Sontronics STC-1 (SILVER) Small-Diaphragm Condenser Microphone

This silver-finished STC-1 is a small-diaphragm condenser microphone built around a solid brass body, offering the transparent, low-coloration pickup pencil condensers are chosen for on acoustic instruments, drum overheads and stereo room miking. Sontronics’ output circuit skips a transformer entirely, running instead through a fully Class-A preamp stage — a design choice aimed at keeping the signal path as clean and uncoloured as possible.

Onboard switching gives it real flexibility across different sources: a three-position pad (flat, -10dB, -20dB) and a two-position high-pass filter (75Hz or 150Hz) let it handle everything from delicate room ambience to loud percussion without an outboard box. The cardioid capsule that ships as standard can also be swapped for optional omni or hypercardioid capsules, effectively turning one microphone into three depending on the session.