Pearl ELM-T

The ELM‑T is a new microphone that has been 70 years in the making.

If you look up “company man” in an English‑to‑Swedish dictionary, you’ll probably see a photo of Bernt Malmqvist. Since joining in 1954 as a machinist, he’s spent his entire career with Pearl Microphones and sister company Milab. Following in the footsteps of company founder Rune Rosander, Bernt has been responsible for many innovative and successful designs, and on his formal retirement in 2017, the Pearl and Milab brands were reunited under one roof.

After 63 years designing, building and selling microphones, many people would have seen retirement as an opportunity to do something else. Not Bernt Malmqvist, who decided to add to his already considerable legacy by developing the ultimate valve microphone. Several years in the making, the ELM‑T Bernt Malmqvist Signature Edition is a no‑compromise design that draws on all of its creator’s vast experience.

Rectangular Capsule

One of the core technologies at Pearl and Milab is the rectangular capsule. Pioneered by Rune Rosander back in the 1950s, this has some practical advantages over the conventional circular design. The tensioned diaphragm does not have a single, dominant resonant frequency like its circular counterpart, and the same surface area can be achieved using a smaller diameter, allowing some Pearl and Milab models to offer large‑diaphragm performance with the footprint of a small‑diaphragm mic. The rectangular capsule also exhibits different pickup patterns in the vertical and horizontal planes, which can be a useful quality in real‑world recording scenarios. For example, if you’re forced to work in a room with a low ceiling, a mic that has much stronger rejection along the vertical axis can be a valuable asset.

Designed by Bernt Malmqvist and introduced in the mid‑2000s, Pearl’s ELM capsule took the rectangular design, quite literally, to new heights. Previous Pearl and Milab capsules had typically employed a 2:1 aspect ratio, but the ELM capsule dramatically ups that to 7:1. In doing so, it heightens the contrast between vertical and horizontal polar responses. The ELM‑C is a fixed‑cardioid mic, the ‑B is a figure‑8 model, and the ‑A allows the outputs from both sides of the capsule to be recorded independently, meaning that the polar pattern can freely be varied after the fact.

The new ELM‑T is closest in spirit to the ELM‑A, offering a polar pattern that is continuously variable from figure‑8 at one extreme to omni at the other, with cardioid response in the middle. Unlike the ELM‑A, though, this is set at the time of recording, using a rotary knob on the power supply. Said PSU is a third‑party model made by Andreas Grosser, and appears to be of very high quality. Apart from the pattern control and on/off switch, it features a standard IEC mains inlet, an equally standard XLR output and a single multi‑pin connector for the supplied custom cable; there’s no pad or filter.

The ELM capsule is seven times as long as it is wide, giving it unusual directional characteristics.The mic itself is, as you might expect, unusually long and slender for a valve model, measuring 238 x 42mm, and connects to the cable using a small‑format Lemo connector rather than the more usual screw‑on Binder type. It’s finished in a lovely “Rolex green”, and as always with Pearl and Milab mics, the build quality is excellent. A Rycote USM shockmount is supplied; in my experience these aren’t always the best choice for very long and thin mics, since they only grip at one point along the body, but I encountered no problems with the review model. Mic, PSU, mount and cables are housed in a smart and robust flightcase.

Pearl don’t state what valve is used in the ELM‑T, and it’s not visible from the outside, but the specs are fairly typical of a good modern design. Sensitivity is a comfortable 12mV/Pa, and self‑noise a very respectable 16dBA, while 1% THD is reached at 126dB SPL. The published frequency response chart is almost ruler‑flat in cardioid, with slight deviations creeping in towards the very top of the spectrum in omni.

The Pure Path

These days, we often think of valve mics as a means of introducing character into a recording. But that wasn’t the intention of the designers behind the classic Neumann and AKG models, nor that of Rune Rosander when he developed the first generation of Pearl valve mics back in the 1950s. At that time, valve technology was simply the only way to approach the universal goal of capturing a source sound as faithfully as possible.

Bernt Malmqvist is one of the last surviving links to the golden age of mic design, so unsurprisingly, he hasn’t set out to give the ELM‑T a deliberately coloured sound. If you approach it in the hope of adding obvious saturation, rock & roll grit or “tube warmth” to your recordings, you’re likely to be underwhelmed, because what the ELM‑T offers is a beautifully clean, balanced, tonally neutral sound. There’s none of the midrange push that characterises some classic Neumann designs, nor the slightly hyped high‑frequency sparkle you might expect from a C12‑type mic. The low‑mid richness that we sometimes associate with valves and transformers is also conspicuously absent. The magic of smoothing means that a flat published frequency response can conceal all sorts of idiosyncrasies in the detail, but in this case, it’s entirely believable.

What’s striking about the vocal capture that you get from the ELM‑T is that there’s no hint of hardness.

Yet, at the same time, the ELM‑T certainly isn’t boring. It’s one of very few mics I’ve tried that seems equally at home with male and female vocalists, regardless of register and singing style. I don’t know whether it’s the capsule or the valve that is responsible, but what’s striking about the vocal capture that you get from the ELM‑T is that there’s no hint of hardness: the sound always remains perfectly smooth, without being noticeably dark or too soft to cut through the mix. Sibilants are neither exaggerated nor ‘smooshed’, and the ELM‑T won’t highlight negative qualities such as honkiness or nasality. I’ve never tried any of the solid‑state ELM models, but my sense is that what the valve circuitry brings to the party is a forgiving quality that enables it to swallow up harshess and retain its poise no matter what is thrown at it.

My feelings about the ELM‑T in many ways mirror the reaction I had to Neumann’s reissue of the M49 a couple of years ago, and indeed the two mics do have some things in common, notably the continuously variable pattern control. In both cases, sensitivity is somewhat pattern‑dependent, and appears to increase in figure‑8. However, whereas the tonality of the M49V is also quite pattern‑dependent — and, to my ears, rather less attractive in figure‑8 — the ELM‑T is impressively consistent in this respect. There is, naturally, more proximity effect in bidirectional mode, and the ratio of direct to reflected sound varies as you’d expect, but you never lose that supremely balanced, natural sound. With its high‑frequency response flat to 20kHz and beyond, the ELM‑T doesn’t sound at all ‘vintage’, as the M49 might, but it gives you the same sense of pure, understated class — and the confidence that it will able to capture absolutely anything. If Rune Rusander, or any of the other great designers from the 1950s, had had the means to come up with the ELM‑T, I’m sure they would have jumped at the chance. And if Bernt Malmqvist finally does decide to bow out of the microphone game, he can be justly proud to do so with the ELM‑T.