The year is 2010, I am working on a senior project where I learn to play accordion. As a part of this, I join a local program that lets me sort of volunteer with the EMP/SFM, known today as the Museum of Pop Culture.
One of our primary jobs is that we are responsible for doing preselection of bands for MoPop's all under 21 battle of the bands, and attend all the shows involved. One of said bands has an old telephone handset that they use as a microphone. As a teenager still unable to distinguish between fun gimmick and thoughtful artistic choice, this experience plants a seed that will grow with terrifying rapidity.
I talk about the phone mic I saw a lot. I look up how different kinds of phones are built, and discover that most older phone handsets use what's called a "carbon button microphone", a device for capturing sound so simple that the only way to really damage it is to smash the thing with a hammer. The seed has begun to germinate.
2010 is one of the final, gasping years of the Radio Shack franchise. I think the decline of Radio Shack makes sense for a lot of reasons, but it's also emblematic of a cultural shift that I can't get over to this day. Any child in 2010 can acquire the parts required to fix a toaster, microwave, radio, or to build a Tesla Coil capable of broadcasting electricity 15 or so feet at the local Radio Shack, provided they have the money, time, and sick fascination with electronics or their own narrow understanding of communism. It is downright trivial for that child in 2010 to acquire a 1/4" jack, some wire, and ensure that yes, their father is in possession of a soldering iron. I ask my dad if we have a working telephone headset that I can render inoperable for use with a phone, and he obliges.
The beauty of a carbon button microphone is that in addition to sounding like you're radioing in from the antarctic, is that it's basically impossible to wire up to a jack incorrectly. The humble quarter inch jack doesn't carry electricity to power things, it's only job is to complete a circuit capable of turning mechanical wiggles into electromagnetic ones. I disassemble the phone, disconnect the phone jack present, and dispose of the speaker. To save myself having to drill a new hole in the handset, I install the quarter inch jack into the space where the phone jack originally was housed. I can tell that there won't be enough space on that side for both the inserted patch cable (the thing that plugs guitars into amplifiers) AND the microphone, so the wiring for that part has to be run through the central body of the phone to the other side.
I am then faced with a decision. See, the phone in question opened up by unscrewing the covers for the speaker and microphone, but the threading on the covers was identical even though the covers weren't. I could choose to place either the ear cover (lots of holes, slightly convex) or the mic cover (a few holes, fairly concave) over the mic. In the end, I decided to keep the mic cover with the microphone, which resulted in them being swapped from their original positions.
The mic got used in a few shows, including my senior project, and I had it at least until the end of college. At some point I decided I was done with the thing as I no longer had a band, and didn't have time to start one again. I think I gave it to Goodwill, either in Washington or Oregon.
Thing is, I knew that phone mic really well. I don't want to say it was like, iconic, or anything, but it was a stupid project I was really proud of, and so I knew it intimately. The phone in that picture:
1) is at the very least the same model of handset that I modified.
2) uses a quarter inch jack that is installed in the same location/angle as the phone jack would be.
3) has the microphone and speaker caps switched from their normal positions, assuming there's not a hole for the original phone jack on the side we can't see.
I can't say for certain, but I think someone who knew a little bit about microphone and speaker tech bought my mutilated phone mic at the Goodwill. 🤷🏼♀️
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