Russia | American musician makes mics using Kalashnikov machinery

Californian musician David Brown inspects a microphone at a factory in Tula

Claims of hacking by the Russian state may be feeding international tensions, but they’ve given Californian musician David Brown a great icebreaker when selling his line of Russian-made microphones.

“We give free hacking lessons with these microphones,” he tells potential buyers in Los Angeles. “Watch what you say because they never turn off.”

Brown, who’s often toured Russia with his band Brazzaville, teamed up with fan Pavel Bazdyrev in 2013 to start making top-end musical equipment in Bazdyrev’s home city of Tula, which is dominated by the Russian defense industry.

Though the business climate is difficult, the costs are low and they were able to buy second- hand machinery from Kalashnikov plants. The result is a range of studio microphones that have found their way into Coldplay and Radiohead’s recording sessions, and are beating more established rivals on price.

It’s a rare tale in Russia, which has struggled for decades to diversify its economy beyond oil and gas, something former U.S. President Barack Obama recently drew on.

“Their economy doesn’t produce anything that anybody wants to buy except oil, gas and arms,” he said in December. “They don’t innovate.”

As the country recovers from a brutal recession triggered by its dependence on the oil industry, President Vladimir Putin has often talked about making life easier for small businesses and other sectors. But reforms are often piecemeal or contradictory.

The experiences of Brown and Bazdyrev sum up many of the pros and cons of operating a small manufacturer in Russia.

The company, called Soyuz Microphones, takes advantage of lower labor costs to undercut foreign competitors — Soyuz’s top-of-the-range microphone costs USD3,500 against $8,000 for rival models. It made its first mic prototypes in 2014 and sold 160 of the retro- looking items last year, enough to turn a profit.

“We’re located in a regional Russian city where the salaries are much lower than they are in Moscow let alone in the West. Producing a mic in that way in America or in Europe would be prohibitive cost-wise,” says Brown, who visits Russia regularly to check on progress, while Bazdyrev handles day-to-day matters.

It’s a good deal for the 12 employees, too, such as lathe operator Roman Ilyukhin, who says his wage of 60,000 rubles ($1,000) is almost double what he used to earn elsewhere in the city.

The factory occupies two floors in a rundown building, its renovated rooms with pink wallpaper in stark contrast to the grey Soviet-era apartment blocks just outside.

The name Soyuz — meaning “union” — refers to the “union of East and West” in the company but is also full of historical significance in what was once the Sovetsky Soyuz, the Soviet Union. Soyuz capsules have since the 1960s been the workhorse of international space flight. AP