DIY telephone mic

Valhalla · Post by **Valhalla** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 6:12 am

While doing some planning for a vocal session last night, the singer told me he wanted a decent length overdub to sound "like I'm talking on an old phone". Last month I did a band where the singer wanted to sound "all lo-fi, like a scratchy phone call". For that session we used a broken 58 and a notch filter,

However, I found a rotary phone in the basement and was gonna give a go at wiring it for xlr. Seems pretty basic to me, but I was wondering if anyone on here has had any success with something similar, or if I should skip the project and keep using the beater mics.

Z-Plane · Post by **Z-Plane** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 7:24 am

I found that modifiying telephones certainly gets you into lo-fi territory but is not as pleasing as a good phone effect, usually a plug-in that emulates the miles of cable loss, modulation and noise. After all, the "scratchy" sound that people refer to is probably more a product of the network rather than the handset.

kslight · Post by **kslight** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 9:47 am

I just recorded a female singer for a bluesy rock song in Dead Weather territory using a modified telephone handset. It definitely gave it a certain lo fi quality (oxymoron I know), but it is very susseptable to handling noise and at times a bit peaky sounding, and if you aren't careful and sing too loud has deadly plosives. So the singer kind of had to back off her technique, and it also required a good deal of EQ and de-essing. Ultimately it sounded cool and definitely allowed us a vocal take we wouldn't have got otherwise (singer was burnt and so she couldn't really push herself on a real mic that night, but this was so sensitive it didn't need it).

Though IMHO a cheap dynamic or ribbon and a plugin is probably easier and at least as effective.

dustypants · Post by **dustypants** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 10:03 am

i used one i purchased on ebay for 7 bucks. Looks like all they did was toss in an XLR jack and 100k resistor. Sounds exactly how you'd think it should.

Comes in around the 45 second mark. One day i want to use it to mic some re-amped stuff for some fun snare sounds or somethin' else.

http://soundcloud.com/frankensteinlivs/ ... n-hate-you

Scodiddly · Post by **Scodiddly** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 4:09 pm

Depends on the element in the handset - a carbon element needs a bit of DC current flowing through it, while a dynamic can just be wired up. Check out "Bob Log III", he uses a telephone handset (mounted in the motorcycle helmet he performs in), but he uses the earpiece element which is going to be dynamic.

But really you won't get all the telephone sound even from a carbon element. If you look into your back issues to the Bob Paquette interview, he mentions loaning old carbon mics to producers who ended deciding that it still sounded too good to be "authentic".

blungo2 · Post by **blungo2** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 4:27 pm

I have a bing carbon mic for lo-fi stuff, it's really a cool thing, very lo-fi, gritty. I love it.

edit: i would say that the bing definitely does not sound "too good to be authentic".

bronsonmestizo · Post by **bronsonmestizo** » Mon Sep 05, 2011 4:49 pm

I made one from a 40's vintage rotary phone. it actually uses the speaker as the mic, so you talk into the ear piece. I recently recorded some spoken word w/ music. The poet spoke into a Beesneez Jade and held the telephone against his head upside down. We ran the telephone mic into my Gretsch G5222 cranked in the live room. It was distorted, and sounded very nasal. HOWEVER; At mix time, the amped phone vocal increased the intelligibility so much, that I've started using it regularly.

Here's the song.
http://record-o-van.tumblr.com/post/816 ... poken-word

This was all cut live in a HUGE warehouse.

TheStevens · Post by **TheStevens** » Wed Sep 07, 2011 6:22 am

I remember hearing that the telephone lines had a very limited frequency range... so even if you were to wire up a telephone headset, you'd still need to EQ the crap out of it.

But, having the singer hold and sing into an actual telephone headset (maybe even in front of a "real" mic too, just in case you have those plosive issues others mentioned) should satisfy their desire to sing or talk into a telephone headset, and may give the feel of the performance that extra magical specialness, regardless of which source you end up post processing and using in the long run.

bonus points if you could wire the ear part of it to the monitor mix :p

Dominick Costanzo · Post by **Dominick Costanzo** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 2:14 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I02GQAxc ... re=related

IanWalker · Post by **IanWalker** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 10:42 am

Old house/studio mate of mine had one a friend had made him.

It was as simple as could be - just wired directly to an XLR.

One caveat is that it needs a voltage on the line - ie phantom power.

The voltage on a phone like is something more akin to 10V than 48V, so w phantom on, it sounds really blown out.

Cool vibe, but nothing like a real telephone sounds like.

I would sometimes pair it w a LDC - put the two right next to one another, and blend to taste to get some cool sounds - clarity with some grit.

Example:
http://michigansoundservices.com/media/ ... edLove.mp3

Z-Plane · Post by **Z-Plane** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 11:40 am

As I mentioned earlier, the sound of a handset is only one part of the telephone effect. There's not many occasions when I would say that a DAW plug absolutely trumps its analog counterpart but this is one, check out speakerphone

http://www.audioease.com/Pages/Speakerp ... phone.html

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