[quote author="PRR"]> not much room for diy..
Tons of space. Throw-away the PCB. You have over an inch of vertical clearance for fat through-hole parts, and a little space under the PCB. A tube is unlikely, but I could fit a ton of sand-state in there if I wanted to.
> Does this model AT have a disk with holes in it in front of the capsule?
Darn. I knew you would ask about the capsule, but it was too frikkin hot in the office to take more than the one picture (actually a dozen snaps before I figured the Macro).
No front resonator, no holey-baffle around the edges. Damping holes all under the exposed diaphragm, a few central back-entrance holes for the cardioid thing. Single diaphragm fixed pattern. Diaphragm is grounded, back-electrode is the output. I'm not sure the diaphragm is the claimed 26mm, but the capsule is about 26mm, and the diaphragm is nearly the full size of the capsule. So 24mm, what's the difference? Essentially True Large Diaphragm.
> Electret!! - Oh that does it!
Nothing impossibly wrong with electret. Film-electret limits what you can do with the diaphragm, but back-electret does not. Electret is cheap compared to a 60V supply, which allows cheap/nasty electret mikes, but does not force electret to be bad.
In my view, the cash saved on a bias-supply could be put to some better use. I must say that for $200 you get a MUCH better sound than we did on $200 mikes of the 1970s (not even counting inflation; in real buying power, this mike would have been $25 in the 1970s, and we had $25 junk). That is not a $1,800 Neumann capsule or a $1,300 AKG transformer, but it aint crap.
$300 was, however, a bit rich. On today's market, it is a solid $199 mike.
> the FET is connected to the capsule via a PCB trace.
Through a wire to the right pin and then right and away. That's the -10dB Pad switch over there, which answers.....
> there could be a FET inside the capsule.
Does not look that way to me. And the -10dB Pad is clearly shorting a capacitor from Capsule Hot to ground, the classic way to pad-down the capsule (not an FET).
I don't find it "gritty". It isn't exciting, and it isn't dead-flat. But it is one hell (actually two hells: I own a pair) of a $199 mike. I use them mostly on female choir and childrens choir. Some of you have heard these clips, though in MP3 form so any grit could be MP3 not mikes.
Noise is low; never been an issue. Even in big thick masonry buildings, external city noises are audible above mike and preamp self-noise. With live choir standing "silent", choir shuffle is above mike noise.
My big complaint about the 3035: I can't tell which is front or back. Twice I have recorded in a reverberant cathedral with the mikes backward. The choir director didn't say anything. An outside producer wanted to reject a track from that session ("sounds like it is under water!"), and she still didn't hear a big problem and kept the track on the CD. Even so, I'm going to paint the backsides black. Or paint eyes on the fronts.
Can anybody translate even some of those marks? V224, J106, ABL, CBL, JG, 563, E95, 223, 105, 3? What is the pin-out on the 3-legged beasts? It's all greek to me.
The body looks like plastic but is really a hefty chunk of brass.[/quote]
best 200 bucks ive spent.....so far.
very smooth mic that tracks very well. low noise as said before....and is a hefty piece of gear. doesnt feel cheap at all.....
and yes from a distance, it is hard to tell what is the front and back...i just remember that the back is where the switches are located.
i really dont know if there is much more room for improvement....for a 200 dollar mic that is....unless you just wanted to diy for the pure fun of it and spend as much as the mic costs.....
