58 l June 2013
www.psneurope.com industrytalk
“Our intention is that the microphones we make today can be used for another 50 years themselves, if required. I’m sure they will”
work mostly on new products. Even after that, I think I will keep my percentage of the ownership. I’ll be CEO for at least another year, and then concentrate on R&D – the fun things!
Were you an electronics graduate? I was studying electronics, but I never finished – thanks to getting a job at Pearl. Back then it was crystals, then dynamics, and condensers a bit later. We’ve also made valve and magnetic models. Since ’87 all of the designs have been mine.
Pearl talk
Phil Wardtalks to Bernt Malmqvist, head of Pearl Microphones, and finds that, in a lot of respects, nothing really changes
PEARL MIKROFON - LABORATORIUM is Sweden’s answer to Neumann, founded in Stockholm in 1941 – just 13 years after the German story had begun – by electronics pioneer Rune Rosander. No copycat, Rosander had his own ideas about the effectiveness of rectangular membranes in the microphones, a signature technique to this day, so when a young Bernt Malmqvist joined in 1954 he was soon being mentored in an environment of originality, groundbreaking quality and family ownership. Fifty-nine years on, and Malmqvist – who took over ownership of the manufacturer when Rosander retired in 1987 –
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has finally completed the process of establishing new investors whom, he feels sure, will continue the proud traditions of the company as he steps into that enviable role deserved of all business leaders with staying power: consultant, mentor and eminence gris without the front- line pressure…
Time for a change? I still have about 15% of the company, and together with the members of my family we have about 33%. The new owners are business people, not very technical, but with a great interest in music and recording. It means we have more cash within the company to develop
new markets, but also we have two new employees whom I will teach how to make microphones the best way! It’s not easy: you can’t just find someone who can say ‘yes, I know how to make microphones’, but they’re settling in pretty well. In the future we’ll have people here who can take over the whole of production. That’s very important for me: I can’t just let it go…
No one in the family to follow in your footsteps? Alas, no. We have four children: an architect, a priest, a house builder and a COO… but that’s just the way it is. But the family interest in the ownership of the company will remain, and I will
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Have microphones changed much since the ’50s? Not really. Microphones are very conservative. People pay a lot of money for an old Neumann, for example – and also for old Pearl microphones, of course, especially the tube models from the ’50s and ’60s. These are 50-year-old products! Actually the electronics have got better and better over the years. There is far more noise in an older microphone, and nowadays you can find microphones with more or less no noise at all. But the principle behind a condenser microphone is the same.
So how can it be improved? Good question! We try to employ better and better technology in the process of manufacturing, with higher precision. With our condenser capsules, we’re in constant search for a flat frequency response. The new Priority range launching this year shows a boost at 5kHz of up to 2dB-3dB, but that’s because people asked for it. Our other studio microphones are flat: we always say that there is no reason for the microphone itself to have its own sound. It’s your sound, as the customer, that we’re interested in. We can achieve small, incremental differences, I believe.
What were the priorities, if you will, behind the Priority range? People are always asking for a better microphone at a lower price. Most of the cost goes into making a good capsule; I’ve spent a long time trying to make a lower-priced capsule that keeps
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the quality, and I think with Priority I have succeeded. We have the CC 22 model that costs SEK8,000 (€930); this one will cost SEK5,000 (€580). That’s a big difference, and
we’ve done it by supplying a lower-cost cradle, simpler packaging and other small cost savings here and there – including this new capsule. At NAB this year, the US edition of Pro Sound News awarded it ‘Best of Show’, which made us all very proud.
Can you detect a difference between a Swedish microphone and a German one? Hmm... We are proud to have very high technology and machinery in Sweden, but it’s largely the same in Germany. There is one difference internally: our microphones are made with rectangular condenser capsules, and almost everybody else uses round capsules. A round capsule has only one resonance, the diameter; a rectangle has resonances along the length, the width and the diagonal axes. These are smaller resonances, and therefore easier to make flat. That is Pearl’s contribution – we made the first one in 1960.
Is everything made in Sweden? Yes, we do it all here. As you well know, there are hundreds of microphone manufacturers today, but I don’t think there are so many that have totally in-house production. Most will buy their capsules from China, for instance.
Why is that important to you? We want to have complete control of the production, and to know for certain that the microphone will be of the highest quality from the very first step, the very first component. I know we could send drawings to China and hope – but we don’t trust that procedure. We spoke about using microphones that are 50 years old: our intention is that the microphones we make today can be used for another 50 years themselves, if required. I’m sure they will. n
www.pearlmicrophones.com
Pro Sound Awards ........................56 QSC Audio ....................................38 Radial Systems Engineering.........IBC Renkus-Heinz ...............................55 Sennheiser....................................27 Studiomaster.................................21 TOA .............................................29 Waves Audio.........................33 & 35 Yamaha Commercial Audio ..............1
Bernt Malmqvist, Pearl Microphones
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