ECM8000 Mods

freshmattyp said:
This is fascinating stuff. Most of which is completely lost on me, but I'm very interested in this.

Do what I do,, Just read the results of how one techie gadget change altered the sound compared to the stock and so on.

Forget about the jargon. LOL

Remember these guys are sorta talking to each other in mic tech talk. I just read the results.

Great info and very interesting reading too.

Malcolm
 
I received the following email from Digikey. Does anyone know where to purchase WM-60AY mic cartidges? I've looked through their electret condensor elements and nothing has the frequency response and range that these have.


You have purchased the following part number(s) from Digi-Key within the last two years.
The manufacturer has announced this part(s) will become obsolete.

PANASONIC - ECG
Description: MICROPHONE CARTRIDGE 6MM X 5MM
Manufacturer Part No: WM-60AY
Digi-Key Part No: P9959-ND
Your Most Recent P.O. No:

For more information on possible substitutes, please click on this link
http://dkc1.digikey.com/scripts/us/obs_part.cgi?pn=P9959-ND



Thank you for purchasing these products from Digi-Key. We look forward to serving you in the future.

Regards,

Digi-Key Information Services Team
Email: mailto:info.service@digikey.com
 
Grounding modded capsules

Out of desperation, I came up with a good way to ground capsules modded for 3-wire Linkwitz or phase-splitter use.
hornxy.JPG

Basically it's a carefully bent paper clip. It can also double as part of a mounting system as shown above.
 
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I've been trying to find out if there's something "magic" about the WM60-AY's or not.. like compared to a WM60-AT or the WM61 series.

Yes, Digikey is sold out of -AY's, but they have 8000 or so -AT's, which should only be different in being a few dB less sensitive.

Me personally.. I'm looking for a cheap mic with good flat response and high SPL recording capability, I want to use it for speaker and room measurement, as well as try my hand at recording race cars and engines...

Anyone have some feedback on that?
 
JonPike said:
I've been trying to find out if there's something "magic" about the WM60-AY's or not.. like compared to a WM60-AT or the WM61 series...
The 'AT's cheaper, but has a higher sensitivity. Otherwise the specs are the same. It's almost a dollar cheaper too. I went to the Panasonic site but couldn't find anything.
 
Since I'm new to all this DIY mic building.. I've been trying to gather info on things.

Don't know if anyone's done any measurements on these.. and I have heard that you might encounter ones that have problems, so you can't count on every one to be measurement quality flat.

I was wondering from the recording quality point of view where homemade WM mic's fit in compared to the real pro types (probably starting a thread here) or with the ECM8000? (tying it back to thread)

What say ye all, on a scale of one to ten, how does the Panasonic capsules rate, the ECM8000, and some of the >$100 mic's mentioned?
 
<I received the following email from Digikey. Does anyone know where to purchase WM-60AY mic cartidges? I've looked through their electret condensor elements and nothing has the frequency response and range that these have.>

Roybot, I ordered those just yesterday from Digikey. Yes, the capsules are discontinued, but Digikey still has over 3000 in stock. 61s have lower noise, so it would be worth to try. With Linkwitz mod they will have about 134 db SPL and with higher PSU voltage, even more. I am not sure, but I have a feeling that the 61s use a different from 60s, lower noise FET. When I get them I'll gut a couple of these guy.

<Out of desperation, I came up with a good way to ground capsules modded for 3-wire Linkwitz or phase-splitter use.
Basically it's a carefully bent paper clip. It can also double as part of a mounting system as shown above.>

Dayvel, it is a cool solution. However, aluminum is prone to oxidation, so on the long run it wouldn't be very safe.
I was thinking about phase-splitter (like what Scott Dorsey does in his Chinese mics mod), however, I want to come up with a schematics which could use the existing PCB with some modifications, so the more or less experienced folks here could perform the mod without getting into troubles of etching PCBs and that stuff. And of course, for myself I will make an 'exclusive mod'.


<Me personally.. I'm looking for a cheap mic with good flat response and high SPL recording capability, I want to use it for speaker and room measurement, as well as try my hand at recording race cars and engines...Anyone have some feedback on that?>

Jon, welcome. I don't think you can find something cheaper than already dirt cheap ECM8000. As it is, it might be too noisy, but let's see if we can overcome it...


<No skepticism here. I just wasn’t clear whether you were going to do the Linkwitz mod or try and swap the FET in the capsule.>

Both Flatpicker, both... :)
And then, see which one is better.
Yeah, I couldn't find the graphs for ATs either, so I just ordered more expencive AYs.
 
Marik said:
Both Flatpicker, both... :)
And then, see which one is better.
Yeah, I couldn't find the graphs for ATs either, so I just ordered more expencive AYs.
Go Marik, go! :D
In the mean time, I've got a couple of MXL 603s and a V93 to mod...
 
Some of us really wish we had that techie talent as you guys. This is fun and interesting stuff to read..keep posting fellas.
 
