Chuck,

I don’t disagree - I think the operative word is “need”. ?I’ve been an “audiophile” for decades: ?For many years, I was able to tell vinyl from any form of digital with near 100% accuracy on any system. ?(I could even tell vinyl that was originally digitally mastered vs. analog-mastered vinyl, so much so that none of my 3000+ records are digitally mastered...) ?Digital music causes fairly rapid mental fatigue for me (I even have a hard time with most solid state amps - so tube audio systems are my thing), no matter how high the sampling rate, etc. ?That’s lessening as my ears age, but it’s still there, and I’m not bragging - it’s been more a liability than anything else. ?I sure wish I had all the money I’ve spent over the years compensating for hating the sound of audio that most people found completely acceptable, if they could even tell the difference...

You may be wondering how my ears react to DSP, and they answer is “not well”. ?I have to leave DSP-based filters off mostly and turn them on only for stuff that has to be dug out of the mud...

Anyway, at one point, not long after I got my license (& the IC-7000 the same day) I heard transmitted audio that a contact I’ve long since forgotten A/B’ed for me: he’d gone into his stock mic, drilled out the hole a bit, realigned the element, etc., then bought a second and had Bob mod it. ?The difference to my ears was significant enough that I don’t think I completely believed it, so I went with an MXL studio mic with Prosonus tube processor instead. ?I had a LOT of contacts, upon hearing my audio, say there was NO WAY I was using the stock mic, and they were right, of course. ?I even had quite a few who I’m pretty sure didn’t believe I was running a barefoot IC-7000 (but they were wrong).

At any rate, to your comment, I do believe that the worst of most of the HM-151’s issues can probably be aided considerably by realigning the element and opening up the hole a bit. ?Nagy (a really really nice guy, btw) says on his site that this is necessary and something he does by default. ?But his custom-made element (he was a broadcast engineer by profession) takes it to another level entirely. ?I don’t doubt that generally, the difference between a re-aligned stock element and Nagy’s won’t be obvious except on FM and SSB under good conditions, but I do also think the improvement in “punch” and intelligibility helps considerably in tough contacts and pile-ups. ?As I said, just my $0.02 worth, and you can tell from the above that I’m not normal, so most everyone else’s mileage WILL (not may) vary...

Mark

WC1Z


On Nov 1, 2019 at 16:00:58 CDT, Charles Scott <cscott@...> wrote:

Mark:

The dirty little secret, at least as far as I can tell, is that this model microphone never needed the mic element replaced. I've had several of them and in all cases the TX audio problem was due to misalignment of the mic element with the pin-hole in the mic case. I fixed that on mine and all sounded great.

Chuck - N8DNX

I use my IC-7000 as my base and occasional mobile. ?The only transmit audio problems I’m aware of are caused by the stock HM-151 mic. ?I used to have a fairly elaborate desk mic/equalizer setup to compensate, with a custom cat5 cable to still allow use of the keypad. ?I recently set it up again as a temp base station and didn’t want to hassle with all the extraneous stuff, so I had Bob Nagy, AB5N (7000mic.com), do his mic element replacement. ?I wish I done that to start with, frankly. ?My audio is better with his $50 mod than it was with $500 worth of desk mic, boom, equalizer, processor, etc.

My $.02 worth is that you can’t go wrong with the IC-7000, and if you let him mod your mic for you, you’ve got one sweet setup in a very convenient & easy-to-use package.

Mark

WC1Z