Sunday, May 12, 2024

On making the Pleiades 175mH:175mH (not 200mH or 240mH as fewer turns of wire were used) microphone filter for SM58

As can be seen from the title it is a transformer ie there are 2 coils hugging each other, rather than just one coil as in ordinary Pleiades filters. So it not only low cuts but isolates too as each wire is not electricaly touching each other. They communicate through the music sent as an electromagnetic wave from one coil to the other. It may be called the Pleiades Liliya microphone filter if Liliya agrees. It took yesterday and today to make it. 0.16mm diameter wire was used. 2 small Leukosilk spools were wound with a few meters of such wire each. Then hand was holding the 2 ends of both wires and wound both of them on a wooden stick along its lenghth. The thin wooden stick has wood removed from its ends with a tiny file so that it can accomodate the wire. Then both wires were wound with the help of the wooden stick through the small Magnetec 073 nanocrystaline toroid. This way of simultaniously windiing 2 wires seems to be called bifilar. It looks as if only one wire is wound. Each wire at any point in space is at the same electric potential (voltage) to its pair. So there is no or minimal capacitance between them. Using a Siemens if memory is correct similar size ferite core wound bifilar way, the frequency response was flat up to say 450KHz! It was a nightmere to keep it extremely tidy without each coil jumping over the other but it still looks very nice. About 69 turns were wound for each wire to fill the toroid space and give an inductance of about 175mH for each coil which should also be great for omnidirectional microphones as a nice low cut of bass prominance of environment and usuful signal. The inductor was placed inside Neutrik modules to look really profesional and beautiful and today afternoon was ready. It was tested then with male singing voice indors, outdoors (noisy balcony) and staicase. Singing the phrase I like you just the way you are - Billy Joel. Mic distance was 16in or 19 in. Without the filter, ie mic on its own, the sound was bass heavy, full of boominess even at the balcony. With the usual German inline transformer of 230mH:290mH(?) (470mH at low frequency), the vocal sound much clearer, with very nice midrange, high frequency detail, just a bit of mudiness. With the just made Pleiades 175mH:175mH signal transformer bass mudiness from proximity effect etc was completly removed, midrange was very nice and big but a bit standing out too much, high frequency detail amazing, like a ribbon mic perhaps. The sound as heared sounded close to the Billy Joel quality as recorded by Phil Ramone on apparently a Beyer M160 double ribbon microphone. Anyway I am not Billy Joel. Signal path: indoors, or noisy outdoors, or staircase, male singer singing Just the way you are - Billy Joel - Shure SM58 Mexico at 45 degrees from above towards nose at 12in to 19in distance - Pleiades inline 175mH:175mH high pass filter transformer - Sony TC-D5M on Left channel - monitoring through its tiny spaker or Sennheiser HD-580 or Pleiades 2N3053 single transistor amplifier in class A feeding Celestion Ditton 150 in a small reverberent room The best recording was the one done on noisy (machinary and birds) outdoors. Actually a Pleiades (130 Ohms, 20mH) gentle slope high pass for adding crystal clear sparckle may not be necessary as the SM58 capsule has an inherent high frequency boost. Good luck if you decide to make one.

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