How hard is it to design my own mic?

[ankitmastakar]

Hello kind people of GroupDIY,

Please forgive my lack of knowledge about this, I do not have an electronics background, but I'm trying to try learn at the moment and also trying to do a couple of mic mods. I'm a mere novice.

But, this question keeps bugging me, how hard is it to design my own mic?

Let's say, for now, I buy capsules from someone else, but how hard is it to understand and build circuitry for it? Also, mic body design?

 

[Khron]

As with the answers to nearly all engineering questions - it depends.

How much money are you willing to sink into this? That may or may not make this from-scratch idea unfeasible (or not).

I've seen a few mic builds here made out of brass piping and whatnot, but depends a lot if and/or how handy you are at metalworking. But if you want to design your own body from the ground up, and have it manufactured by a third party, expect some minimum order quantity of at least tens, plus engineering/tooling fees and whatnot.

And regarding the circuitry... Once again, it depends. Solid state or tube? If solid state, transformer-coupled or not? You'll have to set some (clearer) design goals before you start, otherwise it's a "how long is a piece of string?" type deal...

 

[kingkorg]

Hello kind people of GroupDIY,

Please forgive my lack of knowledge about this, I do not have an electronics background, but I'm trying to try learn at the moment and also trying to do a couple of mic mods. I'm a mere novice.

But, this question keeps bugging me, how hard is it to design my own mic?

Let's say, for now, I buy capsules from someone else, but how hard is it to understand and build circuitry for it? Also, mic body design?

First you would have to come up with an idea and what you are trying to achieve that hasn't been done before. The capsule is the core of the sound. So coming up with just a circuitry, unless it's groundbreaking isn't going to do much.

Quiet curcuit, clean circuit, dirty circuit, opamp circuit, RF circuit, minimum part circuit... all been done before.

I'd say it is difficult. Simply because you need knowledge from different areas. I've seen many highly educated engineers whom lack specific, very niche knowledge, fail at modding/designing. No one knows it all.

You can see how projects like "Alice" evolve over time thanks to contributions from many people. There's always something to improve on, and so many quirks where you can fail.

Look at series of videos from EEV with Doug Ford. He goes through his journey at Røde. It will point to many things you wouldn't even think about. Like wrong material for capsule holder, or layout, use of parts no one ever knew existed. You'll also see Dave who is quite knowledgeable surprised by many design choices. And even those designs are based on something else that existed before.

 

[kingkorg]

I like this part of that Elliot Sound article:
"One of the reasons for this is that it's so hard to actually design a stage using a JFET, because all of the parameters are so variable. You can perform all the theory you like, examine the graphs in the datasheet until you're bored or bewildered, design the stage based on the theory you just applied, and find it doesn't work. Not because of anything you did, but simply because the wide variation of VGS(off) (in particular) makes most calculations pointless."

A thing that just popped up in another thread as a great example. This is not to discourage you by any means, everyone has to start somewhere. Just to give you an idea how tricky it can be. JFET is the first thing the capsule hits, it can also be a tube or something else. The point is kinda the same.

 

[ankitmastakar]

As with the answers to nearly all engineering questions - it depends.

How much money are you willing to sink into this? That may or may not make this from-scratch idea unfeasible (or not).

I've seen a few mic builds here made out of brass piping and whatnot, but depends a lot if and/or how handy you are at metalworking. But if you want to design your own body from the ground up, and have it manufactured by a third party, expect some minimum order quantity of at least tens, plus engineering/tooling fees and whatnot.

And regarding the circuitry... Once again, it depends. Solid state or tube? If solid state, transformer-coupled or not? You'll have to set some (clearer) design goals before you start, otherwise it's a "how long is a piece of string?" type deal...

Thank you so much for the feedback. Definitely a lot to think about. I'm still at a very nascent stage of it, so definitely alot of process and consider. But, thank you for letting me know what the process might entail!

 

[ankitmastakar]

First you would have to come up with an idea and what you are trying to achieve that hasn't been done before. The capsule is the core of the sound. So coming up with just a circuitry, unless it's groundbreaking isn't going to do much.

Quiet curcuit, clean circuit, dirty circuit, opamp circuit, RF circuit, minimum part circuit... all been done before.

I'd say it is difficult. Simply because you need knowledge from different areas. I've seen many highly educated engineers whom lack specific, very niche knowledge, fail at modding/designing. No one knows it all.

You can see how projects like "Alice" evolve over time thanks to contributions from many people. There's always something to improve on, and so many quirks where you can fail.

Look at series of videos from EEV with Doug Ford. He goes through his journey at Røde. It will point to many things you wouldn't even think about. Like wrong material for capsule holder, or layout, use of parts no one ever knew existed. You'll also see Dave who is quite knowledgeable surprised by many design choices. And even those designs are based on something else that existed before.

Thank you so much for such a detailed feedback! I will look up the 'Alice' project now! I think I have watched some the videos with Doug Ford at EEV a while back, but I will watch them again for sure! As I said in my original post, I do not have a background in this at all, but I have always been super interested in this and I'm very eager to learn as much as I can haha!! Thank you so much again!!

 

[Icantthinkofaname]

If you just want to use a Schoeps circuit it could potentially be pretty easy. If you want to do something unique it could be pretty difficult, like you're working on something like having a digital output and converter built in the mic like the new Rode NT1. You could probably make a pretty good solid state mic with a Schoeps style circuit and switchable patterns and filters for cheap as long as you're willing to use an existing body. I believe Khron made some edge terminated mics with three patterns for something like $50 a piece.