[Elecraft] [K3] transmit equalizer settings

[Jim Brown]

On Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:35:00 -0500, John Fritze wrote:

>What I would like to know is: does anyone have some basic settings to start
>with for transmitting during a contest?

That's VERY dependent on your microphone and, to a lesser extent, on your 
voice. The only "constant" is that for virtually ALL mics and voices, you 
should set the two lowest frequency bands to their lowest settings (maximum 
cut). These frequencies make no contribution to speech intelligibility, so 
this setting minimizes the power wasted by low frequency sounds, background 
noise, and breath pops. For the same reason, you might also want to cut the 
third lowest band a bit. You should make these adjustments BEFORE setting mic 
gain and compression (following the procedures in the K3 manual). 

For many mics, that's all you need to do. For others, you may want to do 
more. You should do that by having another "good listener" tell you what you 
sound like with his RX opened up for maximum bandwidth. 

The "two lowest band cut" setting is just right for the mic in the Yamaha 
CM500 headset. With Heil mics, which tend to be harsh, you may want a bit of 
cut in the higher bands. When I used professional dynamic mics with my K3, I 
cut bands 3 and 4 and boosted the two higher bands. 

73,

Jim Brown K9YC