Gear / Technical Help > Microphones & Setup

Building your own binaural mics ~ $20

(1/16) > >>

digifish_music:
Inspired by the various sites showing people building stereo/binaural mics from a set of Panasonic WM-61A capsules. I decided to have a go myself.

Step 1.  Buy some WM61-A capsules on eBay ($15 for 10 seems good).

Step 2. Note how small the contacts are and realize life will be much easier if you buy some cheap headphones and steal the cable. That way you end up with a nice fully formed right-angle plug but more importantly perfectly tinned/shielded wires ready to use (no cutting, wire stripping or fiddling - the key to a stress free build). $10 for some Sony cheapies, selected due to the low price and right-angled plug.





Step 3. De-solder the headphones (BTW: I dunked the unsoldered ends of the cable in a cup of boiling water to help straighten out the kinks from the knots) slip your shrink-wrap up the cable and and re-solder on the capsules. I didn't even need to apply any more solder, just hold the two together, briefly touch with the tip of the iron and zap! done. The shield-wire goes to the tabbed capsule connector..this is too easy, surely something is wrong  ;D

Step 4. Matching capsules -

Tip for quick-matching the output of capsules.

- Put a bunch of capsules (in a line) face-down on a speaker laying on it's back (you need something with a smooth flat grille, radio?)
- Tune the radio to FM hiss.
- Plug the de-soldered headphone lead into your recorder and put into record mode so you can see the levels.
- Work your way along the line of caps manually connecting the leads to the cap terminals, note the recording level.
- Pick two that are closest. While you are there match up the rest into pairs for later.



Step 5. Test they are working.



Step 6. Shrink-wrap the capsules.



Step 7. Compare to Sound Professional binaurals misc...(normal sensitivity models)...they sound identical...job done.



Took 15 minutes, total cost ~USD $20

NOTES:

1. No I didn't do the mod of cutting the tab and modifying the capsule connections as I wanted to retain the S/N for field-recording work. If you want to go that path I think it is definitely better to just buy them complete from  SP or similar vendors. The stock capsule handles around 110 dB so, that's loud enough for me.

2. The ear-clips with my original models are very useful and make them worth the extra $40...I was really doing this just to see if I could...and I could :)

3. Next step, use another two capsules to make a stereo hydrophone...:D

4. EDIT: To hear example field recordings from these microphones type in "Panasonic wm61-a" into the search engine at freesound http://www.freesound.org/searchText.php Note: To download the original recordings (high quality) you will need to create an account.
 
digifish

attheshow:
+T for going DIY! Looks good.

SmokinJoe:
This is a great idea for cases where you don't want to bring your other mics...  rainy festivals, salt air party boat jams...  if something bad happens, your not out much.

run_run_run:
h0t +T

ArchivalAudio:
very nice work!
anyone ever look into the Knowles telemetry caps?
I believe that you can still get  (or could a few years back) some sort of Nak 700 caps from them which would be sweet!

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page