My wife and I love to shop the thrift stores and we are always on the look out for something unusual or useful.
This month we walked away with two vintage Realistic Fm Wireless Microphones for the sweet price of 99 cents each!
These are the tiny but bulky lapel microphones Radio Shack sold back in the 90’s for $19.95 and I never bought one because I couldn’t get past the heaviness of this microphone as a lapel mic.
I mean really, they actually pull your lapel down making you almost walk with a lean, which would be difficult if you were giving a lecture on posture and back pain. (note:I don’t own a suit)
The selling points for these gems?
Catalog # 33-1076
Up to 200 foot range
50 – 15,000 Hz Frequency Response
FCC Type Approved (a plus )
Omni Electret Mic
Tie Clip
Includes Battery
The specs to which I won’t type out are as follows in the images below but a couple stand out, Indoor range 100 feet , Outdoor range 200 feet and 50 mV/m at 15 meters……….15 meters??
HUH, interesting. How about the sound quality? Not bad, in fact pretty darn nice considering their age, I will attempt to include either an audio clip or video clip on their sound quality when I have the time.
The wire antenna appears to be a little under a foot long and the tuning tool is attatched to the end of the antenna.
It does tune 88 to 108 mHz and is of course mono. It takes a button cell or watch battery for 50 hours of use.
Meanwhile here are some images:
rock95seven says
Range Test Coming
I am going to try do a range test of this little transmitter, one outside and one inside.
The manual states 100 foot range inside and 200 foot range outside, we all know there will be varying results depending on the locatioin, obstructions etc in the users environment. All of those factors affect the part 15 transmitters coverage, especially on the FM band.
This transmitter has a short antenna, not optimized for the FM band 88 – 108 mHz which is common for most of these part 15 transmitters to pass the certification process. I will probably use a camera tripod to attach the transmitter to allowing the antenna to dangle in the wind both inside and outside.
Now the outdoor test is going to depend on the weather here in Central Ky, right now it is dark and in the upper 30’s, too dark and cold to do an outdoor test, but this is Kentucky and our weather is weird.
Tomorrow maybe a good day to do the outdoor test as the high temp will be in the upper 50’s but time may be a factor too since my wife and I have some important things to do in town.
We will see how things play out and I will post the results and perhaps a video as well.