Good price on donor mics

Hi,

I just got two "broken" MXL 992 mics from musicians friend for $42 each with free shipping. I figured I'd never make anything nearly as nice with a dremel and drill press by hand. The mics are not working, and may have damaged components, but I don't want the guts anyway. The 992 looks like a fine donor with enough room for just about anything inside. It is ~2.3" in diameter, so should easily fit a G7 build or MK7 as well (RIGHT?)  Here's a link:

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/MXL-992-LargeDiaphragm-Condenser-Microphone?sku=273162#used

I have some nice stainless tubing I was going to use, but this is so much easier.

Tod

Hi,

I bought two MXL 2006's with the same goal, but they where to short, and those are 50mmx190mm, these are 60x130mm so it will be a tight fit.

The solution I am going to use is to use al the metal-work besides the in between tube and the rails, so basic the top and the bottom parts, make rails that fit to build the mic, and buy an new in-between tube form stock alu tubing.

DJN

Bargain! I've already spent more than that in parts (brass railing, etc) from Mcmaster, and all I've got is a bunch of parts and a ton of work ahead of me.  Good find!

Did they come with the case or shock mount by any chance?

Kato,

They come with the case and the shock mount. It looks like the link might be broken, but I just went and found them again on the site  search by typing in mxl 992.
Tod

The link worked fine for me. I just went ahead and ordered one.
I'll still build my brass hand rail mic, but this will undoubtedly come in handy for a future project.

I also considered the MXL 990 which you can get in working condition for $50, but it looks considerably shorter.

Thanks again for sharing the link.

Looks like a great deal.

Shame musicians friend is only friends with US customers.

Guess the postage would probably be too much anyway though, or maybe this is just my sour grapes

kato said:

I also considered the MXL 990 which you can get in working condition for $50, but it looks considerably shorter.

Click to expand...

I've put a Royer mod circuit into one of these and it was a PITA. The last 2 mics I built I used the MXL2006 as donors and they worked great.

James

Yeah, definitely want to go with the longer body. A working condition mic has zero advantage when I'm going to gut it without even plugging it in.

I got my two donor mics last night.

As I suspected, the dimensions listed for the 992 on the MXL literature is WAY WRONG!  The mic is actually about 8.25" long. I did confirm that a G7 board WILL NOT FIT without lengthening the framework by about half an inch, or perhaps mounting the xformer off the pcb and shortening the board, so it is not a drop in without some finagling. But it does have plenty of room for a point to point or perhaps MK7 setup.

Both mics had loose capsules, caused by broken plastic mounts. Maybe the plastic was shit, or the boxed units hit some pretty high G forces falling off a ship. Who knows. But for a decent head basket and machined parts to shoehorn a build into, it is still a great buy at $42 with free shipping.

Tod

I ordered only one so I had to pay shipping.

Same situation here. The capsule was just jangling around in the head basket. Looks plenty long for point to point.

My daughter immediately grabbed the mic out of the case and started loudly singing into it. It was cute. I love that my 3 year old knows what a mic is for on sight - even though we mostly only have dynamics in the house.

I'd like to see what everybody does with these; let's keep this thread alive with build progress. I'm thinking about putting an Analag 6AU6 ptp in here.

On arrival:

Revisiting this thread.  Although the MXL992 in the original post is no longer available, I found this one that may work well:

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/pro-audio/mxl-v250-condenser-microphone

Yes, I work for Musician's Friend™.

(not really)