Help the grandpa

[whvick]

So I found a 30 yr old PMZ mic in the bottom of a closet I was cleaning. I checked YouTube and the guy said they were great for duets and such. So I thought it would be better for me and my guitar than trying to get just the right distance for both to the phone.
IMG_9092.jpgIMG_9090.jpg
And also a regular mic, and a 1/4 inch to 3.5mm adapter.
I would like to plug straight into an iPhone 8 and record. I tried to plug into a very old iPad 2 and it did nothing. I have watched a couple of YouTube’s and it seems the thing to do is spend a couple hundred and get an iPhone compatible mic.
But this is covid19 and I am getting squeaky.
What is the cheapest way to make this happen.
The PZM has a battery to power it.
Thanks for suggestions.

[Zandit75]

If you used the small 3.5mm jack shown in your photos, you would have been plugging into the headphone jack, which does not double up as a microphone jack.
Without something else in the middle, it's not going to work with your phone unfortunately.

[catdaddy]

For many years I used one of those Radio Shack PZM mics as a room ambience mic when recording live performances, and occasionally in my studio. With careful placement, I found it to be a useful mic in a lot of different rooms and musical situations.

If you do a little research you'll find that several modifications can be made to upgrade the performance of this mic. The only modification I made was to simply replace the standard AA 1.5V battery with two 6V batteries which can fit in the same battery compartment. The 12V power vastly improved the headroom and output of the mic. Quite frankly, I found the mic to be nearly useless when powered by the 1.5V AA battery. That may have been a factor in the failure to record on your old iPad. The mic with a 1.5V battery installed may not have had enough output to deliver a recordable signal to the iPad.


For more info regarding other possible improvement modifications such as a conversion of the PZM mic to phantom power this article is a good starting point: http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/ph...istic-pzm/4087

[whvick]

Thanks guys,
So that puts me to buying an iPhone mic
Any opinion on zoom iQ6 or iQ7?
IMG_9103.jpgIMG_9104.jpg
And this Boya thing cost half as much.
IMG_9102.jpg
Would it pick up voice and guitar?
Doesn’t need to be great, just better than the hollow iPhone tone when you get on speaker mic.
Thanks

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by whvick

Doesn’t need to be great, just better than the hollow iPhone tone when you get on speaker mic.
Thanks

That hollow sound isn't actually the mic - it's that you're recording from far away, and it's picking up the whole room. Any mic, even an inexpensive one, that you can get closer to you to reduce the room sound should be a really big improvement. You may also have better luck in some rooms of your house. Just like recording, it's all about room acoustics and mic placement.

[MikeBmusic]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

That hollow sound isn't actually the mic - it's that you're recording from far away, and it's picking up the whole room. Any mic, even an inexpensive one, that you can get closer to you to reduce the room sound should be a really big improvement. You may also have better luck in some rooms of your house. Just like recording, it's all about room acoustics and mic placement.

Exactly!! I've heard some pretty good Facebook streams done with just an iPhone, and others that have sounded terrible. The good ones usually have the iPhone fairly close to the player, no more than 2 feet away - at guitar level or below if the person is a strong (loud) singer. In a fairly 'dead' room.

[shufflebeat]

If you can lay your hands on two medium sized cushions, make a V shape (as seen from above) on the table top, put your phone in the angle of the V so that you and the guitar are playing into it but reflected sound from the walls is soaked up by the cushions.

You *will* hear the difference. By the way, the mic on your iPhone is better than many of the ones folk pay money for and is perfectly matched to the system already.

[whvick]

Thanks guys
Good advice
I will try it.
My dining room has hard wood floors and we have always had some echo. Maybe in this case I will be better to go to a carpeted room
I’ll give it a try. My voice need all the help it can get[emoji57]

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by whvick

So I found a 30 yr old PMZ mic in the bottom of a closet I was cleaning. I checked YouTube and the guy said they were great for duets and such. So I thought it would be better for me and my guitar than trying to get just the right distance for both to the phone.

Hi whvic

I've owned a few of the Radio Shack versions over the years. They were great for taping in the middle of a table and recording interviews. The polar pattern of the omni-directional design (like the Radio Shack ones) is describes as half-a-beachball sticking up from the surface, which gets bigger as you increase volume. As with all boundary mics, the larger the surface you mount them to (lay them on) the more bass they develop.

It could be fun to try to do a duet with one of the old Radio Shack ones. Drop it on a hardwood floor and turn it up (or on a living room coffee table). You'd sure need to put on some headpones (or earbud) to monitor and see that both are inside the boundary.

I once had to mic a drum kit for a light recording, so I taped it about 6 feet up the wall adjacent to the kit and it actually worked well.

I've seen the 'big-brother' Crown versions mounted on opposite sides of a 4 foot by 4 foot piece of plexiglass and hung 15-20 feet above the stage to pull a stereo mix of the orchestra/band. I've also seen them mounted to rectangles of plexiglass and propped up at the footlights to mic stage play actors/singers (this was before we had wireless lavalieres which could be taped in the hair line to mic stage plays).

We used to tape them inside the propped open lid of a grand piano, and they were great for that. Unfortunately, people/venues with a Steinway or Bosendorfer were allowing that. I'm guessing they could also be taped to the floor under a grand piano.

The Crown versions are substantially more hearty, and expensive. A Crown PZM which looks like the Radio-Shack on steroids is still available for $400. They also make other versions of them for different uses. Several companies still build boundary mics with switchable polar patterns.

Those little Radio Shack ones were built by Crown, and worked pretty well. The big ones were XLR equipped. The death of the Radio Shack ones was the thin cable (fragile).

It might be easier to tape a pair of guitars for a mono recording of a duet with a condenser mic with omni or figure-eight pattern.

[shufflebeat]

Originally Posted by whvick

Thanks guys
Good advice
I will try it.
My dining room has hard wood floors and we have always had some echo. Maybe in this case I will be better to go to a carpeted room
I’ll give it a try. My voice need all the help it can get[emoji57]

Some people go a long way to record acoustic guitars in a room with a hard floor because the early reflections can be quite musical. It's usually the walls, and particularly standing waves and comb filtering that properly ruins the character of the guitar sound.

The PZM is great, I have two if them although I haven't used than for a while. The problem will be finding a way to connect it to the phone reliably in a way that makes the best of both.

[whvick]

Originally Posted by shufflebeat

If you can lay your hands on two medium sized cushions, make a V shape (as seen from above) on the table top, put your phone in the angle of the V so that you and the guitar are playing into it but reflected sound from the walls is soaked up by the cushions.



You *will* hear the difference. By the way, the mic on your iPhone is better than many of the ones folk pay money for and is perfectly matched to the system already.

Actually this worked OK
I did find that my classical guitar did better, as it seems to have more volume than my Taylor and Martin.