Broadcast and film

Helmut Kohl speaks at the official opening of the Brandenburger Gate in 1989.

The microphone was introduced at the Hannover Fair in 1971.^[6] From the 1970s onwards it could be seen in various television news programs programs, e.g. in Russia's main evening news program Vremya.^[7] Four MD 441s are visible in Barbara Klemm's famous 1979 photo of the socialist fraternal kiss between Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker.^[8] The later Serbian President Slobodan Milošević spoke into six MD 441s at a large rally in Belgrade on November 19, 1988.^[9] At the Alexanderplatz demonstration on November 4, 1989 in Berlin, the speeches were spoken into two MD 441s. On December 19, 1989, Helmut Kohl spoke into an MD 441 in Dresden at his first major appearance after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Xi Jinping with two MD 441 (2017)

The British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen used an MD 441 in the film Brüno (2009) for his interview with Paula Abdul, in which both sit on the backs of kneeling men.^[10] In the 2010s, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping was often pictured with two black MD 441s at press conferences.^[11] Two MD 441s are used at the lectern in the House of Representatives of the Parliament of the Czech Republic.^[12]

Music

The MD 441 has also been used as a vocal microphone since the 1970s, by artists including Frank Zappa, Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks, David Bowie,^[13] and by The Cure lead singer Robert Smith during the band's first television appearance at a concert in Paris in 1979.^[14]

While the MD 441 as a broadcast microphone has largely been replaced by other models, it is still used today for recording musical instruments, particularly on drums, electric guitars and amplifiers, as well as woodwind instruments.^[2]

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  Frank Zappa and MD 441 with windscreen (1974)
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  Stevie Nicks and MD 441 at a Fleetwood Mac concert in Zurich (1980)
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  Kenny Wheeler with MD 441 (1992)