Slow progress in evaluation--work and life are busy.
The R12 came well packed, a very good sign of care by the company. Outer shipping carton with plenty of space filled with packing styrofoam peanuts. In that is a cardboard box that might have been the real box for many companies, but it houses a plus-sized wooden box made of good quality plywood well finished, with a top that slides in a routed channel and has a little indent for getting purchase with a finger. The "Red" logo is silk-screened on the top in red (imagine), and even that seems classy--it is a deep and mellow hue as opposed to some metal-flaked finish from the 80's. Once the lid is off, you get a thick layer of foam, which you peel away to find a block of foam with an inset for the mic head, which is wrapped in a plastic baggy. This thing is protected. I'm surprised to hear reports that some capsules arrive facing the wrong way in the grill.
It doesn't have a manual or a frequency graph. Frankly, I'm not aware of anything in the price range that comes with an individual frequency graph anymore, so I'm not put out by that. I'm not sure what sort of manual is needed, apart from warranty info. I'm a little concerned in hindsight by the lack of any clear idea of warranty coverage, but I got the head for $74 ($99 for the current sale less $25 for a coupon code)--worse comes to worse I can replace the dead capsule with a Peluso capsule.
The capsule threads snugly onto the MC-012 body, and the finish matches well. Initial test was with a Seagull 12 string acoustic guitar, and put up side by side with the standard MC-012 cardioid cap. Through my board pres with eq switched out and no effects, the difference was not night and day, but there were differences. The stock Oktava has an "essh"-y high end which comes out with this guitar--it doesn't sound bad, but there is a certain hardness to how the highs are defined. This quality generally helps instruments have their own place in a band context, and it could be used as an aesthetic choice for solo acoustic recordings without being grating. The Red, as one might expect, has a bigger low end presence to it, but the high end is usefully distinct from the stock capsules--gone is the essh, but there is a detailed, "etched" quality to the highs. And the natural ringing of this guitar comes through a bit more. And it seemed to pull in voices across the house a bit more readily, one of the reasons I've focused more of my attention on dynamic mics to this point . . .
So subtle but useful differences. I'll try to find time to try a few more applications to run it through. The one problem I have as a reviewer is I don't do a lot of time with LDC's, so I can't tell you "it's a poor man's XXXX" or tell you much about how it compares to other options. But if you have an Oktava body, the current sale price of $99 is in line with the prices individual Oktava capsules go for now, and it's another option that doesn't seem to suck.
Bear