Sennheisere 604

Tonal profile

The glass-fibre wedge that clips to a tom rim - a cardioid moving coil with the whole stand mount moulded into the body. Nothing about it is delicate, which is the point: it lives inside the kit and gets hit.

Gain staging

1.8 mV/Pa is -54.9 dBV/Pa - about a decibel above an SM57 - but the 350 ohm nominal impedance is the number that matters when eight of these go down one multicore. Sennheiser also prints the minimum terminating impedance, 1 kilohm, which almost nobody else does; that is the manufacturer telling you outright what the preamp input must not go below.