| AI4WM |
Rating:     |
2007-03-29 | |
| One of the Best |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
I guess this mic. really should rate 4.99. These are some of the best all-around microphones made. Through the years I've used these in PA, Broadcast and Communications work. I presently use one on my Yaesu FT-101ZD and it works great. Fine on the air audio reports. I have both an amplifed base and a non-amplified base.
These microphones have been around for a long time and are interchangeable on their non-amplified and amplified bases.
Although these are Hi-Z microphones the amplified base will work with a rig requiring Lo-Z or 600 Ohms.
These mics. on a non-amplified base may easily be converted to a preamp base with common ICs or a single transistor or two.
Quite a lot of these still in use and there seems to be plenty of information in the internet for the D-104. If you are searching for one keep your eyes open there are many out there. Just be careful to get one with a case that is not pitted. This often happens with older microphones from any manufacturer. Spare elements and other parts also show-up on sale at times also.
Time owned is listed for my present D-104
It's really too bad these are no longer manufactured. The amount of D-104s still in use and the age of many are a good testimony to the high quality of these microphones. |
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| W3DBB |
Rating:     |
2007-02-17 | |
| These are nice. |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
And sadly, no longer in production. They were USA made in Conneaut Ohio. Beware wary of microphones marketed to CBers as the 'Silver Salute'. I've had no experience with these but still feel it better to look for good used originals.
I have a few of the old originals or varying vintages and features. I don't have any of the prewar versions or anything newer than a mid-80's Silver Eagle.
The ones I like best were probably made in the 50's and 60's, with the hi-Z Rochelle salt microphone element and without the pre-amplifier in the TUG-9 base. An original D104 microphone, properly functioning and terminated, exhibits a pleasing midrange/upper midrange prescence rise along with a pretty decent sounding low end. Just the ticket for better than average communications quality audio with an older transmitter.
Astatic also made a version of the 'D104' with a piezoceramic microphone element in the D104C microphone head. This piezoceramic element is probably barium titanate, which withstands humidity and high temperature better than the Rochelle salts, at the cost of less output. Astatic also made a D10A head compatible with the G-stand/TUG-9 which I believe was a lo-Z dynamic microphone element.
D104s work best with the old transmitters and early transceivers that have vacuum tube microphone preamplifier stages suited to hi-Z input. These early D104's like to look into at least 10 kilOhms of resistance. The higher the input resistance, the better the bass reponse (to a point). With these early D104s (or any hi-Z crystal microphone) is it important to keep the microphone cable as short as possible. Using an excessive length of microphone cable diminishes the microphone's low frequency response.
Later on, with the conversion to solid-state, Astatic added a 'pre-amplifier' (really more of an impedance transformation device) to the TUG-9 base for compatibility with rigs having a lo-Z (500-600 Ohm) microphone input. I've never done much with my pre-amplified Silver Eagle but have seen conversion articles for the base-mounted preamplifier in QST and other places which lead me to believe there may be issues with the linearity of the preamplifier, current drain (battery life), or both.
Grab one while you still can. They are cool!
73
Doug
KA3TGV |
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| KC9GUZ |
Rating:      |
2007-02-17 | |
| works like a champ! |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I still have my D 104 (non eagle version) and the last time i used it was on a Yaesu FT 101 EX. Excellent end results! Too bad they are out of production, but the dies at the factory ive been told, were 75 years old and there wasnt enough demand to retool. But if you can find one in good cond. GET IT! I gave $10.00 for mine(it had battery corission in the bottom and teh painted base was badly chipped) at the Peoria swap and took it home, cleaned up the battery comp, installed a new head and element, repainted the base, and it looks like a new mike! |
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| VE7REN |
Rating:      |
2007-01-29 | |
| excellent original!! |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| by far one of the best mics ever made. ive used just about evey kenwood,yaseu,icom mic against this baby,even my heil mic,and without telling anyone what i was using,i was always told the audio from it was the outstanding. it has to be adjusted right, not overdiven which alot of people do,which gives it a bad rap by people. all in all ,it will go down in history as grounbreaking.ive got a few of them,and wont part withem ever. |
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| W1BKZ |
Rating:      |
2007-01-29 | |
| Venerable old soldier. |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| If you are from the "old school", in order to receive a passing grade, you must have made at least one A.M. contact using the rig of your choice and a D-104. Hi-Fi it was not, but had plenty of output, and good looks, too. Many, many amateur radio stations sported this mike. I still have my D-104C.....the rochelle salt version that my Elmer gave to me got wet and went the way of all good old originals. Those were the days.... |
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| W4AIJ |
Rating:      |
2006-10-17 | |
| D-104 modifications |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| With the advent of all the new mics on the market, the D104 has been quite overlooked by most for ham use, wrongly being dubbed a chicken band mic after Astatic came out with all the fancy "Eagle" models in the height of the CB days. I've got 4 reg D104s from Ebay ( 80+ listed tonight) and am modifying them with the MM-1 impedance matching device only, to see what results I'll get into the low imp rigs. For the money, you can't get a classier mic or sound. |
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| EA3WR |
Rating:      |
2006-05-05 | |
| Excellent DX mike |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I just received mine last week (purchased through ebay by 71USD). It is on very good condition, I just had to clean the switch contacts with a cleaner spray and perform a very simple alignement on the mechanical part that brings motion from the grip bar to properly activate the PTT switch in the base. Once I installed a 40 dB attenuator (LPAD resistor att.) inside the connector mike I can use the level adjustment on the mike's base without having to go all way down and it matches perfectly my TS850. Crystal clear (an clean) audio for perfect DX operation. In my opinion better than other dynamic mics designed for DX. When properly feeding the rig (not excessive audio level by means of the LPAD attenuator nor over compressing it with excessive processing) it is the best mike I've ever connected directly to the rig (without any processing equipment in between). Reasonable low frequency response although being a crystal element, I received good audio reports even on 2m FM when I tried it on my FT857. No undesirable effects like distortion or RF feedback from ground loops even at full legal output environement if properly wired.
