Disassembling Syncron S-10

[jason_tsh]

I have three Syncron S-10 FET condenser mics, but there's barely a signal from them, and a lot of noise. I have to turn my preamp gain up to full to get ANY signal. Which leads me to think that the battery/capacitor thing inside which polarizes the capsule, has probably reached the end of its life. And/or, the FET has gone bad.

Either way, I need to get inside that upper part of the mic to see what's what. I've read on the Coutant site that you can easily convert the mic to run off phantom power, by connecting the secondary's centre tap to the high impedance resisters that feed the high voltage to the capsule.

Problem is, I can't work out how to get to that section of the innards. I've unscrewed the lower half of the casing, which gets you to the battery section (it uses 9v to feed the amp). I can unscrew and remove the battery terminal, and I can unscrew the capsule at the end of the mic. But nothing inside seems to want to budge. And I don't want to force anything, as I'm an expert at breaking microphones. BTW - I have brand new 9v batteries, so that isn't the issue. I'm not using old, dead mercury batteries.

Anyone got any tips as to how to get to the electronics? I know that quite a few people have done the conversion to phantom power, so any help would be very much appreciated.