Phantom Power through a Shure SM57

blademaster

Active Member
While i was writing some stuff down on a sheet my hand accidentally hit the phantom power button for a channel and connected to that channel was a Shure SM57. after that happened the mic seemed to hardly produce high volumes of sound. i switched mics to a peavey p51 and it was back to norm. how was this caused? and how can i fix the shure?
 
The way phantom works, the mic wouldn't exactly "see" the phantom power. There'd still be voltage delivered to the mic, but it would cancel out. What board were you using? Like Matt said, perhaps you engaged the pad, or something else. There's a million reasons why you'd lose signal on a mic. Perhaps it may even be a bad XLR connection, or a problem with the board itself like a loose ribbon cable.
 
There are a lot of less expensive boards (Mackie and Behringer come to mind) where the entire board is phantom on or off and others where groups of channels are phantom on or off. In these cases you are often sending phantom power to dynamic mics so it's unlikely that your bumping the phantom switch damaged the mic.
 
i still was getting a signal on it. but it was very faint. i switched mics to a peavey and it worked just fine. i am using a allen and heath gl2200 40ch sound board. i know for a fact that it wasnt the pad button because that was the first thing i checked after i noticed the issue.

how would the phantom cancel out?
 
hey mat for the sake of CB why dont you put in your ideas that we talked about in here as well
 
i am sorry soundlight. my bad i have read up on it though not a lot recently, as well as dealing with various other stuff in my life has stressed me out. sorry. what i meant and thought of was condenser though the words didnt come out right.
 
Unless something very bad has happened to the 57, it should not be doing this. If the element or the wiring leading to it was in some way compromised, like something grounding out, I guess that this could happen. I would imagine that the sound with the phantom turned off it would still be pretty bad if this were the case.

A 57 should not be doing this. I would suggest putting the mic in a box with $55 and send it back to Shure.

http://www.shure.com/ProAudio/ServiceAndWarranty/ServicePolicies/index.htm
 
I was just going to suggest that Stantonsound. I suppose that it is possible that the element did short to ground, sending the full 48v through the mic. Another theory, did you hit the phase switch by accident? Did you adjust the gain pot at all after trying the PV mic?
 
Re: Phantom Power through a Shure BUT

The Mod to remove the transformer did reduce the output level by about 10db.
The transformer is not what protects the mic capsule from phantom power, it is how the phantom power is wired up, SO if you have a mis wired mic cable then you could possibly have cooked the capsule. Phantom power puts the PLUS 48 volts on BOTH pin 2 and 3 and the Negative is on Pin 1. In the mic either the transformer or the capsule is connected to pin 2 and 3 and there is no capsule connection to pin 1, which has the negative, Pin one is connected to the case.

SO there is no complete electrical circuit . SO if you had a miswired cable that had say pin 2 or 3 swapped with pin 1 then you could have problems. (some one wiring up some xlr's and not looking carefully at the pin assignment and wiring the male and female with the connector orientated the same way and forgetting that the pins are swapped


The main type of mic that definitely does not like phantom power is a classic ribbon mic, plug in phantom power and kiss it good by.

Sharyn
 
Re: Phantom Power through a Shure BUT

I'd still find a cable tester and check that cable. I've gotten some bad ones before from the factory.
 

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