Soyuz 023 Bomblet

Workhorse FET Condenser

Sweetwater is excited to present you with another valuable tool in your quest to make better-sounding recordings. Handcrafted in Russia, the Soyuz 023 Bomblet large-diaphragm FET condenser mic features a distinctive blend of clarity and color that makes it ideal for capturing everything from drums to guitar amps. With its flattering highs, smooth mids, and fat low end, the Bomblet complements the aggressive tone of brighter-sounding instruments and vocalists without sacrificing detail or transient response. The Bomblet is amazingly easy to use, delivering a full and balanced sound regardless of placement. The 023 Bomblet’s forgiving nature is what makes it a great choice for sources where you want a warm, colorful rendition without masking the original tonality.

Clarity, color, and punch

While the 023 Bomblet’s unique treble characteristics make it a go-to for taming vocal harshness, its custom toroidal transformer imparts a thickness and character that enhance louder, bass-heavy sources such as kick drums, bass amps, and electric guitars, capturing a tight, full-bodied sound with low-end punch and the clarity to cut through a dense mix. For louder sources, a screw-in 20dB pad is included, further expanding the versatility of this workhorse mic for studio and live sound applications.

The S23 capsule

Collectively, the engineers at Soyuz have spent decades studying, servicing, and building classic microphones; this unique pool of knowledge, craft, and skill — combined with the golden ears of numerous musicians, producers, and audio engineers — has culminated in the creation of the Bomblet’s custom S23 capsule, a reimagining of the LOMO (Leningrad Optical Mechanical Association) version of the classic CK12 capsule. This very special capsule design features a detailed yet forgiving top end, pronounced midrange, and a fat low end. The Bomblet’s distinctive high end is what truly makes it special, with its ability to flatter high-frequency shrillness rather than exaggerate it.

From Russia with love

The Russian word soyuz means “alliance,” and it signifies the partnership that is the driving force behind Soyuz Microphones. In 2013 American vocalist David Arthur Brown and Russian entrepreneur Pavel Bazdyrev teamed up and launched a company to build world-class microphones in Russia. Soyuz now has 20 full-time employees, and Soyuz microphones are being used by top engineers and producers and have been adopted by artists such as Coldplay, Radiohead, the Lumineers, and Paramore.

What’s in your mic locker?

Among the most cherished assets of any world-class recording studio are its microphones. Take a peek in the mic locker, and you will almost certainly find vintage European tube and FET models made in the 1950s, ’60s, or ’70s. The “human-touch” manufacturing methods and discrete handwired circuitry of that era yielded microphones with sonic characteristics that are distinctly different from modern computer-assisted designs. Soyuz’s original tube and FET microphone designs — while not clones of vintage models — are produced in the old-school way, using manual lathes and drill presses and leveraging the former Soviet Union’s rich technological legacy as a foundation. So what’s in your mic locker? The answer will determine the sound of your recordings.