telephone handset for lo-fi mic?

[littlepokey]

I have had occasion to use a lo-fi telephone type vocal sound in the past that I have achieved by using generous amounts of nasty EQ. It seems like it would be pretty slick to somehow have an actual old school telephone for a singer to sing through. Is there any obvious reason that I couldn't snip through a telephone handset cable, figure out which leads are coming from the transmitter and just slap a quarter inch plug on the end of it? Are there any weird preamp/impedance problems that come to mind? I realize that I should probably just try it since it s not a very expensive experiment to conduct, but.... any thoughts?

Thanks!

-m.

[Scodiddly]

You need to have a DC voltage running through the handset to get it to work. I doubt it would work correctly with "modern" phones, but it used to be possible to just hook up two regular telephones in series with maybe 24 volts DC and talk back and forth. So maybe have a 9v battery feeding DC voltage to the phone, and a capacitor or transformer (passive DI?) to strip off the DC offset.

[blakeq]

Yep, you can actually pick up an old phone from Goodwill and do this. When I say old, thing rotary dial. This was featured in an old TapeOp issue. There is a band out of Seattle (Maktub) and the lead singer used to sing through one as a secondary mic.

[RustyBrooks]

But does the typical "telephone sound" come from the actual handset itself, or the fact that telephone signals are bandwidth-limited to 8Khz?

[Andy Peters]

But does the typical "telephone sound" come from the actual handset itself, or the fact that telephone signals are bandwidth-limited to 8Khz?

it's worse than that -- 300 Hz to 3 kHz.

Neither high, nor fi, but it works for Bob Log III.

Of course, I think that Bob's sound comes from the helmet and the lack of oxygen as much as it comes from the telephone handset mic ...



-a

[RustyBrooks]

You're right, 3khz is the cutoff. I was thinking of the rate for digital voice sampling, which is 64 Kbits (8 KB/s). The Nyquist sampling theorem means that they could theoretically cram up to 4Khz without aliasing into that but they cut it off at 3Khz.

[RustyBrooks]

Neither high, nor fi, but it works for Bob Log III.

Bob Law's Law Blog? Man I miss Arrested Development.

[standup]

I've got an old German mic that never worked. Disassembling it, the capsule looked like an old carbon telephone receiver element. Is that the problem? It needs DC voltage to work? Could it be adapted for phantom power?

I made up a cable that hooked the shield and single conductor to a plug (don't recall now if it was TS or XLR) but it never made a sound. Now it's just sitting there looking funky.

[Andy Peters]

You're right, 3khz is the cutoff. I was thinking of the rate for digital voice sampling, which is 64 Kbits (8 KB/s). The Nyquist sampling theorem means that they could theoretically cram up to 4Khz without aliasing into that but they cut it off at 3Khz.

They chose the telephone bandwidth decades before digital sampling ...

-a

[RustyBrooks]

Yep. But they chose the digital sampling rate based on the bandwidth cutoff that was pre-existing.

However, I learned it digital first and analog later. So, when I think about it, I think about 64 Kb/s and thus 8KB/s.

[Scodiddly]

They didn't choose 3k as a cutoff for the old phone systems - they figured out that if they got that much bandwidth they'd have a workable voice system. So all the technology tried for at least 3k, and of course 3k wasn't a sharp cutoff like a Nyquist filter anyway.

Later on when the phone companies started packing multiple voice channels into digital lines they would have added hard filters.

[bradb]

Use the earpiece as the microphone element rather than the mouthpiece...

you will get what youre looking for.

notice what he's singing into in the picture!

[taxirecs]

This is a little different technique than you're trying, but it's a cool one, nonetheless.
I've had good results using an old cordless phone (not plugged into the phone jack, but charged up) and tuning a shortwave to the frequency that could pick up the signal- then set the phone mouthpiece next to your regular mic, mic the shortwave and you've got a wonderfully distorted take that cuts real nice on top of the "regular" sounding vocal.

[brianroth]

This is a little different technique than you're trying, but it's a cool one, nonetheless.
I've had good results using an old cordless phone (not plugged into the phone jack, but charged up) and tuning a shortwave to the frequency that could pick up the signal- then set the phone mouthpiece next to your regular mic, mic the shortwave and you've got a wonderfully distorted take that cuts real nice on top of the "regular" sounding vocal.

My phone is on the 900 MHz or 1200 Mhz band, and my radio won't tune there. <g>

Great idea, however!

Bri

[centurymantra]

What about using a bonafide old school handset like this...



I'm imagining a hollering screamo vocalist jumping around with a candlestick phone in their hand would provide for maximum vibe.