okay i got it to work very nicely now. The image shows exactly what I ended up with. I put the resistor in the wrong spot. fixed that and it sounds perfect. if i put a resistor between black and shield it has a ton of noise.
how do you determine the proper capacitor value?
what kind of capacitor is best for this application?
Is there a way to protect the mic from accidentally powering on the phantom power?
as far as question 1 goes, I calculated a value of .416 uF. the smallest capacitor that works and still sounds good is .1 uF and the largest is 1uF so my calculation seems accurate. I basically just did the resistance of the cap over the input impedance of the pre-amp, plugged in the desired dB loss (12 dBu) at 8 Hz and solved for C. i figure that is pretty close to a low frequency roll-off of 12 dB/octave. I just need confirmation that that is correct since I've never done this type of thing before.
for question 2, all I have are mylar and electrolytic caps, 1uF being the smallest electrolytic, .1uF and .47uF being mylar. I've heard before molars aren't to great.
and question 3. I tried diodes, and they do not work at all. I don't know what other options there are. I really don't want to accidentally plug the mic in with phantom power on and fry the mic.
also, if I wanted to actually run this off of phantom power, would i just put in a resistor of say 4.6k (mic is 1.5k) in series with the mic and maybe a 12v zener diode as extra protection. of course i would put a cap in also. could i do that, or would i need to use a step down transformer?
EDIT: oops, i didn't add the image