Nice those where intended for Aviation. Cessna and most other planes came with the old Astatic Ugly Stick carbon element mic shaped like a squared off pointy upside down ice cream cone. My main Flight Instructor was a Telex man always pushing their gear! I was happy with my DC stuff though. I almost never used the built in mic the boom mike on the headset was too convenient. I can only imagine how much you want for one of those! As my Grandfather used to say " Those are built like a Brick S*&T house". The switch inside is just like what you would find on a turner base mic so it should last forever! I though Telex went out of business are these NOS?This microphone works great on a Cobra 29.
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Condenser mic on a cobra 29
- Thread starter Bearcat
- Start date
I said -48 volts for phantom power!!! LOL I worked in the Telcom Industry for a while and it is just a reflex when I say 48V I almost always put (-) in with because the phone system is -48V.....LOL Phantom power is +48V.....
I looked at an Art Tube Preamp only and it has a button right on the face to select +48V phantom power you can turn it on and off.
No laughing but I use the BC465 mic they run about $12 a pop and are condenser mikes and already 4 pin but you can wire it to anything you want. I do not like drilling holes in radios for 1/4 phono jack if I can help it. You can route the audio wire from the mic input on the front of a radio any way you want it does not have to go through the stock audio chain if you do not want it to. You can take things out or put things in or change the values etc....You do not need to put an XLR or 1/4 jack into the radio to do direct inject or to key the radio with a pedal etc...Like wise you can put a condenser element in anything you want a D104, D104M6B and RFLimited 577 your stock hand mic etc....
In home audio you try real hard not to put disc or alum electrolytic directly in the signal path and if you do you try to bypass it with a film cap. CB radio's though have the cheapest lytics and the cheapest disc capacitors money can buy often inside of them and as they age they get worse. When they have Tant's in them they are almost always operating at their full rating which means .1% to 1% per thousand are guaranteed to fail in short order. You have double the rating of a Tant over what you actual need and operate it with in it's temp rating to get long life. Kemt says this and so does the miltary. As you approach their temp limit their rating drops like a rock off a cliff. Cheap ceramic caps suffer from microphonic and they literal become a microphone when vibrated and they have terrible sound characteristics. The OEM's can use them because the audio ic has so much noise it that it hardly matter's. Add in terrible filtering and narrow band width and crappy mic and speaker and bam!
That is why you either have to modify the components in the audio chain between the mic and the transmitter or you have to skip over it and inject your signal closer to the end of the audio chain which is what direct injection is about. If you put a tube preamp and eg but still pass that signal through the stock audio chain most of the improvement will be lost. Not all of it.
The flater responce of the condenser mic added to the slightly over driven sound you get from the tube preamp combined with more high and low freq's passing through the audio chain gives you a more refined and natural sound. Add in a touch of reverb and some delay and a pinch of echo not enough eco to be heard as an echo just enough to allow you to add some delay and it will sound like you are in a lively energetic room instead of empty small sound or even worse the sound of a tubby tin like echo...When I say over driven tube amp sound I do not mean it in a CB RF sense of the term over driven. I mean it in the classic tube guitar amp kind of way sonicly not modulation wise and not putting more power into a transistor than it can handle similar expression but totally different meaning.
You can make the system as complicated as you like or as simple at the end of the day it really is about what you can get to pass through the radio that will be heard on a standard radio. I do not know anyone in real life that has the hifi receive mod so something like the MMM would be wasted in my area on most listeners not using Ham gear. You also have to worry about creating sub carriers and such and splater if not done right.
I refuse to use tantalums in a radio because they do not make them small enough with high enough power handling in a radial design to match what is in my radio's. Film caps are huge but if you can replace the electrolytic and key disc caps with them safely in a circuit they will perform better.
In audio you will often her guys say that the best capacitor they have ever heard is wire ie no cap at all just a piece of wire sometimes a twisted pair of wires we are talkin in the signal path.
I was going to try Goldfingers hifi mod on a President Lincoln I recaped but he has people using 16V caps in place of 50V caps in the circuit and using 1uf to 2.2uf capacitance to replace a .22uf part. That is just not sound practice with capacitors. Even if the circuit only see's 16V's operating a tant at it's rated voltage limit is bad practice according to the manufactures and the military. So exercise some caution when doing hifi mod's and obey best practices with regards to parts selection for replacements. I am lazy when it comes to working on a radio if I do some work to it I do not want to touch it for 10 years or more if fails sooner than that I am not interested. I would love to know what they life expectancy is of a 16V Tant in a mobile amp in Coastal Ga. or Arizona etc when the car is heat soaked all day than someone flips on the radio.
