fieroturbo

Hey gang... I'm kinda newish here, so if this is in the wrong part of the forum, my apologies.

I'm doing a rebuild of a Shure 55SW, and I thought I'd post updates here. It's my first mic rebuild, but with my Navy electronics repair experience, I'm shure I'll do it right (pun intended )



Basically, it's been sitting in a back room at my church for decades. If I had a guess, I'd say it's from the late 60's/early 70's. Amazingly, it still works, and the MC3M to XLR cable is still good, but my goal is to eliminate the need for an adapter cable.



Although the foam is totally rotted out, and the on/off switch is electrically stuck "on", it still sounds good, and would be great to use to mic the guitar cab for our lead guitarist. Who knows, maybe one of the singers will use it too... either way, I couldn't just let it go to waste in a dark closet.

For the windscreen repair, I got some thin black silk from a fabric store which I'll combine with a 12x12 stainless steel mesh screen. It'll be a layer of silk, then the mesh, then another layer of silk, then the outer shell of the mic.

For the shock mounts, I'm using sticky foam rubber feet from a hardware store; sandwich two together around the mount on the element, then cut to size. First one came out great, and the frame holds it perfectly. They’re like $2 or $3 from a hardware store, and considering Shure discontinued replacement mounts, I really can’t complain.







Now the tricky part… The XLR conversion:

Considering new Amphenol MC3M connectors for these cost more than $30 EACH I knew getting away from this design was a must. What I'm doing is cannibalizing a male-to-male XLR adapter I had lying around, separating the pins from the plastic retainer on one side of it, then inserting them into the existing MC3F connector. I'll have to machine the XLR adapter a bit on the outside so it slides in between the MC3F connector and the 55's threaded housing. Once it's in there, then I'll align the set-screw on the XLR adapter to mate with the slit in the threaded part of the MC3F connector, and screw it in, then slide heatshrink over the whole thing. It gets the job done without ANY permanent modification to the microphone itself... 100% reversible with a razor blade and a screwdriver.



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Still waiting on the metal mesh, and I need to get over to radio shack for that switch, but otherwise, it should be a quick turnaround. Stay tuned.