DIY Microphones? (1 Viewer)

[SteveF]

Anyone built their own microphone and preamp for speaker testing purposes? The most appealing design I've found so far is at Link Removed and uses cheap Panasonic mic capsules. The response (shown at the end of the above page) and seems flat down to 20 Hz based on what I can see in Panasonic's Link Removed.
Curious if anyone has gone this route. Thanks.

 

[Pete Mazz]

I built that mic, but haven't done the calibration for it. I could compare it to the calibrated mic pretty quick if you want.

The mic capsules are SMALL! It was interesting soldering those wires on. I bought a premade 1/8" patch cable and just cut it in half. I have since changed it to an RCA connector.

Pete

 

[Ellen]

I built the mic and preamp back when Jason Neal was offering a PCB and parts kit. It was pretty easy and worked just fine. I imagine that it will be a bit more time consuming to do point-to-point wiring of the circuit on the RatShack protoboard that Eric mentions, but certainly still doable.
Some (rather large) pics of the contents of the kit:
http://home.earthlink.net/~etunstal/images/PREKIT01.JPG
http://home.earthlink.net/~etunstal/images/PREKIT02.JPG
http://home.earthlink.net/~etunstal/images/PREKIT03.JPG

 

[SteveF]

Pete, it would be great to get some comparisons to a calibrated microphone.

I'm interested in knowing how to mount the electret to ensure it is not poorly coupled to the casing/cables/etc. I suspect there is challenge in bracing and damping these cartridges.

 

[Scott Simonian]

http://www.speakerbuilder.net/web_files/
Go to "Speakerbuilding Articles", then look for a button at the bottom of the page that says "A DIY Microphone".
Hope this helps.

 

[BruceD]

I, like Ellen, built a kit offered by Jason Neal. I also bought and had Jason submit an assembled mic-wand for calibration which he sent with printout and diskette.

The mic, battery pre-amp, and my notebook PC on batteries with ETF5 software make a good combo for room tuning.

I typically use a desktop gooseneck mic-stand to hold the mic-wand in my listening position.