Maybe we can get someone that has done a ton of experimenting maybe even finetune can chime in. How much increase in capacitance can you go with in a CB radio's audio chain before you pinch the top end off or get too much bass? Is it is enough to double or triple capacitance or do you need to go big to see a real difference. GoldFinger has you going up to 10X more capacitance in some places.
I looked at an Art Tube Preamp only and it has a button right on the face to select +48V phantom power you can turn it on and off.
No laughing but I use the BC465 mic they run about $12 a pop and are condenser mikes and already 4 pin but you can wire it to anything you want. I do not like drilling holes in radios for 1/4 phono jack if I can help it. You can route the audio wire from the mic input on the front of a radio any way you want it does not have to go through the stock audio chain if you do not want it to. You can take things out or put things in or change the values etc....You do not need to put an XLR or 1/4 jack into the radio to do direct inject or to key the radio with a pedal etc...Like wise you can put a condenser element in anything you want a D104, D104M6B and RFLimited 577 your stock hand mic etc....
In home audio you try real hard not to put disc or alum electrolytic directly in the signal path and if you do you try to bypass it with a film cap. CB radio's though have the cheapest lytics and the cheapest disc capacitors money can buy often inside of them and as they age they get worse. When they have Tant's in them they are almost always operating at their full rating which means .1% to 1% per thousand are guaranteed to fail in short order. You have double the rating of a Tant over what you actual need and operate it with in it's temp rating to get long life. Kemt says this and so does the miltary. As you approach their temp limit their rating drops like a rock off a cliff. Cheap ceramic caps suffer from microphonic and they literal become a microphone when vibrated and they have terrible sound characteristics. The OEM's can use them because the audio ic has so much noise it that it hardly matter's. Add in terrible filtering and narrow band width and crappy mic and speaker and bam!
That is why you either have to modify the components in the audio chain between the mic and the transmitter or you have to skip over it and inject your signal closer to the end of the audio chain which is what direct injection is about. If you put a tube preamp and eg but still pass that signal through the stock audio chain most of the improvement will be lost. Not all of it.
The flater responce of the condenser mic added to the slightly over driven sound you get from the tube preamp combined with more high and low freq's passing through the audio chain gives you a more refined and natural sound. Add in a touch of reverb and some delay and a pinch of echo not enough eco to be heard as an echo just enough to allow you to add some delay and it will sound like you are in a lively energetic room instead of empty small sound or even worse the sound of a tubby tin like echo...When I say over driven tube amp sound I do not mean it in a CB RF sense of the term over driven. I mean it in the classic tube guitar amp kind of way sonicly not modulation wise and not putting more power into a transistor than it can handle similar expression but totally different meaning.
You can make the system as complicated as you like or as simple at the end of the day it really is about what you can get to pass through the radio that will be heard on a standard radio. I do not know anyone in real life that has the hifi receive mod so something like the MMM would be wasted in my area on most listeners not using Ham gear. You also have to worry about creating sub carriers and such and splater if not done right.
I refuse to use tantalums in a radio because they do not make them small enough with high enough power handling in a radial design to match what is in my radio's. Film caps are huge but if you can replace the electrolytic and key disc caps with them safely in a circuit they will perform better.
In audio you will often her guys say that the best capacitor they have ever heard is wire ie no cap at all just a piece of wire sometimes a twisted pair of wires we are talkin in the signal path.
I was going to try Goldfingers hifi mod on a President Lincoln I recaped but he has people using 16V caps in place of 50V caps in the circuit and using 1uf to 2.2uf capacitance to replace a .22uf part. That is just not sound practice with capacitors. Even if the circuit only see's 16V's operating a tant at it's rated voltage limit is bad practice according to the manufactures and the military. So exercise some caution when doing hifi mod's and obey best practices with regards to parts selection for replacements. I am lazy when it comes to working on a radio if I do some work to it I do not want to touch it for 10 years or more if fails sooner than that I am not interested. I would love to know what they life expectancy is of a 16V Tant in a mobile amp in Coastal Ga. or Arizona etc when the car is heat soaked all day than someone flips on the radio.
Maybe we can get someone that has done a ton of experimenting maybe even finetune can chime in. How much increase in capacitance can you go with in a CB radio's audio chain before you pinch the top end off or get too much bass? Is it is enough to double or triple capacitance or do you need to go big to see a real difference. GoldFinger has you going up to 10X more capacitance in some places.
