converting a speaker to a microphone?

[professorlamp]

I read about this in SOS where the engineer for the flaming lips basically turned a speaker from a sub into a mic to mic the bass cab, seems pretty obvious since a speaker is in its most basic sense a reverse microphone. So anyways has anyone around here attempted this and/or like to fill me in on how to do this? I have a dying pair of headphones that could be salvaged for some crappy mics to possibly trigger from

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

Yup, used a DIY subkick a couple of times. Just do a search for "subkick", there's lots of stuff about this.

 

[professorlamp]

For anyone too lazy to look but is interested. Heresa Quote from Gearslutz

'I built one a few weeks ago... I used a 6" speaker out of an old Altec Lansing computer subwoofer (the internal amp died).

I really did just make a stand for it and wire an XLR to it.

I found contradicting articles about how to wire it (standard or reverse polarity), so I just wired it hot (pin 2) to +, and cold (pin 3) to - ; I left the shield unhooked. I figured that if it sounded out of phase I could just switch the wires, but that wasn't necessary.

This thing sounds GOOD... coupled with my D6, it sounds GREAT.

A lot of people mentioned having to put a pad inline, but I didn't... the output didn't seem nearlyas hot as most of them made me think it should be; granted, I only have the gain on that channel at about 15-20%, but still, I can make that work. Maybe a pad would get me closer to 50% on the gain (giving me more adjustability), but in my case it doesn't seem necessary.

Anyway, If I wouldn't have used a GOOD XLR cable, I'd have virtually NOTHING into building this thing... it was all crap that I had lying around the house!


Have fun!
Steve'

 

[arv_foh]

all you will get is sub lows which are not accurate enough to use for triggering. but cut the female end off an XLR, wire + to + and - to - and the ground to the speaker basket and you have a homemade subkick

 

[professorlamp]

well I was going going to use a sub for sub lows, and my old dying headphones for the triggers
and also fankzzzz

 

[arv_foh]

well I was going going to use a sub for sub lows, and my old dying headphones for the triggers
and also fankzzzz

i'm pretty sure no matter what the size of the speaker you will still only get sub lows out of it. maybe someone can confirm or tell me i'm wrong haha but the yamaha subkick only uses a 6.5" speaker

 

[if6was9]

2 more applications of this same idea.
Just plug a 1/4 jack cable from your guitar cab into your interface and sit it a few feet in front of your kit. Same thing as a sub kick just bigger and without having to butcher anything. Probably works best with a 1X12 or 1x10 speaker but I've done it with 2X12's and it worked well. I advise low passing it as you'll pick up a surprising amount of bleed from other parts of the kit in this.

Slap a pair of headphones onto an acoustic guitar body with one ear on the front, one on the back with the strap coming up over the top of the body. Plug the headphone cable into a jack input of your interface. Viola, cheapo miced acoustic that better than a camera mic with minimum fuss. Not great sounding but not shit either. You won't get phase issues from each of the different ears as you'll only get signal from 1 side of the stereo jack depending on how far you've pushed it into your input. Also works as a handy live mic if someone neglects to bring a guitar with a pickup.

 

[if6was9]

Also you won't get a useful trigger from headphones, The transients will be quite blurred and it's mostly lows they'll pick up.
What you want there is to get a cheap piezo transducer( less than 1 euro each in Maplin, probably the same in radio shack) and wire it up the same way. They come with a + and - wires already soldered on for your convience. Tape that onto your drum head and you've got a cheap trigger that works great. This is all an expenisve trigger is with a more robust housing.

These also work as surprisingly good contact mics on acoustic instruments. Clear and pretty decent sounding. I highly recommend trying it

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Yeah here is the one I did, pretty easy to wire up. You do have to run it padded with the way it is right now. The output is WAY hotter than a normal mic.:

BX8a speaker, regular snare stand, solder, nuetrik end, mogami xlr connector and some zip ties to hold it together.

 

[chrisrivalry]

I built one as a lesson to all the idiots that leave their shit at my place. So I ripped a celestion out of a marshall combo that didn't work to great, took the shell from a nasty sounding snare and lopped off a microphone cable, soldered that bitch up and I was good to go. The only problem I have is that I use it for live and I never really secure it well enough so it's constantly being ripped out.

 

[greyskull]

yep. made one myself. ugly as fuck. but works great. used a £10 speaker from maplin, and two resistors across the terminals to make a pad.
Has more low End AND better rejection than the real Yamaha one.. mental