Lustraphone mike, another piece of junk restored...

A few months ago I visit a friend of mine.
In his backyard I found a big stock of junk.
Searhing for some interesting, I found a nice desktop microphone who look a little odd!
I took it for nothing.
Unfortunately, I didn't took any picture before I start to open it. The images here are after some cleaning...
At home, after a little thinking, I opened it and found that the microphone is made by LUSTRAPHONE in England.
A nice transformer was fitted under the transducer. The output is balanced at around 600 Ohm.


I search on the Internet but I found almost nothing about this type. Only this site is exhibit a identical one, only for hire!
I removed the old paint which was horrible and sprayed with a matt-black one.
On the chromed pieces I work witha Dremel brush and restored the shining for a nice contrast.
The front of the transducer was covered with a dense copper mesh which was unrecoverable so I removed it.
The switch is the original one (Labeled also with LUSTRAPHONE). It is a double-section two position but one section was unusable (in shortcircuit) so I had to use only one...

The final result is this (click on photo for larger view):

I used it on a FT-2000 and the audio reports were great!
Nice piece...

Why Lustraphone Ribbon Mike was never at BBC.

Some info about LUSTRAPHONE:

Lustraphone was a contemporary of Grampian and Reslo from the 1950s -- all British microphone manufacturers building ribbon and moving-coil mics mainly for the amateur, semi-pro and PA industries. (http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar02/articles/qa0302.asp).

It seems that hey invented the noise cancelling microphone!