Yes to the battery thing which no longer seems necessary as phantom power is much more available now. Which one do you have? The newer ones, the black ones are not cut from the same cloth as the original grey and are made by Karman Harden. HK are known for stereo equipment. The new ones require 3 double-A batteries in place of the 9V. I've been using mine (the original) for recording lead guitar tracks, but most recently one of two acoustic tracks on a new song.
So where did you say you bought "a ton" of them? @sean92008 If we're talking about the original I'll pick up another one.
I liquidated all of that. Sadly, the man who bought most of my mic cabinet died only a couple of years afterward. I even had a log sheet in each case indicating what session it was used for and what instrument it recorded. I believe a lot in the whole diaphragm stretching stuff and would never use a mic used for acoustic guitars for a horn or a kick drum, well that goes without saying.
I bought them directly from Audio-Technica and, I'm sorry I don't remember all of the details, but I think I paid only something like 30% or 40% of the list price. I also loaded up on the headphones, with those called the ATM 4050m3? I don't remember. Come to think of it, I used to buy audio interfaces direct from the manufacturer, whoever made the Layla, I also bought directly from TASCAM, I got freebies too, but the big ticket items were either returnable upon demand or "buy it."
If you can find old Foster brand condenser mics, those were not too bad for a pencil condenser. The old Radio Shack PZM microphones mounted on plywood, ABS plastic, and other various things were excellent mics. Crown made them, as I recall.
By the way, my c1000s was that dark charcoal gray with a 9-volt battery. The typeface was different than your nickel colored one. I don't know if yours is older than mine, I bought all mine around 1995 or so.
