Shelby Daytona Mic Completed!

The mic is completed! And it Wails!!!! Frankly, I'm not worthy.

Following the last post, I finally got the chance to lay some clearcoat. I used Kustom Shop 2K Speed Clear and laid 3 nice wet coats. I cured it at 140 degrees for 20 minutes after letting it sit for about 30 minutes.

After then letting it sit for 7 hours, I wet sanded the shell with 2000 grit wet/dry paper in soapy water and then buffed the entire thing back with Meguiars Fine Cut Cleaner. The result is like a mirror. I'm pretty doggone pleased. No hint of edges from the stripes, no ripples or orange peel.

I re-installed the datatag with brass rivets and then soldered in the gear. Screwed in the grounds and the pot.

The silk inside the grill is black and white checkerboard, a la Checkered Flag! What is more appropriate for the grill of this mic!

I topped it off with a machined aluminum volume knob which works perfectly.

More On the Vintage Mic!

Made a lot more progress on the mic. After getting all of the electrical work and the details worked out, I tore it back down and bagged all the parts.

With the parts all bagged, I removed the badge on the front and got the shell ready to strip down.

Stripping down the shell was easy with some wet/dry 220 and some Dawn soap in the hot water. Very easy to get all of the paint of and back down to bare metal. I then did some shaping of the casting with some emery paper.

Next up, it was time to get this shell mounted on a stick and get some primer on it. I took my time laying the primer and laid several light coats, with baking over the heater between each coat.

 

I let the primer cure for several days over the heater and then wet sanded it with 400 wet/dry and laid 2 more coats before allowing 2 more days of curing. Then it was time to move on to color.

 

Initially, I was planning to paint it with some House of Color 'Black Diamond', but unfortunately the black diamond was really a top coat for some other color, not a base. As a result, I went back to my original plan of painting it with a nice metallic blue.

 

I shot about 5 coats of the blue, starting with some light coats and eventually moving to one final wet coat. The result was something pretty nice. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it.

 

Next up, I'm planning to see if I can ghost on some music notes or something similar in a pearl or other nice effect.

 

 

 



More Progress On the New Mic....

So I made some more progress on this mic.

First up, I had to find a good pot (potentiometer) for the volume control. That took a bit of doing. I ended up with a 5 meg ohm pot that I bought from Digikey. Pricey little thing, but it had a 22mm (basically 7/8") long shaft, which was necessary to get through the body of the mic. It also has a very small body itself, which fits behind the element nicely.

To make this fit, I had to drill out the hole that was previously used for the ground. This started as a hole for a 6-32 screw, and I progressively enlarged it with increasing bits up to the 1/4" hole needed for the pot. For those that have never seen one of these before, I'm putting a volume knob in the hole where the mic body would have been mounted on a post in its stock configuration.

The 'Before' picture.

 

And the 'After' Picture.

 

After that, I needed to drill out one of the molding posts to make a new ground. I actually decided to drill two of them before I painted it. Just in case I wanted to ground the pot and the element to opposite sides for some reason, or the tapping of one failed. I tapped this again for a 6-32 screw.

 

 

 

Now it is time to wire this thing back up. A couple minutes with my multimeter told me which pins on the pot were for control and which was ground. I soldered up the circuit. For those that I don't plan on desoldering for paint, I went ahead and heat-shrinked them. I left the others bare. Everything fits pretty nicely. I'll change out the wire coming from the Amphenol connector to a white wire for 'signal' to allow easy understanding of the circuit when I rebuild that portion.

 

 

With the wiring done, I was able to screw the thing back together and give it a go. I stole the knob off my other nice mic to give it a try (I ordered some good 1/8" post knobs that should arrive tomorrow that will go on this mic).

 

Results with the 5 meg ohm pot are dead on and exactly what I wanted. No tone change, just volume change.

 

Crushed blue velvet 'silk' to protect the element. 

 

 



 

 

Building A New Mic!





 

I've been looking for a new project, and decided to build myself a new harp mic. Don't really need one, but I wanted to build something new, so it was time. I found this one on Ebay and paid a good price for it. Looked pretty ugly when I pulled it out of the box, but it did have an element inside.

 

I was not sure if the element would work, but I was pleasantly surprised when I found that it did. Not only did it work, it sings! It has a great tone with my amp. Similar to the vintage crystal Astatic element in the Purple mic I built a few years ago. The element in this one is a Calrad C-3. Japanese made and has a good gasket with it.

 

For this one, I plan to clean it up, install a volume control, lay some cool paint and then do automotive clear on it. Unfortunately, the clear I laid on the Purple mic was just too delicate. I may also lay some Auto clear on that mic at the same time.

 

Here are the before pics.