We have been working on this off and on for several years.  I am finally at a place where I feel there is nothing more that needs to be added or changed, and I feel the time is finally right to let it loose onto the world.  
 
The SAE Spirit 47 Supertube is a phantom powered 47, driven by the Spirit Supertube developed by Phaedrus Audio (UK) and our circuit is developed in cooperation with them, to fully exploit the advantages of the Spirit Supertube.  Phaedrus have been in business for more than a decade in the niche market (among other things) of developing solid-state replacement parts for tubes which are becoming unobtainable or unreliable, such as the VF14 (U47), AC701k (M49), and several others.  I first became aware of these tubes more than a decade ago, and while I understood the concept of keeping vintage mics in service; I felt like the real gift of such a product would be to move beyond that and develop new iterations of classic circuits that were free of their cumbersome power supplies alltogether.  Since the Supertube is being freshly engineered, I thought that it would be really nice if they engineered some to simply run on phantom power.  It took many years, but it seems that Phaedrus finally reached this same conclusion a few years back, and so we started experimenting with a board design to exploit this next generation Supertube part, later getting their approval on our final board design.
 
I have to start off this product description in a weird way by saying off the bat that I am not a believer that the full sonic imprint of a tube can be replicated with solid state technology (or digital for that matter).  You can get part of the way there, but not all of the way there.  I have evaluated the Phaedrus Audio products and although they are all impressive and interesting, they would never fool me in an A/B comparison between those parts and an actual vacuum tube device.  Not a chance.  Are they good enough to make records?  Of course.  Are they close enough that in the context of a mix it might not matter?  Of course.  Can I still hear the difference?  OF COURSE.  24/7/365... always!  That is not necessarily the point.  Unlike some manufacturers and repair shops, I did not develop this product to be a tube replacement product.  I developed it to fully be its own thing and to stand on its own merits.  We have done everything possible to add to the 'analogue' qualities of this circuit, from using NOS polysthrene and wet tantalum capacitors, to a custom film capacitor and a custom wound special iteration of the BV8 transformer complete with center-taps for pulling phantom power to drive the amplifier circuit.  We worked with Arienne Bloss to develop a K47 capsule that has the right sensitivity to truly shine under phantom power level polarization voltages, and that is the capsule it ships with.  But, I do not market this as sounding like our tube 47.  It does not.  However, it also does not sound like a U47 FET either.  If you imagine a tube 47 as being very rounded, three dimensional, holographic...  and you imagine a U47 FET as being much more dry and articulated, more focused and less forgiving... this mic kind of lives in the middle of those 2 worlds.  It certainly leans more in the direction of a U47 FET but with a much smoother, warmer, softer tonality.  You can tell it is massaging transients a tiny bit and you can tell it is a little warmer, girthier, more euphonic and '3D' than a U47 FET.  But it is not all the way to where a tube 47 is either.  I really do feel that it splits the difference beautifully, and that was what we sought to do.
 
So what applications do we feel this mic is great for?  For starters, I think it is the ultimate 'on the go' 47.  If you are a producer or engineer or musician who is on the go and you don't want to lug around an entire tube microphone system, this is ideal.  It gets you very close to the full package with far less baggage.  It is good for any application where you would use the full on tube mic system.  I also think it may be a bit more ruggedized and impervious to resonance in cases where you may want to use it on an outer kick drum, a floor tom, a room mic, or other percussion.  Of course, I also think it is great for bass cabinets and and for vocals.  I think it can be used anywhere you might use a U47 and in fact you can probably be a little bit more bold with it due to it being solid state.  I really do feel like this mic has its own place on the spectrum of 47-style mics, and is not exactly like anything tube or solid state that has come before it.  I hope you will also agree!
 
The Phaedrus Audio Spirit Supertube is, as they say in the UK, an expensive piece of kit... and so is our capsule, transformer, mic body, and everything else for that matter... but we are trying to make this product as affordable as we can, at least for the first few months.  The mic will ship with a shockmount, wood box, and a special IP66 to XLRm 20ft cable.  As someone who has a history of disdain for the XLR format, I wanted to keep with the profesisonal twist-locking connector for the mic itself, so I developed a 3 pin version of the IP66 format we use for our tube microphones, so it only has to have XLR on the other end.  
 
We will hopefully have more professional photos later this year; but I wanted to go ahead and give this product a soft launch now with just the photos I could take today on my phone.  We will be shipping these in limited quantity by the beginning of August, but are open to taking pre-orders right now.