Help me dismantle my Electro-Voice RE-20 gem find please

newmusicweb

New member
just added this used giant to my collection from salvage inventory of a talk radio station that closed. Unlike almost all of my other EV mics, I cannot seem to unscrew either end of the barrel; I want to separate the head grill at minimum, to clean and recondition the retired pupster.

Incidently the mic sounds "average" out of the shipping box (paradoxically no smoke or unpleasant odors or stains-- which drives me to wanna press forward with the mic cleaning mission). What I have read about this mic is true, no toppy or edgy surprises, less bass, and your preamp better have some hefty noiseless gain. I tested it for male vocals and speech.

Back to my gem find's condition, something of course seems to move inside the RE20 when I shake it a certain way (for sure does not qualify as a rattle yet, but something DOES move maybe half a millimeter or less). I imagine there is a foam/rubber absorbing system that has deteriorated with time, allowing the capsule to sligthly move with gravity when tilted. I don't know how 'cause I can't open it.

Also I want to adjust/replace the internal foam padding for that (possibly more) breathier and bassy? sound when I need it.

Anyway, how do I dismantle this giant without breaking anything or bending the already weathered grill? \

Thanks in advance!

P.S. What's that mini screw hole on the head grill lip for?
 
Did some digging and came up with the EV's Service Manual found here (see next post) ;-)


It shows 2 screws holding? the front cover (grill) and screen. The 2 screws seem to sit one on top of the other! The outter (top) one is missing from mine, the second one (inner) has some sort of micro hex head? My smallest hex nut won't fit in it.

ANyone who has done this before can shed some light and at least confirm?
 
Any worthwhile mods known for this mic?

While I am waiting for EV, telex, whoeterver, to get back to me regarding the tool I need to open this mic, any known mods for this mic?
thx.
 
Opening The Re20

Anyone figure out how to open this baby up yet? I can get the hex screw off, but can't pull the bottom off it it. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Joe
 
assistance on how to properly open the EV RE20

I would appreciate anyone who can drop some suggestions here. My re20 has something loose inside I can hear the noise coming from the very top of the mike when I move it. I would like to open it but do not want to go trial and error. It is not clear from the postings whether there are 1 or 2 screws on the upper part, are they definetively hex type? -I can only see one small hole opening up on top . The service sheet for the re20 does not identify the tool to use nor the type of screws. Any one can please contribute

many thanks
teltima
 
Hex Tool for RE20

The hex wrench size of the set screw on the top of the RE20 is 0.9mm. However, I've removed that one screw and still can't get the grille off. The schematic for this mic mentions that there's two set screws, but the diagram is not clear. If the two screws are indeed stacked on top of each other then the inner one of mine is stripped. Which seems odd. Or, the outer one is gone, and I've removed the inner one and still can't get the grille off. Thoughts anyone??
 
i bought one recently for £80 and had to take it apart to 'fix' it.

had a lot of trouble with the grille grub screw jobby and ended up just drilling it out (carefully)


even when i had completely bored it out though, the grille still wouldn't screw off. It only turned about a quarter turn each way..

i put a tiny tiny drop of wd40 into the threads and the thing just spun off with no probs..(then i cleaned it)



i imagine someone will come in a say dont put a drill or WD40 anywhere near a microphone,,,but hey, it worked for me,lol..


i think there is meant to be an internal grub screw that holds the capsule up close to the grille, and then an external one that stops the grill from turning,

but when i put mine back together everything was so well packed in that the capsule wasn't gona move anywhere,

plus the grill screws on tight and isn't gona go anywhere,,like an sm58..
 
As much as I love vintage Electro Voice microphones, it seems they went out of their way to make them challenging to disassemble and reassemble.

Don't recall them ever having a "no user repairable parts inside" warning on their stuff.

About 15 years ago I came across a very trashed out RE-20 at work. I sent it back to EV and the cost to totally rebuild it then was $75. That was the original EV in Buchanan, Michigan. It doesn't surprise me that they want a couple hundred dollars to refurb an RE-20 today, though chances are they just send you a new microphone. When mine was rebuilt they returned all the damaged parts.
 
