David Brown of Soyuz Microphones: Behind the Gear

How and why did you start Soyuz?

It's a weird story, because I certainly never thought I would start a microphone company. I was in Russia in 2013 because my band Brazzaville is popular there and had been touring there since 2003. I have no idea why, but one day I thought, "I wonder where Oktava is?" I had bought some Oktava [microphones] back in the '90s when they were the first affordable condenser mics around and Guitar Center sold them. I looked them up on Google, and they were in a town called Tula. I thought, "That's a pretty name," but I had no idea where it was. A week or so later, I was playing a gig in a completely different city, Krasnodar, and this guy came up to me after the show and said, "Hey, I'm a big fan. Would you ever consider doing a solo show in my hometown?" I asked him where it was, and he said, "It's called Tula" I said, "You're kidding! That's where Oktava is right?" "Yeah, that's right," he said. So, I said, "Man, if I come play, could you arrange a tour of the factory? I'd love to see it." So, long story short, he arranged a gig a few months later. He had to get permission from the FSB (the Russian Federal Security Service, Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti) for an American to go to this factory, because they make military headsets and stuff like that. He got me in, and it was really old and kind of rundown. They had lost their distribution in the West. He said, as kind of a joke, "Maybe we should form a company and help them get back to America." I thought about how the world is so different than it was when Oktava was popular; they were the only option for decent condenser mics that weren't super expensive, but now there are tons of Chinese mics and there are Australian mics – it wouldn't work. But then I thought, the Russians have all this technology, old classic technology that they still use; tubes and manual lathes. I thought that if somebody could do some nice designs that could combine Western design and marketing with classic Russian technology, maybe it would be possible to make a mic that's as good as the classics without being a copy of them. My reasoning was that the Soviet Union developed in parallel with the West. We made rockets. They made rockets. We made tanks. They made tanks. We made mics. They made mics. So, they have this rich technological tradition but there wasn't a tradition of marketing. That was the idea, to try to make something that sounds as good as the classics, that isn't a clone, but that can live in the same realm. So, Pasha, my friend from Tula – who is now my business partner – started to form a company to do this. Originally our plan was to work with Oktava. We would do the designs, we would develop everything and they would produce it. We were within a week of signing a contract with them when their parent company, Rostec, fired the entire management staff. The new guy they brought in, everyone was terrified of him. I said, "Let's arrange a meeting with this guy." I met him and I said, "Pasha, there's no way we can work with this guy. He's out of his mind." He agreed. He said, "What can we do?" I realized we had to do it on our own, but we had no money so we started trying to raise money. We talked to a lot people who thought it was an interesting idea, but nobody would invest in it. Finally, there was one guy in New York who said, "I like your idea and I'll give you some investment in tranches, because I have to see how my finances are." He didn't give us the full amount he was going to, because after a couple of tranches he had a big tax bill or something, but it was enough for us to buy our first lathe to get started, and to build four prototypes of our first 017 tube mic in 2013. I sent one to Nigel Godrich, Al Schmitt, and a few different people, and the feedback that came back was so positive that I said, "Pasha, I think we're onto something!" Knowing what I know now about the world, I don't know if I would do it again because it's such a crowded and difficult market. It's almost like a miracle that we've been able to succeed in it. But back then, I was so innocent and I thought, "Yeah, let's do it!" It's grown over the years, and has become a well-respected brand and a fun thing for me.

You knew Nigel Godrich because you played with Beck at one point?

Yeah. I was his sax player. I played with Beck before I started my own band.

Is all the manufacturing still done in Russia? And your partner Pasha runs that side?

Yeah. It's obviously a tricky time, historically, right now. What I try to explain to people is the word Soyuz means union. The Soviet Union was called the Sovetsky Soyuz in Russian. From day one, I viewed our company as an opportunity for two countries, who rarely get along, to come together and do something better than either could do on their own. From a practical standpoint, in our factory the idea from the beginning was to create a pleasant environment for people; a place where people would want to come work. We hire a fair amount of machinists who used to work in the weapons industry, and now they make mics. So, it's a swords into plowshares thing. If you look at the history of many companies, you have to deal with historical realities. There's the Minox spy camera. They started in Latvia and then they had to move to Germany because of World War II. You have to move with the tides of history. We've had an overwhelming support from our users, and people who understand that we're just a company who makes mics. We like to make beautiful products – we're not political and we're not involved in any military activity. Cooperation between countries is the key to progress, as opposed to more and more separation.

I think people here in the USA have realized that the government may not represent everyone's views. Becauseourgovernment decides to do something, doesn't necessarily mean we all agree with that. You hope you can transfer that empathy to another country.

Certainly. I think that, because of social media, we live in a cancel culture society. I'm an American. My country has done so many things that I don't agree with, but thankfully nobody blamesmefor it. They don't blame me personally as an American. Extending that same courtesy to other countries is important.

Tell me about the 013 FET mic.

When we when we were working on making a small diaphragm condenser FET mic, my idea was that people love [Neumann] KM 84s but they don't make them anymore. Why do they like them? They have a transformer and they have a different sound than the [newer] KM 184s. I thought, "We're not going to copy anything, but let's try to make a transformer for the mic that works well and sounds good, and then we'll experiment and test." We have very, very smart engineers in our factory who understand capsules and circuits, but they're not musicians and they're not audio engineers. We have them do their thing and we get different versions. With the 013 FET we had ten different versions – five different capsule tensions and two different transformer versions. I went into the studio with them and tested them on many different sources. We'd listen back, and it was clear immediately that two of the ten were the clear winners. Of those two, one had a bit more low end. Low end is easy to cut but it's difficult to boost if it's not there. So, we went with that and it's been one of our most popular mics. People who love KM 84s love it, but they would never say, "Oh, it's a clone of a KM 84," because it's a bit different. But it has a similar character.

It comes close. It's got that same type of top end. It's clear and open but it's not hyped. It's a pleasing top end. On a lot of SDCs the top end is brittle, or has no character, but when I first heard the 013 it felt right to me.

Sound for me is very similar to flavor. You can say something is salty, sweet, or sour but those are very broad terms. Sound has so many variables that the human ear can recognize. The only way to zero in on something that's really beautiful is through testing and testing and testing, and having different people who have good ears weigh in on it. It's things that can't be described with words. You know when people use all those foofy words about wine? It's a similar thing. They're always a rough approximation. We've had mics that we never released because I didn't think they sounded right. We tried to do a tube version of the 023 Bomblet a couple different times, and it just didn't sound right to me. I didn't like the midrange, so we didn't release it. It's better tonotrelease something than to release something mediocre.

Your mics feel classic, but also new, in a way that not a lot of manufacturers today are able to do. I think Royer has done that with ribbon mics, and you are doing it with condenser mics.

We put a lot of care and attention into every single mic. We build it 100% in house; all of the bodies, the capsules, the transformers we wind ourselves, and the boxes are made in our facility. They're truly handmade, lovingly, by our staff and tested extensively. I used to tell them, "When you're working, imagine the person who's buying the mic. Imagine there's a young person and they need one really good mic for their studio. They work extra hours at their job. They sell some of their outboard gear. This is a huge purchase for them. Keep that person in mind when we're building the mic, because that's the level of quality we should deliver."

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