Homemade Microphone

[David Eugene]

A few days ago I stumbled across this guy's blog about him building his own stereo microphone. The sound samples sound good and the schematic is fairly easy to follow, able to be built at around 10 bucks.
I mean, 10 bucks worth of parts isn't a big deal for me to waste and experiment with, but are microphones always this cheap and easy to build? Just curious.

http://www.aqua-web.com/2008/03/11/d...eo-microphone/

[Steve Conner]

I've built a few of these before. One of them was a stealth version with two mics sewn into a beanie hat.

They work fine, the main problem is that the maximum sound level they can stand is quite limited. You'd get more distortion than noise if you tried recording a rock gig in a bar. Other than that, the quality is great and stands up well to more expensive mics.

Some portable recorders supply power for electret mics straight out of the mic jack, so you may not even need the battery box.