George hacks a gamer headset for radio use. Emile has video from Swamps On The Air. Mike begins his BitX 40 build and mods. AmateurLogic.TV
Price, quality and variety are all so much better among vendors of "gamer" headsets, compared with hammy hambone products. Definitely worth the time to explore what's out there. Use the amateur equipment companies to buy pre-made cables to interface with your rig. Same for microphones. There are some amazing values out there that sound good, marketed to the far larger audience for podcasts and musicians. The savings compared with amateur models can pay for a nice boom-arm, suspension cage, and windscreen
Just a friendly reminder to everyone, if you scream out of frustration or chew your words, no microphone in the world can make you sound good. Any good audio setup has to come with a little bit of self awareness and good audio control by the user. And, no, yelling will not make you easier to hear over the static.
So let's see - we have had POTAs, SOTAs, and now Swamps on the air .....next it will be OHOTA ( Out Houses on the Air )
Some points to consider when buying PC gamer headsets for amateur use. One is the type of mic cartridge. My Yaesu FT-991A, as well as the FTDX101 expects a high impedance dynamic microphone. I'm not sure what a PC wants. Additionally most gaming headsets want to deliver a wide audio range since games have soundtracks (do they? I'm not a gamer), so the response is very wide unlike a communications headset where it is designed for a more voice range.
I use a Koss SB40 headset straight into the FT-1000MP and get many unsolicited compliments on the audio. It's been used on my Kenwood's and ICOM's over the years as well, all with great results. $33.99 on Amazon US.
forget outhouses there are way more Porta Potties , they are mobile and could be worked from various grids,
I use cheap headphones I get a Dollar General. Both wired and wireless work fine and simple to replace when the cable between the radio and headphones gets snagged on a chair arm rest or caught on my desk, rendering the headphone useless....Remember the signals you hear on HF radios are not HIFI quality! A frequency response headphone of 20 Hertz-20 Kilohertz (limit of human hearing) is meaningless.
