Germany - One of Sennheiser’s best-known microphones, the MKH 416 P48 shotgun microphone, celebrates its golden jubilee this year. For 50 years, the MKH 416 has accompanied broadcasters, filmmakers, voice-over artists, and content creators; it has been used in studios and in the field. Mounted onto a boom pole, a stand or a camera, its job has been to stay outside the camera angle while gracefully capturing sound with clarity and impact.
To celebrate its golden jubilee, this classic mic is offered with a 15% anniversary discount at participating Sennheiser dealers and – where available – the company’s website in April.
Time travelling to the 1970s, the name of Manfred Hibbing is firmly linked with this milestone product. When the young engineer joined Sennheiser, his first task was to design the MKH 416 P48 on the basis of the MKH 415 T. The MKH 416 was to be Sennheiser’s first phantom-powered (P48) shotgun microphone, while all previous models were AB-powered. In those days, AB powering was preferred in broadcast situations because of its resistance to ripple voltages, but phantom powering had become established in the studio.
In an interview in 2023, he said that optimising the interaction between the electroacoustic transducer and the electronic circuit had been his favourite task in designing the 416.
The long lifespan of the MKH 416 P48 fills the engineer with pride: “During all this time, the design of the MKH 416 was only revised in two instances: one was to make it suitable for SMD mounting, and the other to update it for a more advanced transducer technology.”
“The MKH 416 remains a star of our shotgun microphones, even though we have launched younger models long since,” concludes product manager Kai Lange. “It’s just great to have such a legend in the portfolio, a versatile, long-life, high-performance microphone. The MKH 416 is a mic where everything was perfect from the start.”
