Beginner's guide to helpful mic building accessories

[JerryS]

Honestly one of the better investments. It's simple really - with regular tweezers or pliers you have to tense your muscles to grip the item, which makes it inherently less steady. Letting the tweezers do the work for me has made me much more accurate.

I tried helping hands for a long time and found them to be finicky. I use pairs of reverse tweezers on the desk to hold things, or my panavise, or one of my 3D printed mic cradles (or a 3d-printed wire soldering jig for joining wires). I've tried the gooseneck helping hands and the more traditional wingnuts + alligator clips + magnifier one. I found the second one is too finicky and slow to set up, and the gooseneck ones i've used don't support much weight and the alligator clips are too small for some tasks.

One other important item - which i believe has a separate thread - is a good work light. I use an LED ring light mounted around a magnifier which is on a desk-mounted boom arm. I finally gave in and bought a boom magnifier instead of using one of the magnifying helmets and glad i did.

Two things...

Is the foam inlay made of an ESD safe material?

Soldering/desoldering heat sink tweezers have been around a long time. Check ebay for items - the Clauss 'bullet head' design are for specific wire gauge sizes and are excellent, but the cheap ones are fine, and even alligator clips (possibly more than one at a time) will do. Just remember that their function is to absorb heat; look for copper or aluminum construction - medical rated tools are almost all made of stainless steel which is a poor heat conductor, jewelery (hobby) tools are usually described as 'heat resistant' not heat conductive.

Jerry

 

[VanguardAudioLabs]

Two things...

Is the foam inlay made of an ESD safe material?

Soldering/desoldering heat sink tweezers have been around a long time. Check ebay for items - the Clauss 'bullet head' design are for specific wire gauge sizes and are excellent, but the cheap ones are fine, and even alligator clips (possibly more than one at a time) will do. Just remember that their function is to absorb heat; look for copper or aluminum construction - medical rated tools are almost all made of stainless steel which is a poor heat conductor, jewelery (hobby) tools are usually described as 'heat resistant' not heat conductive.

Jerry

(I think you added the wrong quote?)

I was lucky enough that my father-in-law worked for an electronics company that manufactured tools and machines for electronics production. he gave me a bunch of old tools including a bevy of old copper heat clips in various sizes. We use them all the time in the office when working near heat-sensitive components. Also some great lead benders.

 

[rock soderstrom]

Is the foam inlay made of an ESD safe material?

No idea, I have “processed” two FET microphones with it so far, no problems. Actually I build 95% tube microphones, they are not that sensitive, but you are right, you should keep that in mind when working with components that are sensitive to static voltages.

 

[Roman Beilharz]

The foam inlays are nice. I designed and 3D printed a simple adjustable mic cradle that takes two 1/4in 6" long bolts and two matching wingnuts, that gives me more solidity and more adjustability.

RE: the SS-02 - i've never really had a problem with the recoil, although yes it is strong. Usually during desoldering i mount the board vertically and add a little bead of solder to the joint if it doesn't have enough for good contact. The soldering iron heats up the joint on the bottom side and the solder sucker stays on the top side over the hole. Also like that I can reset it one-handed by pushing the plunger against my leg or the desk, making for much quicker work when desoldering multiple parts.

I am sooo glad, you recommended the SS-02!! This thing is just perfect for my needs, tiny, sturdy and powerful. And the price is a no-brainer: under 20 bucks. Wow! Amazing engineering. And this way I don't have another electronic device sitting around on our living room table in need of a power socket. My wife is really thankful

The best thing is, that it's silicon tube "nose" tightly sits on your soldering pad (as long as it is small enough to be fully enclosed) - or on the rear of it - and so all or at least most of the suction power is effectively being used.

 

[rock soderstrom]

The best thing is, that it's silicon tube "nose" tightly sits on your soldering pad (as long as it is small enough to be fully enclosed) - or on the rear of it - and so all or at least most of the suction power is effectively being used.

True. This is really the best feature - a simple solution with a big impact.