First Three MD 21 Birthday Edition Microphones Up for Auction

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The Sennheiser MD 21, one of the world's longest serving microphones, turns 50 this year. To celebrate Sennheiser is issuing a limited birthday edition of just 100 in a light-gray hammer tone design with the signature of Professor Dr.-Ing. Fritz Sennheiser.

The first three of these, serial numbers 001 to 003, will come with a wooden case and a certificate signed by Professor Dr.-Ing. Fritz Sennheiser, and will be auctioned online. Proceeds will go to England's Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts to support its valuable work on an international level in training young sound engineers and artists.

The online auction for the first of the three Sennheiser MD 21 birthday edition microphones will be held from May 8, 2004, 12:00 Central European Time until May 18, 2004, 12:00 CET. The second auction (serial number 002) will be held from May 21, 2004, 12:00 CET until June 1, 2004, 12:00 CET. The third auction (serial number 003) will be held from June 4, 2004, 12:00 CET until June 14, 2004, 12:00 CET. The auction is available at www.sennheiser.com/md21. The minimum bid is €150. The original MD 21U offered uniform frequency response and was used for both speech and music broadcasting. Featuring a rugged, all-metal body, it offered low sensitivity to handling noise and was highly insensitive to pop and wind noise.

Company founder Professor Dr.-Ing. Fritz Sennheiser's design brief for the MD 21 was clear and simple: "A dynamic microphone that has an omni-directional pick-up pattern and a balanced frequency response, combined with absolute toughness, which will set it apart from all previous microphones." Based on these specifications, Sennheiser's development engineers got to work and created a microphone with acoustic properties that made it ideally suited for both music and voice recording.

For more information, visit their web site at www.sennheiserusa.com.