Microphone Shock Mount Hack: Fix That Sagging Feeling
After a certain point, things start to sag. You may snug them up a bit, but soon entropy and gravity prevail, and what was once nice and tight stretches slowly towards the ground.
I’m referring, of course, to the stretchy elastic bits in your microphone shock mount. We generally attach our large diaphragm condenser microphones in the middle of a web-like structure to isolate it from the thumps and bumps in our recording space. Over time, those elastic loops – which in many cases are just beefy hair ties – simply lose their resilience and start to stretch. When those weakened elastics can no longer support the mass of the microphone, it comes in contact with the supporting framework. That contact can allow sound to transmit directly into the microphone. For a microphone shock mount to work, it must completely isolate the mic from the mount.
The first step most take is to add knotted loops into the elastic bands to take up the slack. Sadly, if you have enough slack to tie anything larger than a microscopic surgeon’s knot, the inner elastic has probably begun to significantly degrade. It might work in the short term, but will only delay the inevitable.
My older large diaphragm condenser microphone used a simple spring clamp to hold the microphone barrel. Over the years, as it sat in the angled shock mount, gravity worked its patient magic and it eventually ended up touching the external metal ring which suspended the shock cage. Though no longer using that mic regularly, I did want it available for other tasks. I wanted to get it working.
You can find a variety of generic elastic replacement bands through Amazon – a quick search revealed choices from Boseen, Mictop, and Dimension, and even Neumann takes pity and only charges $12 or so for a replacement set for their certainiy-not-cheap EA-1 mount.
Those generic precut loops often need to be “adjusted” to the specific size of a given shock mount, which brings us back to tying tiny knots. Bulk elastic could be cut to the exact proper length. However, at some point they would likely start drooping from heat, humidity, and age. I wanted a more elegant and robust solution.
My backup shotgun mic suspension mount uses a couple of rubber “O” rings, but those were too small. They reminded me of round profile vacuum drive belts, which led down an internet rabbit hole of flexible repair belts of varying dimensions and thicknesses, most of which seemed the wrong size.
While digging down into those options, I noticed listings for bulk industrial elastomer drive belts of various thickness. This plasticizer-free material had natural stretch and was available down to narrow sizes which seemed to match the width of the existing elastic. The only downside was that they recommended using “elastomer welding kits” – some running a couple hundred dollars – to create the necessary loops. Reading down through the instructions it also suggested “or just use a lighter…” I decided to use the latter approach and ordered a couple of sizes to test.
The 3 mm thickness drive belt just fit into the metal clips on the shock mount. I found that the elastomer material did not easily compress, so 4 mm was actually a no-go. The material did not stretch without significant force, which indicated it should handle the weight of my large diameter condenser microphone. (It also arrived with a significant amount of random variation in the color over the length of the material as shown above – definitely not as pictured in the product images).
Working outside for ventilation and wearing heavy gloves and eye protection against the possibility of splattering melted elastomer, I attempted the lighter-induced “welding”. Several freehand attempts failed miserably, but after employing a soldering clip rig to carefully position the ends, the results improved noticeably. Once I got the hang of positioning the ends of the elastomer material, the melt-connected result provided a surprisingly strong connection. I did tend to overdo the flame, which ate up a significant amount of material in short order. The first couple tries lost an inch or so from the overall length, making them way too tight.
Adding length to the original cut (about 2” longer than I’d estimated) adjusted for the loss due to melting, I slowed down a bit and focused upon technique. The next two came out within a few millimeters of each other and seemed to have an appropriate amount of slack. The bands tended to be fairly springy, which made them a bit tricky to keep in place when stringing up the shock mount. But by carefully maintaining tension to hold them in place in the clips, I managed to connect all the bits.
Success!
The extra globs of material at the weld clipped away easily and everything held well – even with the full weight of the microphone. The mic stayed centered in the mount and no longer contacted the outside ring when it was positioned on the angle. A quick recording revealed no resonances or other issues.
Overall, this worked better than I had hoped. My main concern had been whether the material would be too elastic when threaded into the hooks. The 3 mm bulk elastomer material doesn’t actually have much give to it, so the band length can be very close to the actual linear distance of your shock mount. I was planning on measuring specific distances between the contact points, but got things pretty close just by guesstimating against the older elastic bands. Measuring would have been the next step if the initial test loops hadn’t work so well. It holds the mic solidly in place while isolating it, and the welds hold with great tenacity.
Of course, the coolest thing is that it looks like I’ve used gummy worms to thread through the microphone shock mount.
Other Studio Hacks
Shotgun Mic Shock Mount Install
Replacement Ear Pads for Sony MDR 7506 Headphones
Saturday Soldering: Fixing a Broken Sennheiser HD280 Connector
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