djduck
Active Member
Can't find a forum segment for this, so general audio it is.
A few days ago I walked into a local used electronics store to get a VCR (because I'm oldskool like that) and I saw this cool looking microphone contraption thingy on the shelf. Turns out it was a Soviet-made LOMO MKE-100 electret condenser microphone. For $15, I just couldn't resist this very studio looking microphone. It even came with a little three legged tabletop tripod stand!
After getting it home, I took it apart somewhat and turns out this thing has a pre-amp built in. It's powered by two 1.5V batteries. And then a DIN jack is used to hook up the mic.
My question is, how do I connect it? I've never had to deal with microphones at home. Only at school, where I'm the sound guy. There we use balanced XLR into a mixer with phantom power. But this thing is different.
Can I just pop in some batteries and connect it to a line-level input? The pre-amp has an output transformer, which would suggest a balanced signal, but the DIN jack only has two wires IIRC. One that is twisted together with cable shielding, I assume ground then, and the other would be signal.
What I want to do is basically hook up a 3.5mm jack so I could record musical instruments onto my laptop, or sometimes even hook it up to an old industrial amp that I use for parties. That has line inputs, too.
I've also read that the pre in this mic is noisy, so I'll probably build a new pre for it. FET input and OPA134 output is where I'm aiming. Or do something low voltage, battery powered, and keep it in the mic
A few days ago I walked into a local used electronics store to get a VCR (because I'm oldskool like that) and I saw this cool looking microphone contraption thingy on the shelf. Turns out it was a Soviet-made LOMO MKE-100 electret condenser microphone. For $15, I just couldn't resist this very studio looking microphone. It even came with a little three legged tabletop tripod stand!
After getting it home, I took it apart somewhat and turns out this thing has a pre-amp built in. It's powered by two 1.5V batteries. And then a DIN jack is used to hook up the mic.
My question is, how do I connect it? I've never had to deal with microphones at home. Only at school, where I'm the sound guy. There we use balanced XLR into a mixer with phantom power. But this thing is different.
Can I just pop in some batteries and connect it to a line-level input? The pre-amp has an output transformer, which would suggest a balanced signal, but the DIN jack only has two wires IIRC. One that is twisted together with cable shielding, I assume ground then, and the other would be signal.
What I want to do is basically hook up a 3.5mm jack so I could record musical instruments onto my laptop, or sometimes even hook it up to an old industrial amp that I use for parties. That has line inputs, too.
I've also read that the pre in this mic is noisy, so I'll probably build a new pre for it. FET input and OPA134 output is where I'm aiming. Or do something low voltage, battery powered, and keep it in the mic