'He says his proudest moment was when he saw the official video for Coldplay's 2016 single Everglow, which features lead singer Chris Martin using a Soyuz SU-17 microphone that Ilyukhin and his workmates built with their own hands.'<blockquote>'A small private company in the Russian city of Tula, long famous for producing arms, is turning swords into golden plowshares -- or missiles to microphones, to be more precise.
Using lathes from a Kalashnikov factory and specialists who honed their skills at Russian weapons factories, Soyuz Microphones is building professional mics that have captured the attention of top music producers from Los Angeles to London.
It is a rare case where know-how and infrastructure from Russia's defense sector have been transformed through an East-West partnership to sell a nonmilitary product outside the former Soviet Union.
..
"Russia has a tremendous amount of scientific know-how and technical know-how," Brown said. "Maybe because of the Soviet period they don't have so much ability in the ways of marketing and design that are necessary in the modern free-market economy."
But for producing audio components in ways that are becoming a lost art elsewhere, Brown says the West can "learn a lot from Russian engineering skills."
Brown and Bazdyrev convinced an engineer at Oktava, one of the only microphone capsule specialists in Russia, to join the Soyuz team as head mic designer.
They brought in a radio-electronics specialist who previously worked on projects developing Russian satellites and missile technology.
They also hired metal machinist Roman Ilyukhin, a manual lathe master who can cut the critical back plate of a microphone capsule within the accuracy of 2 micrometers -- less than the width of the smallest thread of spider-web silk.
Ilyukhin now earns almost double the salary he made while working at Russian weapons factories in Tula, where he built parts for Russian tanks, helicopters, and missiles.
He says his proudest moment was when he saw the official video for Coldplay's 2016 single Everglow, which features lead singer Chris Martin using a Soyuz SU-17 microphone that Ilyukhin and his workmates built with their own hands.
Brown says that in a town "famous for weapons production," Soyuz makes something that is "the complete opposite of war -- equipment for creating music, helping artists and producers to realize their vision, and spreading goodwill." '
- Ron Synovitz,
Microphones: Mic Maker Moves Russian Jobs From Arms To Audio, May 27, 2017</blockquote>
Context<blockquote>
Vision of Humanity - Global Peace(To Heal)(Reinventing Organizations) - '..news about what happening in the space of organizations going Teal.'(Haptopraxeology) - Humans Are Underrated '..the skills of deeply human interaction .. Learning to be more socially sensitive..'</blockquote>