Broken piece in AT-U853 microphone

[robgronotte]

I recently got a slightly used set of Sound Professionals SP-CMC-4U microphones. They're made from the Audio Technica U853 bases and capsules (which I believe have the same internals as the older AT853).

I tried them out once and they worked fine. But for the next use I was trying to figure out the clips I got with them, which I had a lot of difficulty in positioning in useful way.

I could barely even move the clips with the capsules on, so I removed the capsules to fiddle with the clips a bit. At some point I noticed there was a little gold tab sticking out from one of the bases. I tried to bend it back the other direction to match how and it immediately snapped off.

I'm hoping this will be an easy repair if I get the correct piece, but I don't know what it is called. It's the piece of the base that actually makes contact with the interior of the capsule. I don't know why such an important piece would be so fragile, especially in a set with changeable capsules.

I would appreciate if anyone could tell me an easy place I could get a replacement piece, or even what it's called, and any advice on the repair.  I may contact Sound Professionals about it, but thought I would ask for insight here first.

Attached is a photo of the intact base, with the tab sticking up just a bit.  It was tough to get a photo which showed this piece very well, but hopefully some will recognize it.. 

[robgronotte]

Well, I was a bit disappointed not to hear from anyone about this, but it looks like my attachment didn't work before because the file was too large. It would be nice if the system warned you when that happened, instead of just not attaching anything.  Trying again with a smaller file.

[robgronotte]

Anyway though, I got in contact with Sound Professionals, who got the part number from AT.  I emailed them and they offered to send me two replacement pieces for free.  Hope I can manage to fix it or get someone else to do so.

FYI, it's part #145415260, and the AT representative called the piece "Contact spring".