Marik said:
Roybot, I ordered those just yesterday from Digikey. Yes, the capsules are discontinued, but Digikey still has over 3000 in stock. 61s have lower noise, so it would be worth to try. With Linkwitz mod they will have about 134 db SPL and with higher PSU voltage, even more. I am not sure, but I have a feeling that the 61s use a different from 60s, lower noise FET. When I get them I'll gut a couple of these guy.

Hmmm.. that's interesting! Just 3 days ago I checked and there were 0 WM60-AY's and 8000 -AT's. Now there's
3000 -AY and 10600 -AT's.. guess Digikey got a last shipment?? They also bumped up there -61's too, even more of those. So, they're not unavailable yet!

I'd be very interested to know how to open and change FET's.. assuming it's not a wreck 4 out of 5 capsule prospect!
What do they have in there, a SMT part?

<Out of desperation, I came up with a good way to ground capsules modded for 3-wire Linkwitz or phase-splitter use.
Basically it's a carefully bent paper clip. It can also double as part of a mounting system as shown above.>

Dayvel, it is a cool solution. However, aluminum is prone to oxidation, so on the long run it wouldn't be very safe.

Yep, Aluminum does get that insulating surface layer of oxide... I like hearing about using Asprin as a flux.. I'll have to try that! Securely soldering a ground wire woud solve the probelm, but another way may be to use an anti-oxidant grease on the joint. You can find the stuff in electrical stores, "No-ALOX" and other brand names. You need to sand or something to clean metal while applying this, it prevents the oxide from reforming, seals the joint and really lowers resistance. If done right, it could make a pretty good permanent contact.

Jon, welcome. I don't think you can find something cheaper than already dirt cheap ECM8000. As it is, it might be too noisy, but let's see if we can overcome it...

Well, a $2.50 mic capsule and home make the rest of the body would do it.. assuming the Behrenger is pretty much the same as Linkwitz' example with a preamp on board.. It will be interesting to find out if a lot of the noise of the ECM8000 is from the inboard amp rather than the cartridge, or if the cartridge is the majority.

A note.. Sigfried is getting too popular, he's beginning to bump up against his bandwith limits, and is starting to take down some of the stuff on his site. Cant say I blame him, bandwidth isn't cheap, but it's too bad for the site as a reference. Either buy his disk of all site info, or take a trip to the wayback machine..

<No skepticism here. I just wasn’t clear whether you were going to do the Linkwitz mod or try and swap the FET in the capsule.>

Both Flatpicker, both... :)
And then, see which one is better.
Yeah, I couldn't find the graphs for ATs either, so I just ordered more expencive AYs.

I've never seen any graph different for the WM60 family.. that implies they are just selected for sensitivity and put in catagories.

Will be interesting to hear the results..
 
I just ordered a handul of WM-60AY's and now there are less than 100 available. Who's buying these things and if Digi-key is selling almost 3000 of them in a day why are they being discontinued? BTW - when I received the email from Digi-key about this becoming an obselete part, there were none available.
So I'm as curious as JonPike about where the latest 3000 came from. Marik, thanks for the heads-up!
 
I just ordered a handful of WM-60AY's and now there are less than 100 available. Who's buying these things and if Digi-key is selling almost 3000 of them in a day why are they being discontinued? BTW - when I received the email from Digi-key about this becoming an obselete part, there were none available.
So I'm as curious as JonPike about where the latest 3000 came from. Marik, thanks for the heads-up!
 
Well, Panasonic could still have a ton of stock, even if they are stopping production.

It's common (or at least desirable for the customer) to announce a product's termination well in advance of the event, so they have time to change designs for new, available parts. I think the note said they were stopping production in May?

Remember these parts are normally made by the 10,000's or 100,000's a month, and usually bought by companies that may produce up to similar numbers of their product. Think Uniden or Panasonic and how many new model answering machines needing a little mic capsule they probably crank out a month..

Us little guys, small buisnesss buyng a few hundred, designers puting together new products buying a few tens, and crazy diyers buying a few at a time tend to be a minority in the industry.

I hope there will be a few more buys.. and hope the missing 2900 wasn't some misguided bozo thinking he'll keep them then sell on Ebay for $10-20 each. ;-) More than likely it was some manufacturer buying a chunk of stock to put off having an engineer go mic shoppning.
 
OK,

Time for update. Last hight I rebuilt the first stage of the preamp. I made it as a cascode FET, eliminating the first coupling SM capacitor. I tryed two versions--with fixed and self bias. The later sounds better to me. However folks, I've got a problem--the sensitivity is about 5-6db lower than the stock one. Can we live with that?
I am waiting for shipping from Digikey and see if I will be able to replace WM60's FET with selected for high trunsconductace one, so it might take care of the problem. Later tonight I will post some pictures.
 
Here is the stock ECM8000 schematics. Sorry, it is not finished yet, but will give an idea. The output transistors are monolitic 2SA1349.
 

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