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Reviews For: Astatic D-104

Category: Microphones for ham radio

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Review Summary For : Astatic D-104
Reviews: 70MSRP: 90.
Description:
The Liliypop Mike
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.astatic.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00704.7
N8XLQ Rating: 2020-10-23
The D104 is my favorite mic in Radio. I have 7. Time Owned: more than 12 months.
~THE ASTAIC D104~

*The Astatic D104 is the most widely known mic in radio history. It’s history is long and wide. You name it and there was most-likely a D104 in front of the radio on the desk.

*Military, State Offices, County, and City service’s all used these mic’s. Radio companies, Browning, Tram, President, etc., all sold the D104 as an option for they’re base stations.

*Why? Because the D104 was the best option for decades.

*I’ve seen some bad reviews on here about the D104. People saying how it’s sounds bad or looks hideous. No respect.

*I say to them you not audio person if your gonna knock the All Time King Of Radio Mics.

*Also if you can’t make a D104 sound good on any radio then you may be in the wrong hobby. All the bad reviews on here about the D104 are a sign of ignorance and/or incompetence.

*I’m willing to bet that there are more D104‘s out there than any other mic. Why? Cause they’ve been here since 1930 something and there still here talking daily on radios all over the world! Best radio mic ever.

*I got my first D104 Sliver Eagle when I was 16 and I
never looked back. I still have it. If your having challenges getting a D104 to sound good on your radio it’s most likely the radio that is giving you trouble. Some radios don’t like the output drive the D104 offers. That’s when I say turn down the D104 mic gain. The D104 is very simple to use.

*After you check the D104 on a radio, that likes the D104, then check your radio mic input with the stock mic. Most of the time you’ll find the gain stages in the radio or on the D104 are set high. That’s half right.

*The unpowered D104 is plug and play with the right Adapter. No gain dial on the bottom. The D104 modulation power will be subject to the radio’s mic gain stage.
You’ll get the Basic D104 sound- no gain.
For some this is perfect- others- not so much.

*(How to set up the D104 Powered mic to your radio)

*(First) Turn your radio mic gain up all the way.

*(Second) Turn the D104 mic preamp down all the way. Connect the D104 to the radio.

*(Third) Set up a monitor so you can hear your modulation and use headphones, earbuds, etc., that sound good or your comfortable with. If the Headset is dodgy then your D104 will sound dodgy.

*Some radios have a monitor built in, some do not. Use the built in monitor or the speaker out. I use the speaker out on my Yaesu FT450D. I think the speaker out is a better tap for this but that’s up to you.

*You need to isolate the monitor headset so the D104 can’t hear the speaker. Reason- FEEDBACK. The crystal and ceramic elements that are in these microphones are extremely sensitive!, like laboratory sensitive, circa 1935.

*(Fourth) Set your headset listening/monitoring level low. Press the PPT button or the Squeeze the (Chicken Choker).

*(Fifth ) Now, with either a Phillips or flat head screwdriver slowly crack open the D104 mic gain just a little and listen to your voice. The D104 will modulate with the gain off.

*What your gonna do next is add a little drive to the Radio mic input stage. Turn the D104 gain up till your content with your vocal sound. You can turn the D104 gain dial all the way up to see what you sound like with a MODULATION MONSTER driving the rig, lol. However, This setting is useless on newer radios.

*(Hint) keep the D104 gain in it’s low range. It will serve you well.

*The D104 mic gain can be very aggressive if you use too much drive. Keep it turned back for ragchewing and give it a little more gas to drive into contesting. The D104 cuts through better than any other mic I’ve heard. I’ve heard most mics made.

*The D104 won’t drive FM but will sound great.You can distort your modulation if you have the D104’s gain too high. Just back it down till you get your sound.

*I get the question on the repeaters often about what I’m talking on. The answers are fun. That’s a D104? You betcha! I get great audio reports every time I ask. You will find that on AM & SSB is where these D104’s Excel.

*The tone of the D104 is designed to cut through in the worst conditions. I’m a Pro Audio Tech and Bassist- 41 years and a part time Rock Star.

*I have a bunch of mics laying round. Most of the audio mics out there are designed to pick up certain Aspects of a sound you’re recording or amplifying.

*The D104 is that just from the 1930’s. So your bandwidth on the D104 isn’t going to go deep. It’s designed to hear vocals and it does it very well indeed.

