Beginner's guide to helpful mic building accessories

[Roman Beilharz]

Hi everybody,

as a former newbie with very little mic building knowledge, I have evolved to a more experienced builder with a lot more understanding of what's going on under the hood - thanks to this amazing forum. So it is time for a big THANK YOU GUYS and a series of posts to give something back to the community - and be as helpful as possible in times when more and more people seem to establish a solid "it's all about me" attitude.

So if you have cool tricks up your sleeve to share with beginners, that make your mic building life a lot easier and you wish you had come across earlier, this is the place to add them.

I'll make a start with a random collection of accessories I wish I had had right from the start:

1. Get a decent soldering station with controllable temperature and a hot air gun. I know the affordable ones are not always of great overall quality, but this is a game changer compared to the good old stick types.

2. Get a decent middle class DMM. I am happily using an ASTRO AI DMM, but I've heard that if you want to invest more, get a decent FLUKE
Astro AI DMM on Amazon

3. Get a goldsmith set of small pliers of all kinds: round nose, flat nose, long nose, bent nose... and clippers with small heads as well.

4. Set up a solid mic boom stand and attach a Manfrotto super clamp to it. This bugger is great to help you soldering cables, PCBs, or tampering around with parts and capsules:



5. Get a PCB holder like this one



6. Get a set of M3 brass standoffs in a variety of heights.

7. Get a set of M2, M2.5 and M3 screws and nuts in a variety of lengths.

8. Get a set of shrink tubing in a variety of colors and diameters.

9. For point-to-point building and as a general problem solver to reliably connect parts mechanically, a set of nickel plated single leader sleeves in a variety of diameters and lengths with a matching crimper wrench (used for leader bait building for fishing!) came in handy quite often for my builds:



10. Get a package of 0.25 watts resistors in a variety of values (10R - 1M).


Alright, thats all that came to mind in a first go, feel free to add helpful stuff and happy building!

Ro

 

[Khron]

the good old stick types.

* fire-stick

I've heard that if you want to invest more, get a decent FLUKE

... Or a Brymen

 

[rock soderstrom]

Is this your soldering station?

https://www.amazon.de/Preciva-Lötst...b422d843a988a971bd3b4b61d70&th=1&gad_source=1

 

[Rob Flinn]

I've heard that if you want to invest more, get a decent FLUKE

... Or a Brymen

I have been repairing & building stuff for nearly 40 years & in that time I have never owned a fluke or other expensive meter. I'm currently using a multicom meter which cost me about £15 U.K I have never not been able to build or fix something because I haven't got an expensive meter. I do have a really good bench meter that will measure down to 1/100 of an ohm etc etc, but I rarely use it. Just saying....

 

[Rob Flinn]

1. Get a decent soldering station with controllable temperature.

I've never had a temperature controlled iron & it's not stopped me building or repairing anything in nearly 40 years. I just use a weller tcp, simple & reliable. & easy to get spares. tips etc. In my view having a variety of tips is more useful than the iron being temperature controllable. YMMV.

 

[doorunrun]

Donegan OptiVisor!

I have 3 of them, picked up from various estate sales. I also have the one my dad bought in the '70s.
Their 5X is the most useful to me. A 10X helps with SMD and very close inspection work.

Accept no substitute!

 

[My3gger]

Some kind of bags for protecting capsules can be great investment. Don't ask me how i know

 

[frans]

I also use a very big magnifying glass to check small solder traces and the thinnest wires.