"SventheViking" wrote in message
...
Greetings. This should initiate a bevy of responses :=).
Since I
have used Viking IIs in the past only for CW, and am in
the process of
getting back on AM with one of these when it gets here,
what are the
preferences out there for a mic for one of these. I can
firstly
assume a Hi Z non amplified type like an D-104, but I
imagine there is
a wide range of experienced users out there. Thanks
kindly for your
time.

Wayne (VE6NE)
Calgary, Alberta, Canada

There was a very large variety of microphones which
would work with this transmitter, any high-impedance mic
will do. There are still some made but I am not current on
what is available. Solid state stuff can used low or medium
impedance mics directly but old vacuum tube TX need a
matching transformer for them.
The main manufacturers of high impedance mics for public
address or ham radio use were Electro-Voice, Shure Brothers,
Astatic, and Turner. In addition American Microphone made a
line but were a smaller company.
Crystal mics are vulnerable to heat, humidity, and
mechanical shock so old ones are often not working. Moving
coil, so-called dyamic mics, are very rugged and generally
will work as well as when new if they have not been damaged
in some way. Crystal mics were popular because they had very
high output and were cheap. The D-104 was one of the first,
if not actually the first, crystal mic on the market and has
remained popular ever since. The early ones came with a
choce of flat or rising frequency response but the rising
response version was so much more popular that the flat
version was discontinued. At least part of the sound is the
result of the fairly large baffle area of the case. This
causes a diffraction effect which increases the
high-frequency output and makes the mic slightly directional
at speech frequencies, both desireable for communication
purposes.
I think its possible to get new elements for old D-104s
but I would check first, they may be expensive since the
D-104 has become a collector's item.

--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL