In the Allen Sides interview in issue #106 of Tape Op, Allen mentioned owning a few Church mics and loving their sound. There's an interesting backstory to that microphone that I would like to share.
Stanley Church was Chief Sound Engineer for the famed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Sound Department in the '50s. They bought a then-new Telefunken-badged Neumann U 47 to test and found that it was not good for soundstage applications; particularly dialog recording. The mic body generated too much noise, the electronics output was too hot for their equipment (which had been designed for low-output ribbon mics), and the mic pickup patterns weren't ideal. Plus, no one at MGM wanted to deal with obscure German tubes and transformers. However, they loved the sound qualities of the mic, as its presence peak and sensitivity were very useful for distant mic'ing.
Church ordered a bunch (less than 100 but more than 12, based on the number of known Church mics) of U 47 capsules from Neumann and set out to build his own mic body and electronics, utilizing a 6072 vacuum tube with a high-voltage circuit (though there are at least three circuit variations known). He focused on using off the shelf, U.S.- available parts for the electronics, in keeping with the Hollywood tradition of using non-exotic gear that was easily and quickly replaceable if it failed during a production day (when potentially millions of dollars of talent were on set).