*There are a few mics out there that try to reproduce the Crystal Element Sound and the Ceramic Element Sound from Astatic. Heil did a good job in mimicking the Astatic sound. So if your D104 needs a new Mic Element, and you can’t find an original replacement then go with the Heil replacement. Or look on eBay.

*About Maintanance-
These D104’s are all old. All of mine are from the 70’s and earlier. The first thing I do when I get a D104 is hook it up to the FT450D and see if it keys and talks. I use 4 wire microphone connectors and HAMDaptor mic adapters.

*If it works then great. I listen to the relay to make sure all the contacts are good/clean. If the contacts need cleaned I use a small piece of sand paper and pull the paper over the contacts three times- all of them. I have fat fingers so this takes Me about 10 minutes.

*Since the D104 is so old cleaning the relay is good to do about every 2 to 5 years depending on your location’s humidity levels. I’m 300 yards from Lake Erie so I check the relay contacts every December.

* Any 9volt battery will be fine. Some last longer than others. Put an install date on or in with the battery. I found the better batteries will last up to five years. In storage the battery will drain very slowly, like if it were still in the package.

*I pulled my original D104 Silver Eagle off the shelve four months ago and hooked it up and it talked. Then it died mid-sentence. I pulled the bottom plate off. The battery said 8-23-2009. Awesome!
If you leave the battery in the D104 when stored it won’t corrode the mic. Nice!

*I found that You can wire the D104 to any radio. The nice thing about the D104 is that all the mic’s sound the same. Weather it’s a base-line D104 or a Diamond Anniversary model. Take the head off of one and put it on another D104 base. Simple.

*So there’s my 2 cents about the ASTATIC D104.
THIS HAS BEEN MY GO-TO MIC SINCE I WAS 16. Every time I get a radio I put a D104 in front of it. They sound so much better than hand mics. And then you’ll hear me the same across the bands.

*When you hear me on air you will be listing to one of my D104 variants. I have 7 now and I’m buying more. The collection is not complete till have at least one or two of each!

73’s Gang! N8XLQ


AD0AR Rating: 2019-07-24
1st mike ever owned Time Owned: more than 12 months.
The year I bought my first cb radio at a garage sale , I came across a D104 at another garage sale for $.25 as the guy said he could never get it to work. I liked the look of it, kinda neat.
I initially tried to use it on the Pace cb radio I got and was not impressed.
I held onto it because I may need it one day.
That was in 1987.
Then in 2012 I became a amateur operator.
I still had the mic, dusty with a deteriorated wire. When I went to rewire it to a IC-7000 as that had a atrocious hand mic, I was startled to find that in the base was a 9 volt battery and preamp.
I found the schematic printed on the bottom of the mic base and I went to work adapting it over to the IC-7000. I made phantom power come from the radio to power the mic and added a resistor divider to better match the impedance and a non polarized capacitor to block the dc where it shouldn't go.
I also had an issue since the key switch was designed to turn off the preamp when not being keyed, that it would introduce a loud *POP* into the audio when I would key the radio. I was able to overcome this by bypassing the ganged power switch in the key switch and kept the mic preamp powered all the time as the power came from the radio anyway.
Turning the gain just above minimum and talking close to the element I was able to elicit many unsolicited comments of "That's a IC-7000? You are loud and clear, with an emphasis on LOUD!"
Field day was a hoot in 2012 and that mic scored me good that day!
I do find that the D104 is very omnidirectional and can pick up the faintest of fan and other ambient sounds, i.e. crickets chirping outside and the wind blowing but nonetheless it is a screamer on the IC-7000 with the transmit bandwidth on wide.
Having a degree in electrical engineering has helped me immensely in mating this old technology wit the new, but I can see why reviews are so inconsistent. You either love it or hate it. Either way it is a conversation piece for the ham shack, especially if you are a Vet and like to polish the chrome once in a while.
In God we Trust, all others we monitor.
AD0AR
W6LBV Rating: 2019-07-23
Send the Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I’ve never owned a copy of an Astatic D-104 microphone. To me, its appearance is hideous. It looks like something home-brewed out of surplus boiler parts. Its proper “service location” ought to be standing on the manager’s unkempt desk at an automobile junk yard. And, if it is improperly set up, its “twangy” speech output is annoying on the air. YMMV, of course.

The mike comes with some engineering problems that users must recognize and potentially may have to solve. The original D-104s were crystal cartridge mikes, a type no longer manufactured. The industry’s use of the crystal mike cartridge was later replaced (but not in the D-104) by the advent of the somewhat equivalent ceramic mike cartridge. That type also seems to have sunsetted now. The current (and improved) equivalent is the electret condenser cartridge.

