Studio Mic for Ham Radio - Saving $$$...

I've never been really interested in audio-twiddling and processing.  But, recently, the hand mic that sits on my kitchen table has become something of an irritant.

So, in true arse-about-face fashion, I started out the process of clearing the table top through buying a studio mic boom.

An entire boom mic system for just £65 - about the same price as a Heil boom.

And how much does someone like Heil and their various outlets expect you, poor ham, is going to fork out for a piece of thin metal and some springs?  Well, about £65, seems to be the answer.

Enter Dawson's Music, who provided me with a great-quality boom, plus a good length of cable, for just £15.

Now for the microphone.  If you are a mere consumer and hunt through the ham outlets, pretty much all you are going to find is a Heil mic.  Now, whilst these have, in most cases, a good reputation, something marketed as a high-fidelity broadcast mic is something you might expect to see in a commercial FM station, not an SSB ham station.

Add to this overkill the fact that they cost something like £230, and it's clearly time to look for an alternative.

On receiving some kind advice on QRZ.com, I decided to buy a Behringer XM8500.  This is a cheap-and-cheerful recording studio mic, costing...wait for it...£15!  Whilst it may be cheap, it gets a very high score from hams on E-Ham's review site.  Indeed, it gets a much higher score than many Heil mics.  That was good enough for me!

Remove the fitted Behringer mic stand coupler (shown partly out) to reveal just what we need - a thread for the boom attachment!

I got myself in a real internet search engine tizz when I tried to figure out how to wire the mic to my Yaesu FT-450.  Seems like I was making things too complex, because people like Technofix make simple adapters for this very purpose.  Turns out the Heil 3-pin units (for which the adapters are marketed) are simply the normal XLR standard connections that you find at the back-end of any studio mic.  So the Heil 3-pin adapter for the FT-450 is equally suited to any XLR, 3-pin mic.  It also features a socket for a PTT switch of your choice.  Technofix provide both hand and foot-operated varieties.

As for a shock mount - certainly not a necessity, by any means - E-bay and Amazon outlets supply these for a £45 saving over the price Heil expects you'll pay for theirs.

So, all-in, the whole change from hand to boom mic cost me about £65.  Or, alternatively, a minimum of £150 less than had I chosen even the cheapest Heil mic (not that there is much choice for an FT-450 from that maker.)  I could have saved about £20 off that if I made the adapter myself.  I decided to leave the shock mount, because hams expect to hear the odd bump and creak!

I later had a browse of some adverts in RadCom.  I was rather surprised to see a headset there sell for £207.  This is a lot of money for two small loudspeakers and a microphone attached to some springy steel! The £207 headset looks very similiar indeed to my pilot's headset - which costs just £105.  Given that reliability is considerably more important for flying than ham radio, and that pilots are hardly poor folk, it seems hams really are being taken for the biggest ride.