Microphone Projects

We have been interested in audio recording since high school. We met a local man, back then, who had been recording to tape for some time as a hobby, and he very generously took me under his wing, and would loan me mics and recorders from time to time. He recorded all sorts of musical events, and would provide sound systems for other events, such as auctions, town meetings, etc. He had some nice equipment at the time - two Ampex 602 "suitcase" half track recorders (all tube), and a selection of Electrovoice and Shure mics that he was remarkably willing to lend us from time to time. In return, we would help him at live sound events, and would try to return any equipment in equal or better shape than when we borrowed it (we would do things such as clean the pots on the recorders, make up custom mic cables, re-solder broken internal mic wires, etc.). He would also record our high school rock band from time to time, basically for the cost of the tape.

More recently, we have started building up a collection of digital recording equipment, including a number of condenser mics. Most of these are inexpensive Chinese clones that we have purchased, mostly used, on eBay. These mics are half way decent, and are great platforms for modifications. There are a number of relatively simple mods that can make a fairly noticeable difference in the quality of these mics, and a few slightly more expensive ones that can really improve the performance as well.

We had the first mods on a pair of MXL 602 pencil mics done for us by Michael Joly on Cape Cod. He offered quite a few mods on a number of different mics, but is no longer providing this service. After getting these back, and being very pleased with the improvements, we decided to try a few ourself. Our first attempts involved changing out the signal path capacitors on a pair of MXL v67g LDC mics. We wanted to try this on a LDC mic first, as there is more room to work on them. We also modified the head basket to remove the inner screen liners to open them up a bit. Later, we would also start replacing the diaphragms as well, with better quality capsules from Microphone Parts.

In this section, you can find some pictures and details on some of the mics we have modded so far.

Use the menu at the top of this page to check out the various mic mods we have documented here.