Was looking at those BC465 mics myself onelasttime, bow do they sound? I am a conderser mic kind of guy due to my voice they seem to work better than a dynamic type element mic. For the price I suhoose it's hard to go wrong. But gotta ask before I buy one or more LOL! Thx for any responses. Much appreciated. This is if I even make it past the rest of the week with this hurricane bearing down on where I am around Daytona Beach, FL!! Wish me luck!! My fingers are crossed LOL!! Done as much as I can, now all I can do is pray my antenna makes it!! Along with the rest of the house!! Again, thx for any and all responses!!
I bought a case of these 8 years ago on Ebay for my personal collection. I don't sell them.
They need some power so be to to add some passive parts tot he mic just like you do when doing the condesnor mod to any mic for a stock radio. Than again we are not talking a stock radios re we? If you feed that into any pre-amp of any sort it will be nice and flat and what ever your pre-amp or rack do to it is another story. Keep in mind I run that mic into at the very least a pre-amp.
If you just grabbed a studio mic and wired it into your stock radio what would you expect? On the other hand if you want a condenser mic and do not want to over pay that is the way to go. Most much more expensive condensers have better ptt's or better housing etc...the element though is what is the most important. Hell if you know what you are doing you can by condenser elements under $3 each that will kick some serious but compared to the average dynamic element but you have to know what to with it! It really comes down to the mic gain amp in the radio and how it is adjusted. I make an expensive Heil mic sound like a turd with next to no work at all.
Like we say in the trumpet world "everything affects everything" lol.....
What do you have right now? Look into consenor mic modification and modify what you have right now before you do anything too crazy or just start tossing money at things! Than again if you hate it you are out under $16 and might be able to try it on another radio latter or modify it latter.
I have intoxicated right now so I fear my spelling is even worse than normal.
If you just grabbed a studio mic and wired it into your stock radio what would you expect? On the other hand if you want a condenser mic and do not want to over pay that is the way to go. Most much more expensive condensers have better ptt's or better housing etc...the element though is what is the most important. Hell if you know what you are doing you can by condenser elements under $3 each that will kick some serious but compared to the average dynamic element but you have to know what to with it! It really comes down to the mic gain amp in the radio and how it is adjusted. I make an expensive Heil mic sound like a turd with next to no work at all.
Like we say in the trumpet world "everything affects everything" lol.....
What do you have right now? Look into consenor mic modification and modify what you have right now before you do anything too crazy or just start tossing money at things! Than again if you hate it you are out under $16 and might be able to try it on another radio latter or modify it latter.
I have intoxicated right now so I fear my spelling is even worse than normal.
The radio or radios I would use one of these on already use condenser mics. So this might be a good back up mic. Thx for the info Onelasttime. Much appreciated. May pick up one just to give it a whirl. Like both you and I said, for the money if it doesn't do what you are looking for, it's not a big waste of money in any event. But I am confident that with the right settings it should sound decent at least. But I could be wrong. Best thing to do is to just get one and mess with it!! Again, thx for the info and have a good one!!
I use it for it's flat response not for magically improved vocal range. It is officaly listed as 150-4000. Most CB's start rolling off that between 150 on the bottom and 2500 tops.
If I had a modified radio I would use a better mic for sure. I talk a lot of SSB and the more I process my audio on SSB the more fidelity suffers.
I can put really expensive racing slicks on a 3 cylinder Geo Metro but that and a wing does not make that Geo Metra a Rally car right??? LOL Better tires always help though! LOL
Growing up an Army Brat we used to make fun of the Pureto Ricans becaue they would have $6000 in wheels, tires, window tint and paint on a car only worth $3000. That is my take on putting a $500 tube mic or $3000 ribon mic on a $200 CB radio. LOL
The mic has to be a good fit for the radio and the mod's that have been done tot he radio.
If I had a modified radio I would use a better mic for sure. I talk a lot of SSB and the more I process my audio on SSB the more fidelity suffers.
I can put really expensive racing slicks on a 3 cylinder Geo Metro but that and a wing does not make that Geo Metra a Rally car right??? LOL Better tires always help though! LOL
Growing up an Army Brat we used to make fun of the Pureto Ricans becaue they would have $6000 in wheels, tires, window tint and paint on a car only worth $3000. That is my take on putting a $500 tube mic or $3000 ribon mic on a $200 CB radio. LOL
The mic has to be a good fit for the radio and the mod's that have been done tot he radio.