On Dec 31, 9:33 am, Mike Rivers wrote:
On Dec 31, 12:22 am, wrote:
I just bought a vintage Shure 55c high impedance microphone, a new
vintage style 7' cable (3-pin amphenol to 1/4"), and a 1/4" to XLR
transformer from radio shack. I have connected it to several
different sound boards but struggle to get good sound quality.
Everything sounds muffled, like the bass is missing perhaps.
"Muffled" usually means lacking treble rather than lacking bass. Given
the setup, and the fact that the Shure 55C is supposed to have a
"vintage" and band-limited sound, it's simply not supposed to sound
very good.
Is this a real 55C from the 1940s, or the modern version? If it's an
old one, goodness knows what it's been through. Just look at the
frequency response of it when it was new and you'll see that it starts
to go to pot beyond the speech range (200 Hz to 3.5 kHz roughly).
http://www.shure.com/stellent/groups...b_ug/documents...
The fact that you have the high impedance version and you're going
through a crummy transformer only makes things worse. Enjoy the
vintage sound or get yourself a more modern microphone. I was given a
couple of those mics (though the low impedance version) and after
deciding that I'd never use them for anything but a prop, I put them
on the "future projects" pile. I'm planning to mount them on a nice
looking piece of wood and making them into a hat rack.
It's a real 55c, and the element is just probably too old. Basically,
I was hoping I could get a decent sounding mic that might provide
something usable once or twice for a radio broadcast. I don't have a
high impedance crystal amplifier, though it did work a little better
on a guitar amp.
Thanks for the help,
Adam