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analogguru

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 25, 2007
Messages
586
Location
Vienna, Austria, Europe
Anybody already played around with this ?:
https://www.ebay.at/itm/KQ-JW-E300-Pro-Vocal-Handheld-Wired-Condenser-Microphone-Audio-Broadcast-Recor/333780840701?hash=item4db6e370fd:g:VioAAOSwY2pedXml

I mean the look is a matter of taste, but the specification claims for this price.... wow:

transformer balanced

Material: Metal
Pattern: Cardioid Uni-directional
Working Voltage: 5-48V
Frequency: 20Hz - 20KHz
Sensitivity: -32dB±1dB
SNR: 78dB
 
abbey road d enfer said:
Is there any reason for these specs to be anything other than fantasy?
The only way to know is buying one...
I already did that...  € 13,40 including shipping and paypal exchange commission is within my possibilities....  I mean this is two times not a visit to th local burger-station... really healthy.... let's see what's inside when it arrives.
 
In the past I ordered a more expensive Chinese microphone (at the risk of making the biggest mistake in my life!), but it was surprisingly good. So, you never know...  :D
Please, keep us informed!
 
The one i bought had a capsule directly soldered to the xlr. No electronics. Needles to say, there wasn't much sound coming out of it. Maybe that's what they call transformer coupled. Or it could have been just just a coincidence. I did get a refund.
 
mjrippe said:
Ordered one for $13.07 USD including tax.  I hope it does not work so I won't feel bad gutting it to make an end address LDC.
Which is exactly what i did.  ;D
 
mjrippe said:
.... I hope it does not work so I won't feel bad gutting it to make an end address LDC.
Ohhh.... I think better when you pray for that, otherwise it may happen that it looks like this one inside ;) :

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I bought 3 of these. 2 were ok, one was unusable. My main goal anyways was to gut them and turn them into something usable. One has a JLI TSB-165 capsule ( drop-in replacement for the original capsule), and 2 have a TSB-2555 larger capsule. All have a Russelltech Schoeps based preamp. The donor body is really nice.
 
So mine arrived fairly quickly.  It was $13.07 USD shipped, including NY state tax.  Nice heft to it, but it looks worse in person.  I did plug it into my 2010 MacBook Pro 1/8" jack and got no sound at first.  Then I was re-seating the plugs and found that half-plugged, it worked!  Not bad sounding but nothing worth keeping.  Here is a photo of it.
 

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As expected, there is an electret capsule wired straight to pins 1 & 2 of the XLR.  The silver oval turns out not to be a sticker, but a large plastic plug.  And in case the machined aluminum body did not have enough weight to feel "pro", there is a 95 gram (3.4 oz) lead steel weight glued inside!
 

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So the only disappointment is that the part I am calling the basket is made of plastic, not aluminum.  That will make it critical to shield and ground the capsule carefully.  The inside diameter of the basket where it is threaded is 42mm, which is plenty big.  The large end of the aluminum body is 28mm and my BV-8 style transformer does fit inside.  However the tube would have to be between the transformer and the XLR so that is not ideal.  We shall see if my Lomo 19A19-inspired mic will work or not  :D
 
So you got the circuitless version as well. My basket was at least metal. However, i believe it shouldn't be an issue, as the grille should provide enough shielding.
 
Here is my promised report:

My two microphones arrived today and they are very similar to the ones from mjrippe.
But there are some minor differences:
The basket/grill is made of metal but the rest of the upper half of the microphone is made of plastic.  The metal basket is not connected to anywhere but this is not a problem because there is only a 9,7mm x 6,7mm OMNIDIRECTIONAL capsule inside - the cheapest you can get (marked "SG").

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This capsule is embedded in a 16mm foam-ring to fit in a 16mm-capsule-holder, well known from Neewer/Tonor-microphones.  But there they use at least an unidirectional 9,7mm capsule.

This capsule is directly connected to pin1 and pin3 of the XLR-connctor - pin2 is not used.  No transformer inside and no other electronic components, so unusable on 48V.  In my case they even ommitted the "lead" weight (if this is really made from lead.  From the consistence I suspect these weights are made of steel-debris from the twin-towers or something similar).

So a classical case for a refund/buyer-protection (and probably two mic-bodies for free).

What can we conclude from this ?
Chinese folks are able to learn - here is the proof:

Many, many years ago, at the beginning there was a soundcard with a 3,5mm socket.  Tip was audio signal, sleeve was ground and ring was 5V via a 2k2 resistor.  So one could either use a dynamic mic with only tip and sleeve connected or an electret-mic with tip, ring and sleeve connected.

Then came the chinese folks and found the schoeps circuit and made clone-mics where they claimed that you could connect them to your pc.

They even put a second pcb inside which was not connected to anywhere - some where assembled + soldered, some were only assembled and some where empty.

After many reclamations they tried to adapt the schoeps circuit by changing the zener-diode from 9,1V to 3,1V in the hope that know the mics will run from 5V pc-supply too.

Since this was bogus and they had again tons of reclamations they sold their mics with a phantom-power supply.

But then a clever guy had the cognition that all these parts are not needed and reduced the circuit to one buffer-transistor, a cap and two resistors.

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With time another guy probably thought "why waste all this components " lets connect the capsule directly to the mic input of the pc.

And then we were at the beginning, a sound card who had a 2k2 resistor to support electret mics.  Yes it took some time - approx. 25 years - but in the end they have learned how to connect an electret capsule to a computer as it was originally intended....
 

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