[AMRadio] Mic recomendation for rig

[sbjohnston at aol.com]

The most important single accessory item to have in your AM shack is a 
way to monitor modulation - a cheap o'scope is a good choice. Keep an 
eye on it to ensure you have reasonably strong average modulation 
levels, and negative peaks that don't go all the way to 100% and pinch 
off the carrier.

You current quest for a good mic is already underway.  The next item I 
would want is a compressor-limiter. This device allows you to wander a 
bit from the microphone, or get excited speaking loudly, without under 
or overmodulating. You can get a "microphone processor" which combines 
a mic preamp with equalizer, compressor, limiter, de-esser, and such. 
I'm fond of the Berhinger ULTRAVOICE VX2000 for that job. They go for 
maybe $70 on eBay.

I sometimes run more elaborate AM broadcast processors on my rigs, 
too... but that's because I'm a nut. The Berhinger ULTRAVOICE VX2000 
alone does a great job for ham AM work.

On the other hand, on my Apache I use a plain D104 driving the musical 
instrument (High-Z) input of a DBX 163X compressor-limiter - sounds 
great and very simple. They usually go for $80 on eBay

Steve WD8DAS

sbjohnston at aol.com
http://www.wd8das.net/
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