Both of the older cartridge types were used in low-priced communications mikes, where at least they outperformed the even more ancient carbon T-1 button cartridges. In its era, Astatic was never a “power player” in the communications microphone market.

Both crystal and ceramic mikes use the piezoelectric effect. Applied pressure on the surface of the crystal or ceramic element results in electric charge being produced, and the time succession of charges, as the air pressure changes with speech, produces an audio voltage.

But the crystal element itself acts in effect as a small capacitor. Its capacitance needs to be terminated in a megohm resistor in order for the resulting RC time constant to be large enough to allow passage of some mid-range and bass frequencies out of the mike. Shrill-sounding D-104s probably don’t have a large enough line termination resistance.

The old tube transmitters could, if properly designed, work with a megohm termination resistor at the audio input stage. Modern transceivers have low impedance audio inputs; they cannot support this. An outboard FET-based speech pre-amplifier with a high input impedance, whose audio output feeds a solid state transmitter, could be used to overcome this limitation. Designs for doing this are available. The D-104 models which have the internal pre-amp assembly presumably have already corrected this problem.

An additional potential problem: the crystalline material in the original D-104 cartridge is known as Rochelle salt. Chemically it’s sodium potassium tartrate. It’s not toxic to humans, but if left open and exposed to air the salt will slowly pick up water and become useless. If the seals on an older microphone cartridge break and expose the interior to the outside air, the original element can be ruined.

Modern microphone cartridges (dynamic, condenser, ribbon, electret) have none of these problems, and most will work successfully with modern solid-state transmitters. Why take on the problems of dealing with this old warhorse and trying to adapt it to today’s world? A Behringer XM8500 dynamic mike can be bought for as little as $20, it interfaces well with today’s transmitters, and it produces fine results.

Still, if you want or need to mimic the highly restricted nasal sound of a vintage D-104 in order to work DX, merely use an equalizer after the XM8500 and before the modulator stage to greatly attenuate all speech frequencies below 1,000 Hz. You’ll sound “authentic” enough, and you can use the same mike for both needs.

Unless your goal is historical preservation or indulging your personal nostalgia for “CB Daze”.....go modern! This dog is ready for retirement.






KS4AA Rating: 2019-07-23
'Beautiful' audio or punch thru the pileup? Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Just ask yourself this simple question to decide to use a D-104 or not, "Do you want HiFi TX audio or do you want to punch through the pileup and get that DX to hear YOU? If the D-104 is matched (simple 2 resistor mod; preamp is set to almost off; mic element is good and battery is good) then it WILL punch through the pileups much better than someone with 'beautiful' audio and twice the power output! It really is that simple. SK de Eddie AE7AA. My last word...won't waste any more bandwidth.
K4JPN Rating: 2019-07-22
Great Mic Time Owned: more than 12 months.
The D-104 is a great mic for old tube type high (2-3 Meg Ohm) mic impedance rigs (HW-101, SB-100, DX-100, Ranger etc). It is not good for low impedance rigs (600 ohm like Elecraft K2, and most modern transistor rigs etc. There is a simple solution, build a simple impedance change circuit. I built this simple circuit, from N9WB and it made my D-104 work great with my K2, which is a low impedance mic input. My D-104 now gives great audio reports. https://www.qsl.net/hcara/D-104.htm

Here is how I check my audio, this was published years ago in QST Hints and Kinks.

Many of the new rigs have the capability for one to listen to transmitted audio, for setting up levels, compression etc. The problem is that listening to your audio, while speaking it is difficult to comprehend differences in settings. I simply use my PSK31 interface to record into the sound recorder of my computer and then play it back. This eliminates the problem of speaking and listening at the same time. When I do this I actually state into the recording the various levels I have the compression etc. set at, then reset them at another value and make another recording. This permits me to listen to the audio files and know what is going out on the air, with different audio levels and settings.

