Journeys Unknown - R&D - DIY Microphones and other hardware

It's taken me a while to gather everything needed for this instalment of the blog, everything from the daily grind and the extra rainy British weather, to balancing uni and work has meant that getting out and making a mess has been tricky recently.

Anyway... 

In this post I will show you how I made a couple of easy microphones and a fake drum room, that can be used to enhance and add flavour to lots of different recordings. basic soldering skills and use of hand tools is necessary for these projects. Audio clips of these experiments are available at https://tomweber.bandcamp.com/

The tools needed for these projects are: a Drill, Soldering Iron, Solder and Flux, Saw, Hacksaw, Scissors, Pliers, Spanners, Hot Glue Gun, Screwdrivers, Thread lock, Tape.

Soup Can Mic

The first mic, and easiest to gather the parts for is the Soup Can Mic. This mic has a very vintage "old school radio" flavour to it, which gives a fun lo-fi texture to vocals and acoustic instruments. 

 To make the Soup can mic you will need: 

1x A soup of your choice

1x Piezo Transducer

1x 1/4 inch mono jack socket

1x Sponge

1x String

1x Square of fabric (big enough to cover the end of the can)

1x Mic clip (optional) 

 

Step one: Eat soup, wash and dry the can. 

Step two: Drill the holes for the jack socket and mic clip (if you choose to add one).

Step three: Solder the piezo and jack socket together then fix them to the inside of the can.

Step four: Cut a rectangular piece of sponge and place it inside the can (this is to help fight feedback)

Step five: Cover the open end of the can with the cloth and use the sting to tie it on.  

There are plenty of tutorials online for making this type of mic, I recommend following along to one alongside the pictures in this post to ensure you don't miss out on any of the finer details. 

Subkick Mic

Secondly and slightly more expensive is the Subkick Mic, this mic was first used by Geoff Emric and The Beatles in 1966, and has since evolved from rewiring a guitar cabinet into its own fully fledged product manufactured by companies such as Yamaha and Solomon. These mics are useful for picking up the extreme low-end frequencies of instruments like kick drums and bass guitars, and although they may not be all that useful by themselves, when blended with other mics they can fill out the sound and add extra "Oomph" to your recordings.

The hardest part of this project was finding the fitting used to secure the mic to a stand. After some digging around online, I found what I was looking for was the middle section of a mic stand (the bit used to join the boom arm to the pole) and not easy to get hold of, one company had a minimum order of £35 but only had 2 in stock, and the other options came from Germany so I picked the one with the cheapest postage. I'll share the link to the one I bought to save you the hassle. 

To make the Subkick mic you will need:

1x 6 inch (or larger) speaker

1x Sheet of plywood (roughly 5 millimetres thick)

1x XLR panel mount socket and fixings

1x Short piece of XLR cable

1x Threaded rod (to fit the screw holes in the speaker)

16x Nuts and washers for the rods

1x Nut, bolt and washers for the mount 

1x Bottle of thead lock 

1x Thin high friction rubber. 

 1x mount. (https://www.musicstore.com/en_GB/GBP/Koenig-Meyer-Hinge-Core-with-Thread/art-ACC0001878-000)

Step one: Draw round the speaker and cut a square large enough to protect it from damage from the plywood sheet and mark the holes for drilling the threaded rods. Do not cut a hole for the speaker. 

Step two: Pick a corner to mount the XLR socket, then drill holes for the rods and the XLR socket. 

Step three: Assemble the speaker and rods to the board, raise the height of the speaker and hold it in place with the nuts.

Step four: Drill a hole and fit the mount, sandwich the thin piece of rubber between the board and the mount to ensure it does not slip.

Step five: Solder the speaker and XLR terminals together (in reverse). 

Once you're happy with the fitting and height of the speaker, use the thread lock to seal the nuts and stop them from coming loose.  

I paired my Subkick with an SM57 to capture the full range of the kick drum.  

Again, there are lots of videos and tutorials online for building these but, in this instance, the inspiration for this particular design came from the subkick I have used at ICMP.

 

Hosepipe Reverb

Not for drummers that are scared of Xenomorphs...  

This is an idea I borrowed from Sylvia Massys book Recording Unhinged. 

Basically, you seal up one end of the hose with tape, then put the mic in the other end and use more tape to hold the mic in place (I used the hose clips which came with the hose to help secure everything together). The Hose is then loosely wrapped around the base of the drum kit and the mic end is trailed as far as possible. Take care to not touch the drums with the pipe and be careful not to push the mic in too far or cover the vent behind the cap to avoid changing the polar pattern from cardioid to omni. 

For this project you will need:

1x Long hosepipe (5-10 metres with a diameter large enough to fit an SM57 without too much of a gap around the outside)

1x SM57

1x Roll of tape 

2x Hoseclips (optional, but reccomended)

 

 

*Note - Carefully remove the mic from the hosepipe... 

 

Step one: Tape up one end of the hose

Step two: Stick the mic in the other end and secure it with tape

Step three: loosely coil it around the floor underneath the drum kit without touching any of the drums.  

The sound you get from this is similar to a big drum room with a mono mic as far away from the drums as possible, it captures all the shells while taking the edge off the cymbals so they're not overpowering, this is a great way to fill out drum sounds, especially if you're low on inputs on your interface. I used a single Ribbon mic capture the whole kit and blended the hosepipe in for ambience. 

 

Being able to solder is a valuable skill for anyone interested in DIY music and production because you're able to make your own toys to inspire and push your creativity to new places, and you can also save money by repairing cables and other basic equipment like changing the pickups in guitars. Aside from the projects above, learning to solder has allowed me to build things like effects pedal kits, the XLR patch bay for my interface, a really long speaker cable, change pickups and replace the wiring in guitars.