[Elecraft] K3 mic gain and bias settings

[Fabio Mantovani]

Hi James,
    I installed firmware 4.17 then went back to 4.14 yesterday.
What I noticed today is that I had to change the mic gain, but in the 
opposite direction of what you did.
I am using a Peltor headset fitted with a HC-4 capsule, and I used mic 
gain around 20-22, compression 23, no bias, gain high to get 5-6 ALC 
bars (with compressor turned off, as manual states).
Today I had to put mic gain at about 10-11 to have 5-6 bars.
I don't know if something is related to upgrading to 4.17 and then back 
to 4.14, and I don't think it's worth resetting the whole rig, but I had 
the impression that something more has changed somewhere.

Ciao
Fabio
  IZ4AFW / NZ1W

Il 07/11/2010 00.54, James Sarte ha scritto:
> Greetings Elecrafters,
>
> I previously posted a question to the group about mic gain settings in
> conjunction with the Elecraft MH2 hand mic.  Prior to the slew of recent
> firmware updates, I had to set microphone bias to low, and keep the mic
> gain at 4 or 5.  Anything higher, and ALC would start to reduce power.  At
> those settings, speaking normally would give me 5-7 bars of ALC as
> recommended in the manual.  Several folks have written to me stating that
> their K3 also behaved similarly and thus required the same amount of mic
> gain as I've written.
>
> Today however, after testing firmware versions 4.17, 4.18, and then
> reverting to 4.14 I've noticed that mic gain now needs to be set to 15 in
> order to achieve the same results.  I'm curious if anyone else has noticed
> this.  There doesn't appear to be anything out of the ordinary in terms of
> performance, but was curious as to why the sudden difference what else could
> have been affected.
>
> Any thoughts?