APEX 460 Transformer Mod

Welcome, this page was created as a visual guide to assist those of you who want to mod your Apex 460 tube microphone with some of the great aftermarket parts available. This tutorial in-particular will be dedicated to changing the stock transformer to a Cinemag CM-2480. Please note that I am not a professional in the electronics industry but merely a music producer who wanted to help out others with these mods. Do this mod at your own risk and only if you have experience in basic electronics and soldering!

The first thing to do is unscrew the bottom off the Apex 460's casing and slide the long tube off.

The Apex 460 without it's protective casing.

At the bottom of the mic on either side are 4 tiny screws. Remove them.

After the screws are removed separate the bottom casing to reveal the transformer.

You'll find the transformer in the top half of the casing. You won't really be able to access it properly until a few more steps.

Remove the tube from it's socket. Try to avoid touching it with your hands.

There's some metal slats that hold in the wires from the circuit board to the transformer and mic output. These slats have to be removed so you can get the slack you need to slide the top of the transformer casing to get at the wires.

The inside slats will pop off with a screwdriver. Remove both on either side.

With the slats removed you will have the slack with the wires required to slide the top casing up to give you room to get at the transformer.

Slide the top of the transformer casing up the wires. Now we have the room needed to get at the transformers wiring.

Exposed transformer!

Cut the wires from the transformer at the base of the transformer to give you as much wire as possible to play with. This would be the point of no return so again I will remind you that you're doing this at your own risk!!!

Strip the wires on the mic and the Cinemag transformer to prepare for soldering. You can also cut off some of the excess wire from the Cinemag transformer as you won't require them to be so long.

Tin all the wires you're about to solder

The colour coding for the connections is as follows (this worked for my mic, if for some reason it doesn't for yours I'm not responsible!):

Apex 460       Cinemag CM-2480   Peluso

Red         Red

White         Brown

Green         Yellow

Black         Orange

Tape up the connections and put the mic back together.

Now that you're done you can close the mic back up and start recording. Goodluck!

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Relevant Links:

Peluso Microphone Lab - Website for Peluso Microphone Lab

Canadian Audio Distributors-Canadian distributor for Peluso capsules and microphones

Cinemag- Makers of great transformers. The Apex 460 uses the CM-2480 output transformer. Check out our picture tutorial for that as well

Morph Productions- My music production/recording studio website (How I make a living).

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