Are they still made? If not, are parts for them available?
I saw one at a yard sale-are they worth anything?
I like the calssic look.
It’s an RCA 77.
It’s a ribbon mike. It was a standard for years. Call a local radio station and ask for the chief engineer about where to order parts.
Ribbons are almost indestructible except for one bit - the ribbon - which is so fragile that you can be assured it is wrecked. Even a sudden breeze can wreck a ribbon. However ribbons have made something of a resurgence in popularity, and there are now quite a few people that will repair them for you. The ribbon is nothing more than a piece of very thin aluminium foil that is corrugated and held at each end. It is possible to rebuild them yourself if you are a bit handy, and meticulous. But with a vintage mic like this, you may prefer to have it professionally repaired. Beware, it won’t be cheap and will exceed the price of the mic.
The other thing that can happen, is that the magnets may lose strength over time. Magnets can be remagnetised, although the equipment is specialised and rather brutal.
The only other component is a transformer. This is usually pretty hard to wreck.
Personally I would buy it in a heartbeat and have some fun with it.
There’s one on eBay right now.
I’d get back to that yard sale if I were you.
Wow! $730!
I guess I’d had better buy it.
I always figured Larry King’s RCA Mic was a prop (perhaps his decades in broadcasting into one meant that he was more at east with one in front of him) and that the actual mics used on his show were the same (technologically) that are used by any other newscaster.
Microphones have actually changed very little over time, with essentially no revolutionary new technology bar the replacement of tubes with transistors. (Microphones live at the edge of the possible physics, so it hard to do anything very new.) Most live TV uses Lavalier style microphones - i.e. the little pea sized things clipped on the clothes in an inconspicuous place, unless they elect to use a full sized thing. Ribbons have always been beloved by voice artists, for which any talk show host is one. They have some particular interesting features.
They have a figure 8 sensitivity pattern - they have zero response to the sides. This made them useful for radio interviews as interviewer and interviewee could sit either side of one.
They are what is known as a velocity sensitive microphone. The interesting point about this is that in the near field of the microphone the frequency response is far from linear, and a skilled voice can use this to their benefit, and many radio jocks soon learnt that the deep masculine voice they so loved to project over the airwaves could be created by carefully exploiting the proximity effects of ribbon mics. Hence their ubiquity in radio stations.
Living on the other side of the planet to Larry King I think I might recognise him, maybe, and maybe have seen him on TV once or twice. So I can’t really comment on his style, but I gather he is reasonably old school, and I can certainly imagine someone like that having a deep seated preference for the on air persona that a ribbon brings. If he cut his teeth on radio it would be an almost certainty.
Even in a modern TV station, you could bring in a mic from the 50’s, plug it straight in, and it would work. The same plugs, the same pinout, the same sensitivity, all there. Many of the mics in use are essentially identical designs, just newer production. Even true modern microphones with that do have quite new technology, for which the Sennheiser RF mics are about the only real example, still use the same pinouts and will remain compatible. (Tube mics have an external power supply, so it is sort of cheating, but from here to the desk )is the same still.
Yes that is correct, Larry said a couple of times on his show that the Mic was a souvenir from his radio days.
This does not preclude the mic being live. I suspect it was.
I always think of this album cover: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c7/Donald_Fagen_-_The_Nightfly.jpg
You can buy brand new equivalents. There are companies that have a whole line of new mics that look and sound like the old mics.
Oh yes…
I doubt it. It may have been wired up, but King was principally picked up by the standard tiny microphone on his tie, just like his guests. If King had been picked up with a ribbon on the desk and the guests were picked up by tiny condensers on their chests, they would sound weirdly different.
TV hosts have microphones on their desk because of tradition and that they are a cool prop.
I always considered the mike as a prop. King was working directly in front of it. You don’t work a ribbon that way, unless you want that ribbon to self-destruct.
All the old (now, sadly gone) radio guys I worked with put the mike to the side. You can still work close, but you’re working across it. An older (and some think better–with reguards to frequency response) ribbon was the RCA 44. That one had radio actors working directly at it, but they were standing at least 3 feet away.
There are also folk who “gut” an old-style mic and put a new mic inside. So it looks retro but still functions. But for certain ones, like in the OP, you’re doing yourself financial harm. Not that that would stop certain idjits.
I doubt that Larry King’s was ever used. It would just pick up way too much extraneous noise. Letterman has a mic on his desk which he sometimes bumps, lifts up and bangs down, etc. Never a sound out of it. So it’s definitely a prop. (I think he has also lifted it far enough up a few times to show the end of the wire, but maybe that was just on the old NBC show.)
I think in Letterman’s case it’s used as a territorial marker on the desk. The guest will have their “coffee” cup on the corner of the desk and occasionally a promo item or some such. On Dave’s side is his cup, blue cards. etc. King had a much wider setup so it wasn’t a territorial marker, but probably just a radio throwback. (Despite radio people generally not using mics sitting on desks due to the increased noise issue.)
It was a non-functional prop.
In the pic in the link Hermitian posted, you can see Larry and the mic, and I would concur with Doug Bowe Both Larry and the mic are in the wrong place for it to be useful. He isn’t addressing it properly, and it just isn’t on the desk in a place that you could usefully do so. It might make him feel more comfortable, and I like the idea of it being a bit of a territory marker. In a TV studio it’s rear sensitivity could be a significant issue, although its side rejection might be used to good effect to avoid picking up guests. The question of consistency of voice is probably a killer. Guests would sound ordinary, whilst Larry could easily come over with the old school radio voice of god. It might be funny for a while. It would get old really quickly.
No cite, but I once heard that the mic contained a modern figure 8 microphone that actually worked - you have the mic set up right between Larry and his guest and the mic’s sensitivity for both would actually be the same.
Would this be why I was told to scratch it rather than thump it to test?
An element of that, but what kills a ribbon is a blast of air. The actual element that detects air motion is an astonishingly thin ribbon of aluminium (OK, aluminum if you insist. 
) It is corrugated to give it flexibility, and it is suspended between two powerful magnets. A blast of air can easily pull it past its limits, permanently distorting its shape, or even tearing it. Something as simple a slamming a door can kill one. 'plosives in speech could, in principle, damage one.
The general reputation for fragility tends to cause people to generally baby them, even if they are actually reasonably immune to some kinds of abuse.