Strnad harp mic

[Mike Curtis <wd6ehr@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, last night it finally happened.  Headed out for a harp gig, and left
my harp bag, mics, and junk at the house.  Oh, well - I had my "practice"
C harp (a valved Lee Oskar) in my shirt pocket, and didn't forget my harp
amp and effects board; and a Strnad microphone I bought but never used
"live".  I stuffed it in the back of the amp, "just in case".  So Saturday
night was the "just in case".  I finally got around to trying the Strnad 
"live".

I was VERY disappointed.  This thing not only looks like a vacuum cleaner
attachment - it sounds like one, too.  I couldn't get enough volume out of
it to drive my amp to a listenable volume, let alone overdrive it like I
prefer.  I ended up connecting my (guitar) distortion pedal as a volume
boosting preamp (yuk!)

When I got home, I checked its impedance with an ohmmeter.  Guess what? 
Even though it has a 1/4" guitar type plug (indicative of high impedance),
it's actually a low impedance dynamic microphone element inside - I
measured 3,000 ohms.  I tested it on a small Casio keyboard practice amp,
and it was wimpy.

I went to the junk box and dug out an old Radio Shack 1/4" male/female mic
low-Z to high-Z (step-up) microphone transformer that I had bought in a
pinch long ago, plugged it in, and the volume came WAY up!  Surprisingly, 
so did the "fatness" of the sound!

I'm going to give it a try with the transformer tomorrow at Perqs, and
will report the results back to the list.  If it works well, I'll buy a
Shure transformer for it.

It may well be that the addition of the matching transformer will make
this a very useful little unit.  There certainly is a need for something
that works decently in a rack. 

Too bad they didn't design it with a bullet or JT-30 cartridge - but it's 
probably better to have a rugged dynamic element in something used in a 
rack, that may be falling out onto the concrete, etc.



 -- mike