Sennheiser MKE2 Repair

[mark kirchner]

Sennheiser MKE2 Repair

 

This MKE2 lavalier microphone had a broken solder joint at the capsule. If the capsule was twisted the signal would go from normal audio to pops and clicks with no audio. I decided to cut away the plastic housing. As expected, one of the solder joints had broken. I soldered the connection and the microphone worked as normal. 
 

Next I took some strong black nylon thread and wrapped the end of the black cable. I used a “snelling knot” that fishermen use to snell a hook. I wanted the nylon to bite into the cable to help the epoxy hold tightly to the cable. Then I painted on clear 5 minute epoxy, covering the nylon and the solder joint. A second coat of epoxy was done, this time the capsule was rotated to help the epoxy creat a nice round shape. This made a similar durable replacement for the original plastic housing that cut away. The epoxy could have been tinted black with model paints. 
 

Good luck,

 

Mark Kirchner 

[mohamedelkholy]

can you please provide more info on how did you fix it, because i have the same problem, all 3 of soldering joint are borken.

[Conor]

If you do it carefully with a craft knife you can actually just separate the plastic housing and push it down the cable. Then you weaken the epoxy by allowing it to soak in acetone for a few minutes. This way you can remove the epoxy, do the resolder job, add epoxy back, slide the housing back on and let it dry.

[mark kirchner]

On 9/8/2023 at 7:47 AM, Conor said:

If you do it carefully with a craft knife you can actually just separate the plastic housing and push it down the cable. Then you weaken the epoxy by allowing it to soak in acetone for a few minutes. This way you can remove the epoxy, do the resolder job, add epoxy back, slide the housing back on and let it dry.

Have you repaired a MKE2 capsule yourself?

[Conor]

On 9/9/2023 at 8:21 PM, mark kirchner said:

Have you repaired a MKE2 capsule yourself?

Yes I've done this many times, either to resolder the capsule or replace the cable (MKE2 cabling tends to kink pretty bad)

[Matthew Steel]

Those of you who have done this repair, to what, if anything, is the shield connected at the capsule end?

 

This thread inspired me to investigate resurrecting some of our MKE2s that I declared dead due to excessive jacket damage.  Now I am considering putting new cable on them as an alternative to buying new.

 

I opened up a MKE2-Gold and the blue was connected to the concave side of the capsule, and the red to the convex side.  The shield did not appear to be connected, and I don't see a third independent connection point.  So it seems either it broke quite cleanly off one of the other solder points during disassembly, or it was not connected to begin with.

[mark kirchner]

On 9/11/2023 at 7:03 AM, Matthew Steel said:

Those of you who have done this repair, to what, if anything, is the shield connected at the capsule end?

 

This thread inspired me to investigate resurrecting some of our MKE2s that I declared dead due to excessive jacket damage.  Now I am considering putting new cable on them as an alternative to buying new.

 

I opened up a MKE2-Gold and the blue was connected to the concave side of the capsule, and the red to the convex side.  The shield did not appear to be connected, and I don't see a third independent connection point.  So it seems either it broke quite cleanly off one of the other solder points during disassembly, or it was not connected to begin with.

It would be great if you could post a photo or a diagram of what the capsule looks like. It’s been over 5 years since I did my repair, so my original post was delayed. 

[Matthew Steel]

As requested I have attached some pictures of MKE-2 capsules with the wiring exposed.

Upon closer inspection, my initial description of the sides of the capsule as "concave" and "convex" is inaccurate.  Instead, the capsule has three leads.  Between the leads is something like a tiny printed circuit board.  Two of the capsule leads are soldered to one side of the board, and the blue wire of the cable connects here to both of these leads.  As this side of the board is at the center of the capsule, it appeared concave at first glance.  The third capsule lead is soldered to the other side of the board and the red wire connects here.  As this side of the board is near the edge of the capsule it appeared convex.  The shield is not connected at the capsule end on any of the mics I have opened up.

 

Some of the mics are the older "non-gold" version whose serial number tags match the color of the cable (beige or black).  All of these so far have had a red dot on the capsule where the blue lead connects, and a gold-colored diaphragm.  The newer mics that have gold serial number tags do not have the red dot, and have a silver-colored diaphragm.  There is also a newer version of the MKE-2 Gold that has blue serial number tags, but I have not opened up any of these since all are still in service.

 

Almost all of the MKE-2 mics that we have stopped using, we have taken out of service because of badly deteriorated jacket on the cable.  In most cases the mics still function but the bad jacket makes them ugly and difficult to use.  Inspired by this thread, I have now performed a few total cable replacements using cable left over from cutting new mics to length.  It is still early days, but results are guardedly positive:

(1) mic appears to work as good as new.

(1) mic had persistent popping sounds.  It is possible the capsule is damaged internally.

(1) mic initially made a couple of popping noises, but they seem to have gone away.  I'm considering a theory:  In the process of replacing some of the cables, I had compressed the jacket, cut the steel and shield wires, and then allowed the jacket to slide back over the cut ends.  This microphone model is susceptible to cable noise, so maybe the cable jacket was sliding around readjusting to stresses and that was causing the noise.

[Max SM]

On 21.09.2023 at 17:29, Matthew Steel said:

Вдохновленный этой темой, я выполнил несколько полных замен кабелей, используя кабели, оставшиеся от обрезки новых микрофонов до нужной

длины.

Hi! Thank you so much for sharing such a valuable experience. Which cable did you use to replace it? Maybe there is a name or a model?
I have been looking for some information about replacing the wire on the Sanken cos 11D microphones for a long time. Perhaps someone knows how to repair it yourself?

[Matthew Steel]

The

On 11/9/2023 at 5:29 PM, Max SM said:

Hi! Thank you so much for sharing such a valuable experience. Which cable did you use to replace it? Maybe there is a name or a model?
I have been looking for some information about replacing the wire on the Sanken cos 11D microphones for a long time. Perhaps someone knows how to repair it yourself?

 

The cable I used was original cable from MKE-2 microphones.  The version that comes without a connector is so long that I always cut it shorter.  I had saved a lot of these cut-off ends, so I had a good supply of original cable.