electro voice pl76-I found Batteries!!!

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les666paul

New member
i have a bunch of old mics from when my dad did recrding for bands early in the seattle music scene.

heres a list, maybe you could tell me a little about them.

-Electro voice PL76-condenser cardioid
just recently found batteries
for, they havent arrived yet...
-Electro voice DS35-cardioid dynamic
-Peavey PVM 535N- cardioid dynamic
-Peavey CD-30 Celebrity series-cardioid dynamic

maybe you could give me some uses for them
 
I have two Electro-Voice PL76 microphones which I bought in the late 1970's.
The original batteries I bought were mercury batteries which likely aren't even made anymore due to the waste-hazard associated with mercury.
I am glad to learn the ones you found are alkaline; indeed I am glad to learn where to find batteries for the PL76's!

About the microphones: The PL76 mics are Electro-Voice's answer to the Shure SM58 vocal mic. The PL76 is a much better mic, however, in my opinion, with an extended frequency range: the Shure SM58's go from 50Hz-15kHz, whereas the Electro-Voice PL76's go from 50Hz-18kHz. This is significantly higher, bringing out more clarity in the music source. In addition, the EV is known to give a more even response across the entire frequency range, creating more lattitude in EQ-ing. I have found that I actually need to turn the treble knob down to compensate for the extra crispness from the PL76's!

The PL76 also makes a great live accoustic guitar/instument mic, due to the extra high end. Just experiment with different positioning in front of the guitar to find the sweet spot. On my accoustic, the best mic position is next to the high E string, just at the bottom of, and slightly behind the bridge, away from the sound hole toward the soundboard, about an inch or so. It takes a little getting used to this placement, though. (I find miking the sound hole directly to be too boomy sounding, although it feels more comfortable, since the mic is more visible there, right in front of you.) You can naturally mic a straight accoustic guitar but you can also mic an accoustic-electric guitar in addition to using the guitar's own pickup: just plug the mic into one mixer channel and the guitar pickup into another channel. This gives you two sound sources for the same instrument. Then you can blend them together as desired (using the separate channel volume controls) for an outstanding guitar sound!

Sorry, I don't know anything about the other mics you mentioned. You can search the Internet, however, for "Electro-Voice DS35" or "Electro-Voice PL76" and find the actual engineering data sheets for both of them, as well as other sites with information about them. Unfortunately, however, I was unable to post the URLs for the sites here.
 
EV PL76 batteries

If you'd like to save some $ and use batteries much easier to find, use 3 watch batteries such as LR44/AG13 and a piece of rod such as a bolt shank cut to the appropriate length. They are a bit harder to handle but if you roll them together with a piece of tape its easier. They dont last as long of course, but if you put a piece of plastic such as you can cut from a milk jug between the batts and the rod for storage, it stops the current drain when not in use. Love these EV PL76, have used them from time to time since I bought them 30 years ago. Smooth as buttuh. Using them now to mike djembe and other percussion.
 
I've had four PL-77's which I believe was the replacement for your PL-76. They run on 4.5v (and work fine with AA batteries) and phantom power. About ten years ago, they became very noisey, then quit working. So I took them apart, replaced the caps, and then they worked better than ever. I gave two of them to a friend that wanted something to use for drum overheads, and I gave another one to a budding vocalist. I've still got one tucked away in my mic locker. Tonally, they remind me a lot of an AKG C-1000... very bright but generally smooth.
 
Or for more fun, you could feed the output of a 9V battery into a TPS84250-based regulator circuit configured for 4.5V output. Or be lazy and use a linear voltage divider.
 
MugsyDouglas said:
About the microphones: The PL76 mics are Electro-Voice's answer to the Shure SM58 vocal mic. The PL76 is a much better mic, however, in my opinion, with an extended frequency range: the Shure SM58's go from 50Hz-15kHz, whereas the Electro-Voice PL76's go from 50Hz-18kHz. This is significantly higher, bringing out more clarity in the music source. In addition, the EV is known to give a more even response across the entire frequency range, creating more lattitude in EQ-ing. I have found that I actually need to turn the treble knob down to compensate for the extra crispness from the PL76's!.
Click to expand...
I have no doubt that the EV mic is much brighter sounding than a 57, but it isn't because of the difference between having a top frequency of 18k instead of 15k. Even if there was a lot of sound in that range, which there really isn't, it's isn't a very big difference at all. It is the same as the difference between 937.5hz and 1125hz. It's a major 3rd, the difference between an A and a C.

Most of a mics brightness and sibilance will be between 5k and 10-12k. By the time you get up to 15k, most people over 40 are lucky to be able to hear it at all AND there really isn't much energy up there in the first place.
 
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