On Wednesday, November 25, 2015 at 1:39:07 AM UTC-5, Irv Finkleman wrote:
There is an official Kenwood Mod for the MC-50, and it applies in
case you have troubles using the mic on VOX. It's easily found by
Googling 'Modifications for the Kenwood MC-50' but unless you are
a good tech, it involves modifications to one of the boards in the
rig itself, so unless you run into VOX problems, I'd leave that
problem to another day. I ran the MC-50 on a TS-520 and a TS-820
and never had any problems.


I hate to sound like an appliance operator but to me if it works don't fix it...
if it sounds good and has communication quality audio I say leave it be. The only reason I want to hook the MC50 up to my rig is because I was getting grief from a guy in Nevada saturday morning on 28.4** about my audio and suggested I try another mic so I have this MC 50 laying around and figured what tha heck rewire it and give it a go.



I just finished refurbishing an old
TS-930 and have an MC-60 for it. It's a lovely rig, but absolute
hell to have to work on. Normally the Kenwood manuals are good, but
for the TS-930 the Service Manual is pretty much rubbish. It was
only good fortune that I was able to effect the necessary repairs.
It's a dream rig, but the next time it requires any servicing I'm
going to junk it and go to a new rig -- even back to a 520, 820,
or an 830.
There's really nothing that these older rigs won't do if you tune and
operate them properly. I do have a Yaesu FT-857D which has almost
every bell and whistle you could ask for, but is largely
microprocessor controlled and every time you want to make a small
change such as Mic Gain and Carrier Gain you have to revert to
the manual and change a bunch of settings by which time you have
probably missed that rare piece of DX you have spent years searching
for. I'm no dummy with digital stuff, but it's still nice to
be able to twist a knob or two for quick adjustments.

Irv VE6BP
RADIATE OR DIE TRYING!

I dread having to dig inside my 520 if things ever go haywire but with the guidance of the group and some elmerly encouragement ya never know I might just get 'er done