I’ve known Mark Fouxman and Samar Audio Design for at least ten years. I reviewed his VL37 ribbon mic back in 2015 when it first came out. Mark has been a regular at AES shows for some time and for good reason. He’s an excellent craftsman with a passion for microphones and all of the little parts that need to go inside them. Get to know him a little better by watching this 2017 video.
SAMAR MG33 & MG20
Both microphones are cardioids with 10 mm diaphragms. The side-address MG33 is transformerless. The end-address MG20 has a transformer.
MG33 Specs
Capsule Dimension: 10 mm
Sensitivity: -41dB (8.91 mV/Pa)
SNR: 80 dB
Selfnoise: 15 dBA
Phantom Power: 48 V
Max SPL: 140 dB
Output Z: 47 Ohms
Overall Dimension: .74”x 3.37"
This is a physically small microphone. The merit there is that if you’re shooting video or taking pictures, you’d have to look hard to find it. Not that it’s diminutive size takes away from its performance. Let me make clear; it doesn’t on either of these mics.
MG33 Hand-held mic check
MG20 Specs
Capsule Dimension: 10 mm
Sensitivity: -41dB (8.91 mV/Pa)
SNR: 80 dB
Selfnoise: 15 dBA
Phantom Power: 48 V
Max SPL: 140 dB
Output Z: 200 Ohms
Overall Dimension: 1.0”x 5.7”
This is also a small microphone, but bigger than the MG33. It’s shape is both functional and eye-catching.
MG20 Hand-held mic check
All That Technical Stuff
When Sensitivity, Selfnoise and SNR are the tea leaves, here’s a link every audio engineer should enjoy.
At the end of the day, you want the mic to have enough sensitivity so you don’t need to jack up your preamp and add its noise to your recording. Unless you’re recording kitten purrs from across the room (probably not a good idea) you’ll be fine with either or both of these microphones.
After hand-assessing them, (Hear the hand-held links above) I thought, since they were similar in sound, that I’d put them in front of my favorite guitar (Indian Rosewood Martin D28s) and my favorite guitarist (John Seay.)
The Martin strings (13-54 bronze) were not new or old; just somewhere in the middle
I fed each microphone into a separate input of my JVC GY-HM650 digital video camera, and had John play a bit. Then I brought those files into Final Cut Pro and edited the clips to play one track at a time and then both tracks together in stereo. My ear says the MG20 has slightly more top end, but not so much as to make using them as a pair impossible. Listen/watch for yourself and see/hear what you think.
MG20 and MG33 Comparison Video
The smaller MG33 has more handling noise and pops more easily, but I wouldn't use it as a vocal mic without a good pop filter. Both mics are very transparent with fewer phasing issues than bulkier mics simply because of the lack of mic body and/or other structural parts that could reflect/delay the sound. It damn near NEKKID! (That’s “naked" if you’re not familiar with NEKKID.)
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