Hello all,
I record with a Fostex FR2-LE and a Telinga Pro 6 Stereo DAT
microphone (with parabola). Yesterday morning, I took my gear on a
very cold and rainy hike up Saddleback Mountain in Maine to try to
record Bicknell's Thrush. The thrushes were not singing in the rain,
but I did manage to record some of their calls from the porch of the
ski lodge, which was sheltered from the rain. For the hike up and
back, I disassembled my parabola and carried all the electronic
components of my rig inside a plastic garbage bag inside my
backpack. It worked fine to record the thrush calls.
This morning, however, it's not working fine. It works, but the
levels are WAY low...at normal mic trim levels (the 3:00 position per
earlier posts to this group), max gain, and half monitor, I can' t
max the levels out even by yelling directly into the microphone. I
can hear the ambient sound perfectly well on both channels if I turn
the monitor and/or the mic trim levels to max, but obviously the mic
is not picking up like it should. Is this because something in the
unit is damp? I can't tell where the problem may be--it affects both
microphone channels equally. The recorder and monitor/headphones
seem to be working fine--together they play back yesterday's
recordings at full level--so I think it's either the mic or the cord.
I know my gear didn't get truly wet yesterday, but it was definitely
exposed to a lot of humidity both inside and outside the plastic bag,
and some drops of water may have gotten on it here or there. I've
been trying to dry it for a couple of hours today (assuming humidity
was the problem), but it hasn't seemed to help yet. Any advice would
be much appreciated.
Thanks--
Nathan Pieplow
Boulder, Colorado
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