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in responce to the shielding question, i connected it to the ground conductor when the mic entereed the box, and it seemed to work well. i am running the mic throuogh a hung ceiling, past several flourscant lights, then past a computer moniter, and i still have almost no interference. i also have a seperate grounding cable going to a ground as well too, that helps a lot. dan g

nobody comes here anymore, theyve moved on. i dont have a loot of experience soldering electrets, but i soldere a great deal, and i always try to heat the thing im soldereing up the least possible, epecially if its an lectronic componant as opposed to wires, etc. my gues is that there is a good chance that, dpending on how long you had the iron on the contact, you partially melted part of the mic inside the casing, which is causing the distortion. i reccomend getting new electrets, and practicing soldering bits of wire together before doing the mics. try soldering 2 wires with only 2 mm or so stripped without melting any isulation. you have to do it fast, but it comes with practice, and if you can do that, you can quickly solder the mic, making sure not to damage it. my technique is to melt solder, then tin the wire with the melted solder so it heats up faster because there is more surface area contact, and only the part you want to solder is heated up. tin both sides like that, then melt them together quickly. letting them cool between solders is a good idea too, so the heat isnt tranferred inside the componant very much. allelectronics.com has 65 cent electret mics that are pretty good, but shipping is 7$ no matter how much you get, so i usually stock up when i shop there. as to you not getting a good contact, lightly sand the contacts, then tin them and there should be perfect conduction if its done right, whitch its relitivly easy to do. hope it helps. dan g

i used exactly the circuit diagram from the origional project, then put on 3/32 inch jacks in place of wires directly to the mics to suit the mics that i had. what do you mean, what opamp did u use? this amplifies it up to mic line level, then i have a mixer with a mic input that i have run from the line out of that into the line in of my computer, if that's what you mean. it also orks to use the mic jack on the computer, just not quite as good quality. dan g

i made this, and put up pics onto flikr at flikr. it was really quite easy and in total cost well under 10$ i have 3 electret mics from allelectronics.com that have mono 3/32 plugs, so i made the tin have 2 plugs for that, with a stereo 1/8 in output cord. i made that out of 3 braded strands of the wire inside cat5 cable. right now, my only issue is that i cant really record in stereo, as my computer only has line in as stereo, not mic, and ipodlinux hasnt come out with stereo recording yet. anyway, it sounds great, and is quite solid. feel free to tell me if u think i did something poorly, etc. oh, and the plugs are labeled r and l/m for right and left/mono, for if its going into a normal mono mic jack. dan

would it make a difference, using polarized vs nonpolarized caps? i know in speakers you have to use nonpolarized for the crossover to the tweeters, but would it make a difference in this? thanks