm can sort of start to corrode and, you know, there can be general corrosion. So is that the sort of thing that you repair, James, to sort of bring them back into, you know, to standard?
SPEAKER_02:Almost never a problem, except for the very early models with that tin hat. The adhesive between that hat and the diaphragm sometimes fails. And it's hard to tell because when you draw in that tin hat and the diaphragm kind of gets sucked together but when you blow really hard on the harmonica then the tin hat and the diaphragm tend to separate a little bit when you hear that issue going on i have a a vendor out in california or in oregon who uh glues them back for me because he's has lots of experience in disassembling the elements themselves wow i don't touch them because i figure i would just break it totally that's fragile
SPEAKER_00:work so that's all we've got time for we could definitely continue talking about the green bullet for many hours but if you want more detailed information again recommend reading the greenbulletmikes.net website the links on the podcast page and lots of detail on there if you want to really get into into this stuff thanks so much to Michael and James joining me today and I think suffice to say all of us happy 75th birthday to the green bullet 520 model next year thank you very much excellent Once again, thanks to Zydle for sponsoring the podcast. Be sure to check out their great range of harmonicas and products at www.zydle1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zydle Harmonicas. Thanks to Michael and James for a fascinating conversation about the Green Bullet and related microphone topics. It sure cleared up some points for me and hopefully for you too. And thanks to Frank Meek for the donation to the podcast. Regarding the clips used in the episode, I don't know if these songs use the green bullet. As the conversation suggested, the mics used by the greats during their recordings is generally not documented. But on that note, we'll play out with another masterwork from the king of the blues harmonica, Little Walter.
UNKNOWN:Little Walter No.