The PSK31 interface is also useful when someone asks how their audio sounds. Simply record it into the sound recorder and play it back for them using the PSK31 interface. I often do this and then Email them the file, that way they are hearing exactly what I heard with out the effect of my rigs audio on the recorded audio I play back. I use the freeware program Audacity to record and playback



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Earlier 5-star review posted by K4JPN on 2017-03-05

I bought a 2nd hand D-104 back in 1963, used it with my Ranger, later used it with my HW-101 and got excellent audio reports. When I built my Elecraft K2 I built a simple FET amp for use with the K2 (high impedance D-104 to low impedance K2) and again got excellent reports. So I have owned this D-104 for over 50 years. I would recommend anyone with a new rig use one, but build the N9WB circuit, rather then the amp that came with later D-104s. The link is http://www.qsl.net/hcara/D-104.htm N9WB shows using a 9V battery, but I had good results using the 5V from the rig.
WW1I Rating: 2019-07-22
Still CB era junk Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This idea that because this mic lacks mid range and bass, it is somehow good, is nonsense. When I look at at the audio on my Flex using my PR40 with my EQ off, it shows close to level audio response from from 50 to the upper limit of my pass band. The D104 is the absolute worst audio on the bands. It lacks mid and bass to the point there is nothing to EQ. It sounds brassy and shrill because it is all treble with weak mid range and zippo for bass. I can spot a D104 on the scope in an instant, with the audio off. Even worse, the horrible audio is instantly recognizable. Painful.

Guys, I don’t care who says what, there is a reason why nobody today produces a crystal element like they used in the D104. The reason is that we have better elements today that wildly produce better sound quality. To compare a crystal element in a D104 to a large diameter low mass dynamic is like you telling me a model T is better than a new BMW. Nonsense.

You don’t need an expensive mic. A Heil Genesis mic is a great sounding mic, and it retails for $70. There are many brands of modern mics out there that sound great that are a good value. The D104 was a very old design for rigs that used high Z mics. They put a little preamp on them during the CB era and sold them to guys that didn’t know any better.
KD7RDZI2 Rating: 2019-07-21
for what I heard it's great Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I have never had one, nor I have never used one. I will probably never see one. But I think I am still qualified to rate it as I have listened hams on the air that were using this microphone. I liked their modulation. I have to say I do not generally like modulations that are too bassy so it might be a matter of preference or maybe that a proper match should be obtained with transmitter.
N5XJT Rating: 2019-07-21
Simply Great!! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I purchased my first TUG8-D104 in 1976 and it still looks and works like a new one. Have used it with a Tempo 2020, Kenwood TS-530, Yaesu FT-840, Yaesu FT-107M, Kenwood TS-450 and currently using with my FT-890. Still performs well and receives very good to great audio reports. I have never received a bad audio report. Have since acquired a UG-8 stand with a 10DA head and another TUG8 stand with the DNZ head and a 10DA head installed. The original lollipop head is degrading due to the salt content in the element but can easily be replaced with a kit. These are great looking mics that work well and have never given any trouble. So with no disrespect to critics, I love mine and will continue to use them daily.

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Earlier 5-star review posted by N5XJT on 2011-01-26

I have the TUG8 D104 amplified stand matched with the 10DA head. This helps to eliminate the "tinny" sound the lolipop head generates. I also have a non amplified UG8 and the heads are inter-changeable. I have used both for 20+ years and they still look and work great with both my TS530 and also my old hiZ Tempo 2020. Plus they are easy to wire to any radio as wiring codes are all over the net. Wouldn't take for em!
VE3TMT Rating: 2019-07-21
A true classic! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Over the course of 40+ years as a CB/Ham operator, I've owned my fair share of D-104's. Currently in the shack I'm using a Silver Eagle on my TS-850S. The Eagle only compliments the 850's legendary audio. I tacked a .1uf cap across the output to tame the high end a little and the mic sounds great. I run both the mic gain and processor on the radio at 3, and have the mic barely cracked open. Don't use the high boost. It sounds fantastic. The legendary D-104 sound, but not overdone. When I want to work some DX, I simply switch over to my Koss SB-40 headset, hit the high boost and I'm ready to go. Couldn't be easier. My Eagle almost looks new and looks great in the shack.
W4KVW Rating: 2019-07-20
Does a great job Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I currently own 39 Astatic D-104 Desk Microphones.I have a lot of different stands & heads from as early as the 1960's & they have GREAT transmit audio.I have been using them since the 60's when I started in radio & they quickly became my favorite desk microphone then & still are today.I have used them with Tube & Solid State CB's to Tube & Solid State Amateur Radios.I have used them for all types of Amateur Radios from FM mobiles to an ICOM 7600 on SSB & AM & they work well on all of them.People poor mouth them because they don't use the right models for their radio & some think they were designed for CB Radio when they were used in Amateur Radio before we had a CB Band so that is a Myth & they are scared of the CB Band but will never admit it.I will continue my use & collecting of these great microphones because they have always served me well.I also think they are the most Beautiful looking desk microphone ever produced by any company.