A good piece of equipment I would definetly recommend. By the way, it looks impressive on my desk!
73 de Joan EA3WR |
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| N4MJG |
Rating:      |
2005-11-27 | |
| D-104 |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
the D-104 is good mike only one problem if you ever put d-104 on ft-847 on fm the mike drives too hard.you nearly have to cut gain way down way too loud on fm it maybe be ok on ssb ,but not on fm.i can wire the mike with no problem ! even inside the mike,but anyway it good mike it maybe ok on older radios.just try it and see hows it sounding, and good luck otherwise good mike.i sold my last year
73
Jackie
KG4ORX |
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| W9AC |
Rating:      |
2005-11-27 | |
| Good Performer |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
As others have noted, the D-104's crystal element needs to be completely unloaded in order to produce good low frequency content.
Back in the '30s, the D-104 contained no buffer amplifier and was designed to be coupled to the Hi-Z grid of a vacuum tube. In this application the D-104 really excelled. When the D-104 is terminated into anything less than 10 meg-ohm low frequency content begins to suffer.
About 35 years ago, Astatic designed the now-familiar two-stage active impedance transformer. Many people refer to it as a pre-amp. In calculating the input Z to this circuit, one finds that the crystal element terminates into approximately 470 K-ohm. This is a step in the right directions, but it also explains why so many D-104s restrict low frequency content. At 470 K-ohm, there's not much below 350 Hz that passes through this circuit.
Others have suggested using 1 meg-ohm termination impedance, by placing a resistor i series with the cartridge but this is still not enough when you work through the math and realize that the crystal element is the equivalent of a voltage source in series with approximately 1000 pF of capacitance. The exact capacitance is a function of production QC, and the age of the element.
At an absolute minimum, I would let the crystal cartridge see no less than 5 meg-ohm and 10 meg-ohm is nearly ideal.
There are many mods available on the web to unload the D-104 cartridge. I suggest staying clear of the circuits that use op-amps for several reasons. The most practical approach calls for gutting the internal two-transistor circuit board and installing a single N-FET transistor as a voltage-follower. You can count the total parts used on one hand. The gain of the voltage follower is slightly less than unity and input Z is greater than 10 meg-ohm. Biasing the N-FET is as simple as taking the reciprocal of the Gm transconductance figure from the data sheet. The resulting value sets the optimal bias point for the N-FET.
A quick alternative is to simply place a 10 meg-ohm resistor in series with the cartridge but the noise factor increases and for this reason the N-FET circuit is recommened.
10 meg-ohm of loading closely replicates what these cartridges used to see when they were terminated into a grid. On my D-10 mics, the low frequency response is so good that room rumble can become a factor. But at that point, the crystal cartridge is completely happy and the result will rival some of the best studio microphones in terms of overall frequency balance.
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| KS4HY |
Rating:      |
2005-06-16 | |
| It really does not get much better than a D-104 |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I first heard the Astatic D-104 back in 1976 when I was twelve years old. I only had a three channel CB walkie talkie at the time, but I listened to the teens and adults come on the air with new CB's with stock hand mics. Later I would hear them upgrade to a "power mic" which was usually a Turner +2, Turner +3, Turner Super Sidekick, or an Astatic D-104. To my young ears the Astatic D-104 made the biggest jump in audio quality of all the previously mentioned microphones. Almost 30 years later the Astatic D-104 still is one of the best sounding radio microphones on the air.
I have heard some trebly D-104's, but they were not the majority. I had the misfortune of picking up a trebly D-104 on Ebay, but when I replaced the old mic cartridge with a new Astatic D-104 cartridge that beautiful D-104 signature audio came pouring out.
The only other radio microphone I've heard that made me stand up and take notice was a Shure 444 on a Yaesu FT-757. I now own six Astatic D-104's, three Shure 444d microphones, one Turner +3, one Radio Shack amplified desk mic, and a Workman Silver Salute D-104 look-a-like. The Astatic D-104 is still one of my favorite microphones of the lot. The Shure 444d is a very close second. The audio quality of the Workman Silver Salute D-104 clone is no contest next to the real Astatic D-104. I just hope Astatic starts making the D-104 again. It's just too good a microphone to let it fade away.
KS4HY |
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