solarbird | Collection: Microphone Buildout Projects

Building microphones is fun and seems to be of interest to readers, so here’s a collection post for posts about that! These posts discuss building both microphones, and, when applicable, their matching microphone driver circuits and/or pre-amplifiers.

Building a Carbon Microphone:

A Microphone of Constant Sorrow, Part I – I just wanna be able to sing into a can, just like them fellers down at the radio station (19 May 2016)
A Waveform Sung Into a Can, Part II – test of a driver circuit: version 2 (v. 1 didn’t work – 20 May 2016)
Building the “Can,” or the a carbon element mount, Part III – wherein I build a shielded containing structure for the carbon pickup element. (23 May 2016)
Once Upon a Time in a Catalogue, or A Microphone of Constant Sorrow, Part IV – putting the driver circuit into a case, as well as additions to that circuit, and the interface design (25 May 2016)
Not Just a Display Piece, Part V: a final photo and ideas for use (27 May 2016)

Related posts:

Understanding Something Better Now – wherein I discuss how building this microphone has made me understand magical technology in 1930s-1960s science fiction.

Building a Crystal Microphone:

Crystal Gems would use crystal microphones, right? Sure. Yes, I’m building old-technology microphones again (9 June 2016)
Confused by Background Radiation, wherein nothing makes sense and everything is terrible (11 June 2016)
It’s 1944 forever: the crystal microphone, part II, wherein it works, and that was not a fait accompli, things got real weird (13 June 2016)

Building a Ribbon Microphone:

Ribbon Microphone Buildout – it’s surprising now simple a build this is (9 December 2013)
Calculating the Terminal Velocity of Falling Microphone Ribbon – ruminations on how incredibly thin this material has to be to work (5 December 2013)
Microphone Preamp Build Report – build the necessary preamp. Also works with dynamic microphones, but cannot receive or send phantom power (2 December 2013)
Should Have Seen This Coming – a short note about debugging said preamp (4 December 2013)

Building a Large-Diaphragm Condenser Micrphone:

Let’s build a Micparts RK-47/990B kit microphone! – the complete build report (24 March 2017)
A Bit of Errata (and something I forgot) – turns out the “complete build report” was only mostly complete; I neglected to mention an interesting build option. Also, I guessed wrong about the design’s “omni” mode behaviour (26 March 2017)
Let’s listen to a Micparts RK-47/990B kit microphone! – with test recordings and comparisons (27 March 2017)

Other microphone and preamp customisation/modification posts: