Could this be your next Neumann microphone?

I spotted this on the platform of a London tube station. Take a closer look...

It's a Neumann! And the text 'hier sprechen' reveals firstly its origin in Germany and second that you should actually speak here.

It's a microphone!

Well, it contains a microphone. It's an intercom, presumably for station staff to use.

The bad news...

The Neumann here isn't Georg Neumann GmbH of high-end studio microphone fame, but jm Neumann Elektronik GmbH. They make intercoms, and yes I did lowercase the initials correctly.

The good news?

Well this might be just an intercom, and it might not be the right Neumann company, but who's to say that it might not sound interestingly lo-fi?

Perhaps an enterprising plug-in developer could give us the sound of this 'lost Neumann' that we never imagined we wanted.