Golden Age GA-251 Premier

The Telefunken ELA M 250/251 was made for Telefunken by AKG after Neumann discontinued its OEM production of the Telefunken U-47. The Golden Age Premier GA-251 is inspired by this truly classic mic model. The GA-251 shares the same design goal that was set for the GA-47: to offer the classic qualities and advantages that a vintage unit in perfect condition would provide and doing so at a very low price point. Having gone through a number of prototypes that was compared to great sounding vintage units in different recording settings, everyone involved agreed that the goal was reached. The coupling capacitor is made by Solen from France. It is a high balanced film capacitor made from MKP material with pure oxygen-free copper connections. It has a very delicate and balanced sound.

The capsule capacitor uses NOS Siemensantique grade polystyrene capacitor to reduce loss.

The tube cathode bypass capacitor uses an ELNA OFC Cerafine high end hifi capacitor from Japan with oxygen free copper connections exhibiting a very sweet and delicate character, not the least for vocals.The other capacitors are of the low loss polystyrene type.

The resistor used for setting the capsule voltage is a high quality DALE 1% metal film resistor. The result is a very stable and consistent operating level leading to better consistency between different GA-251 units. The plate resistor uses a non-inductive resistor of the United States IRC audio with pure copper connections. The sound level is rich and full bodied. The GA-251 uses a 34 mm K251 style capsule. Being a dual-sided one, it provides both cardioid and omni polar patterns.In order to get a good consistency between units, for each production run of 50 pcs GA-251 units, approximately 200 capsules is evaluatedin order to find 50 capsules with specifications that lie within the tight tolerances. The sensitivity of the front and back side of the capsule do not differ more than 0,3 dB. The sensitivity between different capsules do not differ more than 0,5 dB.

The tight manufacturing tolerance will lead to a very good consistency between different GA-251 units.

The capsule is specially designed to complement the electronic circuit of the GA-251 to achieve a frequency response curve with a nice balance between the high, middle and low frequencies. The result is a very smooth sound with a warm bottom and airy top end just like ELA M251. The vintage style power supply PSU uses a high power R-style transformer with a low noise level and minimum stray field.

A simple but effective circuit uses dual-stage filtering for the filament voltage. The High voltage is also precisely filtered and stabilized using an ON semiconductor zener diode. The polar pattern switch is placed on the power supply so that the recording engineer can change the polar pattern between Cardioid and Omni remotely. A ground lift switch will help to solve mains power related noise issues that can appear in some cases.