Reading with interest... I "won" an auction for an as-is RE20, and it just arrived. Dirty, rattly, yucky - just as described :D -- looks like it could be the worst move I've made on ebay for a while - should have stopped bidding sooner.

I can see the little hex nut described above - I'll follow up with a description of how much worse I manage to screw this mic up...
 
tip for the day....

DON'T try to undo the hex nut with anything but the tool that perfectly fits it.....



yeah yeah, i know,you'd have to be an asshole,,,but erm,,,,we're not all perfect,<ahem>lol



out of interest, how much was it?
 
out of interest, how much was it?
$213. Not bad for a RE20, but way too much for a paperweight, which this could have been (and the ebay description wasn't at all misleading) - I'm the first to brag about used microphone exploits - guess I need to own up to this one :)

...

OK, that wasn't too bad. I had the right hex driver bit to fit the little lock bolt, and it came out without much of a fight. I then twisted the top grill until it screwed off. I saw only one lock bolt.

The entire capsule assembly was loose and flopping around inside the body - this is a cylinder about an inch in diameter that appears to go down the middle of the body and connect with the XLR jack, but I didn't try to take it out. The capsule is on the end of cylinder. The cylinder was moving from side to side, and up and down, like only wires were attaching it at the bottom. There was about .5cm of space around it, out to the inside of the outer case, and this space was what it was flopping around in. I imagine that some of the internal foam was holding it in place until the foam disintegrated.

Inside, it was nasty - the foam was well into the disintegration process, and the many particles of foam and the remaining adhesive were just gross. I shook it over the trash can, then picked out the remaining foam from the top, and carefully blew out pretty much all the rest. I took alcohol (91% isopropyl) and some q-tips and cleaned off as much of the old adhesive as I could see. I undented the top grill with my thumb.


I had a sheet of (pink!) antistatic foam that came with some opamps, and so I cut three 1 cm wide strips of it, each about 3.5 inches long (the foam was about .75 cm thick). I cut one of those in half. With a thin chopstick, I pushed/crammed the two whole strips down the sides of the capsule cylinder opposite each other along the vertical portions of the outer casing that don't have vents. I doubt they remained straight as they went down, because they fit pretty tight, but I was unable to see any pink through the side vents, so I figure I did pretty well. I took the two halves of the third strip and fit them around the diameter of the capsule cylinder right below the threading for the top piece of the outer casing.

Put it back together, and there's no more big rattling (there's still a little rattle that seems to be coming from inside the cylinder capsule), and the mic feels solid. There's a flathead screw near the base that I had loosened, thinking I'd pull out the whole capsule, but then forgot to retighten - with that screw out, I had a big hum, because I had broken the ground, but when I screwed it back tight, that went away.

Sounds good!!! I feel better :) I'm still missing foam from inside the top grill, so I'll probably need to use a pop filter until I figure out what to do about that.
 
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hey! glad u got sorted,

a dirty re20 is better than a paperweight anyday!


out of interest guys,,,,how's the bass roll off on your re20s?


been comparing my re20 to my sm7b and noticed that re20 is substantially thinner...


thinking that the bassroll off was on, i checked it out,,,,,but it was off all along..


seems that the switch only really has effect below 150hz or so...and tbh it's not really noticable at all..



is any of the above normal?

cheers...
 
I found a tip on TapeOp for getting the right sized hex wrench. Take a .50 allen wrench and file it down. I did that, and it worked great. I didn't even get it be anywhere near perfect in shape, but I got it close enough to work. My advice, do a little filing, then try, do a little more, then try again.
 
Hey MicDaddy ... I tried but couldn't find #4 of the video - the one after you removed the lead from the coil.
I have a 20 with baby rattle syndrome and would like to fix it myself.
Were you successful in fixing this problem? My only alternative is to send it to EV but I'm sure it will cost $200.+

PM me your e-mail and we can discuss this further.






:cool:
 
[Tried to quote YouTube link, but the forum will not let me. See MicDaddy's post above.]

This video has been removed from YouTube. Does anyone know if it is available elsewhere or at a different link on YouTube? MicDaddy appears to have disappeared from this forum.
 
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