The most important single accessory item to have in your AM shack is a way to monitor modulation - a cheap o'scope is a good choice. Keep an eye on it to ensure you have reasonably strong average modulation levels, and negative peaks that don't go all the way to 100% and pinch off the carrier.
You current quest for a good mic is already underway. The next item I would want is a compressor-limiter. This device allows you to wander a bit from the microphone, or get excited speaking loudly, without under or overmodulating. You can get a "microphone processor" which combines a mic preamp with equalizer, compressor, limiter, de-esser, and such. I'm fond of the Berhinger ULTRAVOICE VX2000 for that job. They go for maybe $70 on eBay. I sometimes run more elaborate AM broadcast processors on my rigs, too... but that's because I'm a nut. The Berhinger ULTRAVOICE VX2000 alone does a great job for ham AM work. On the other hand, on my Apache I use a plain D104 driving the musical instrument (High-Z) input of a DBX 163X compressor-limiter - sounds great and very simple. They usually go for $80 on eBay Steve WD8DAS [email protected] http://www.wd8das.net/ --------------------------------------------------------- Radio is your best entertainment value. --------------------------------------------------------- ______________________________________________________________ Our Main Website: http://www.amfone.net AMRadio mailing list Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ List Rules (must read!): http://w5ami.net/amradiofaq.html List Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio Post: [email protected] To unsubscribe, send an email to [email protected] with the word unsubscribe in the message body. This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
