The Neumann UM 57 

When I first heard this mic I new it was very special and had to buy it. I contacted the Neumann plant in Germany to find out if anyone knew the specifics of it. I received an E mail from George Neumann telling me about this mic and where it was made.  He told me how his father pulled the manufacturing equipment from a burning plant in Berlin during the war, the Neumann factory had been hit by an incendiary bomb that evening. He moved the equipment to a farming community in Gefel. This tube condenser mic was designed in 1957 by the original Neumann engineers with covert help from George Neumann using an original M7 cartridge and built with the equipment  hauled from that burning plant in Berlin. The help from George Neumann was covert because Gefel is in east Germany and under communist rule at that time.  The mic I have, serial number  331 is one of 200 made at the Gefel plant in 1958 and rumored to have been smuggled out of east Germany in the 1960's.  I spoke to the engineer at B.L.U.E. who refurbished this particular  mic and he remembered its qualities.  It has a wonderful, warm sound.