Posted by: "guyhand2"
> Thanks for your praise of the VP-88 and suggestion that I simply add a pa=
rabolic to it.
> Excuse my inexperience with parabolics, but can you just add a parabolic =
to a mic of your
> choice? I'd assumed there would be lots of technical bugaboos that would=
make it difficult
> to get good sound from anything but the perfect mic/parabola match.
>
> Are there instructions somewhere on this list or other source on how to m=
arry a VP-88 to
> a parabola?
Not for a VP-88, but for about any small mic:
http://frogrecordist.home.mindspring.com/docs/quickparabolic.html
There is nothing special about mounting a mic in a parabola. You simply
have to have some kind of support that holds the mic in the focus of the
dish. The support should be as acoustically transparent as possible
while still being structurally sufficient. And you have to add a handle
to the dish for you to hold.
The VP-88 is a low sensitivity mic with high self noise. The combo makes
it far from ideal for nature recording except for the loudest of sounds.
This alone would negate most of the gain of the parabola vs a quieter
more sensitive mic. In addition, in terms of mounting in a parabola it's
fairly large and relatively heavy at nearly a pound. Parabolas are much
more useful if hand holdable. The regular Telinga with stereo is light
and easily hand holdable for extended periods.
The Shure 183 series would be better than the VP-88 in terms of
sensitivity and self noise and a pair could be mounted for stereo. Or
use a pair of AT3032's in the configuration Lang proposed in a telinga
dish. (he used MKH-20's). I machined up one of these for a recordist
last year and it worked pretty well. My design made it easier to use the
mics elsewhere but was otherwise the same. You do have to enlarge the
center hole of the dish, so it can't then be used with the Telinga
handle and mics.
http://www.naturesound.com/telinga/telinga.html
Even the Sony ECM-MS957 would probably beat the VP-88 used in a
parabolic if you want M/S. Of course a MKH M/S setup could be mounted
for a high quality sound similar to the Telinga mics.
Note the AT3032's could also be used in a Modified SASS giving you a
good stand alone mic:
http://frogrecordist.home.mindspring.com/docs/mod_sass.html#AT3032
Though I'm not a fan of shifting mics between setups in the field and
prefer to have mics dedicated to each setup.
Walt
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