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President Electret Microphone Upgrade

Shadetree Mechanic

Delaware Base Station 808
Oct 23, 2017
7,151
12,504
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The First State (Delaware)
The stock electret microphone that comes with the President radios now days is hard to beat. Changing to a dynamic mic will usually give a lower tone that sounds good, but it lacks the punch of the stock mic and consequently is not as loud. A power mic will bring up the audio level, making the dynamic element loud enough. But the punch is still gone.

There is a seller on ebay that sells a multiple element retro fit kit for the D104. Just put all the elements in parallel, giving more gain. And I just happened to have a hand full of the small electret elements that came from telephone handsets that were in the recycle at work........

Behold, three elements wrapped in tape to make a snug fit. Plus the stock element makes four.

Wow! What a difference it makes! Big clean clear audio, better than any power mic. Seriously, you gotta try it.

IMG_20230504_175151960_HDR.jpg
 

Just a note, the electret elements that you normally buy will probably have too much bass. The studio type elements need an equalizer to make them sound natural. The dc blocking cap that is sometimes needed will trim some of the bass, but it also attenuates the signal.

The elements that I have been using come from telephone / speaker phone applications and have a great frequency response with a natural sound. Now that I found this out, I need to go back to some of the other mics that I did and fix them.
 
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I'm going to try this this evening with my President Stock Mic. There was a few old telephone handsets in the junk closet at my office, boss said to throw them out, so I'm taking them home to dissect and rob the elements out of them. :)
 
Since the radio is bottlenecking audio bandwidth, no matter what mic cartridge you use, radio will cut it down. Those telephone mic capsules are just regular electret microphones.
Mike
 
Since the radio is bottlenecking audio bandwidth, no matter what mic cartridge you use, radio will cut it down. Those telephone mic capsules are just regular electret microphones.
Mike
Sure, the radio cuts down the bandwidth, but the microphone cuts it more. I thought the telephone capsules were just ordinary capsules too. So I bought a pack of 10 elements from Amazon and quickly found out that they are not the same. An ordinary element has too much bass and sounds muddy. It needs an equalizer. The telephone element has the bass attenuated, but not as much as the Anytone or President ones. The telephone people want you to sound like you. This is what the radio people should want too.
 
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I'm going to try this this evening with my President Stock Mic. There was a few old telephone handsets in the junk closet at my office, boss said to throw them out, so I'm taking them home to dissect and rob the elements out of them. :)
The best way to hear the difference, is to use a second radio with headphones and no antenna. I use a stock Cobra 148 as a station monitor. I do a quick check every time I power up, just to make sure nothing got bumped, etc. I thought about putting an extra push button on the mic to switch in and out the extra elements. Would make A/B testing simple. Let us know what you think, and even snap a few pictures if you can.
Chris
 
Prelim testing yields good results with what seems to be a little better "low end" response. I have two President mics that I can use on the Lincoln II. One remains stock, the other is the modified one with two additional elements. There certainly IS an audio difference between the two.

I am impressed.
 
Just did one for the Anytone Ares 2.

 

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