VanguardAudioLabs
Well-known member
Had to repair a couple of these recently and found something interesting that I figured I'd share. I'm used to the through-hole ones, and generally i don't mess with surface mount - i drink far too much coffee for that!
1) The wires from mic to the hi-Z board are TINY - my wire strippers go down to 30awg, and i'd estimate these were 36awg. The insulation appears to be woven, and can be burned off using the soldering iron instead of stripped. AKG actually bolds the text about REPLACING these instead of resoldering if they break in the service manual.
2) one of the mics was intermittently allowing me to change settings. Rolloff wasn't working at all, polar pattern only worked to the left, and pad was working. When i put pressure on one side of the board, they started working. So I reflowed the switches and the connectors with no luck. Eventually I realized that the way in which they put the boards together necessitates some angled insertion of the board-to-board connectors. This angled insertion might stretch out the pin receivers on the female side. Once i realized this, i disassembled the PCBs and ADDED a thin layer of of solder to all the board-to-board connector male pins to increase their dimension slightly. They connected much more tightly and the mic immediately started behaving.
3) if you have any standard Chinese 34mm edge-terminated capsule with a bum diaphragm, it works perfectly as a diaphragm shield for 414 Teflon capsules. Unmount the bad diaphragm of your RayKing/Alctron/797/TongXin capsule and keep it attached to the diaphragm ring. The brass pin on the AKG capsule fits perfectly into the screw holes of the diaphragm ring, and you can shield the diaphragm from any stray solder spit, dust, etc. while you work.
4) the black/silver/gold grills unfortunately are not the same as the ULS/EB/P48 grills, the dimensions are significantly different. I was hoping they were the same as it's hard to find replacement grills for the ULS/TLii/EB/P48 these days.
1) The wires from mic to the hi-Z board are TINY - my wire strippers go down to 30awg, and i'd estimate these were 36awg. The insulation appears to be woven, and can be burned off using the soldering iron instead of stripped. AKG actually bolds the text about REPLACING these instead of resoldering if they break in the service manual.
2) one of the mics was intermittently allowing me to change settings. Rolloff wasn't working at all, polar pattern only worked to the left, and pad was working. When i put pressure on one side of the board, they started working. So I reflowed the switches and the connectors with no luck. Eventually I realized that the way in which they put the boards together necessitates some angled insertion of the board-to-board connectors. This angled insertion might stretch out the pin receivers on the female side. Once i realized this, i disassembled the PCBs and ADDED a thin layer of of solder to all the board-to-board connector male pins to increase their dimension slightly. They connected much more tightly and the mic immediately started behaving.
3) if you have any standard Chinese 34mm edge-terminated capsule with a bum diaphragm, it works perfectly as a diaphragm shield for 414 Teflon capsules. Unmount the bad diaphragm of your RayKing/Alctron/797/TongXin capsule and keep it attached to the diaphragm ring. The brass pin on the AKG capsule fits perfectly into the screw holes of the diaphragm ring, and you can shield the diaphragm from any stray solder spit, dust, etc. while you work.
4) the black/silver/gold grills unfortunately are not the same as the ULS/EB/P48 grills, the dimensions are significantly different. I was hoping they were the same as it's hard to find replacement grills for the ULS/TLii/EB/P48 these days.
