AKG C451

There are certain tools in the studio that might not seem as desirable or flashy as others but nonetheless serve very important roles and should be celebrated as much as the rest.

The AKG C451 is one of those. Starting in 1968 the C451E was AKG’s first FET microphone and had an interesting modular system where capsules could be easily interchanged or attenuation pads inserted.

The most common capsule used with the C451 is the cardioid CK1. These two combined to give you a mic that sounds clear, edgy and naturally bright.

While it doesn’t sound a million miles away from the Neumann KM84, thankfully its price tag is a lot lower. It is a lot brighter sounding than its Neumann counterpart and is ideal on a finger-picked acoustic guitar that sounds a little dull or when you want your hi-hat to sound as crispy as the one on the Bob Marley and the Wailers records. There may be far rarer, and more expensive mics in my collection but there isn’t another that can do this job as well as the C451.

The C451 was very popular in film and TV studios and by the 80’s and early 90’s, in the UK at least, these mics were a universal sight in recording studios.

Unfortunately the CK1 is a fairly fragile capsule so a little care has to be taken not place it too close to a drummer’s sticks but thankfully the CK1 is repairable.

In the 90’s AKG replaced the modular C451EB to the fixed capsule C451B rendering the mic a lot less versatile. They also removed the transformer in the impedance conversion circuit the result being a mic with a very brittle and harsh sounding top end, my advice would be to avoid these models.