Why would you want to start out with a crappy mic and spend money on mixers and cables to fix what you can get from a quality mic? Does it makes sense to cheap out only to later spend that money on other gear to remedy it or is it "Wow, I like the look of me behind that EQ?"
Probably overcompensating for the fact they have a small... well you know the saying. Seems to be quite prevalent in amateur radio and pickup trucks.
The standard mic that comes with the 7300 is excellent, if you want to improve on that get a quality pod cast mic but you may require a mic preamp, take no notice of peoples settings, start tx audio with flat bass and treble and no compressor.
Great advice, however, given the intelligence level of most of society today I'm sure there will be those 1 star reviews now that my Audio Technica AT2035PK doesn't fit my Icom IC-7300.
Just give me a microphone that's reasonably flat over a range exceeding 0.3 to 3.0 kHz and with a cardioid pattern. The TX audio spectrum will be controlled and optimized by other means.
In my part of the hobby the sound quality is part of the enjoyment. We already are going out of our way to repair, restore, and configure vintage gear, or in some cases, to repurpose retired broadcast gear. Personally I couldn't stand using consumer grade, "Hammy Hambone" components on what otherwise is a high quality AM station on our shortwave frequencies.
The PR781 is not a good match for the IC7300, it need almost full scale mic gain and even when you goose the processor to 5 its still a mic you really got to stand up and yell, its better suited for something like the 7610 in which there is no need for the blocking cap so you don't damage the mic element. The ICM or the boom/headset ICM is far better sounding with any 7300 and I have owned two of them but I have found use for my 781 mic, it matches up really well with my Yaesu FTDX10 works great with this radio but I still have found that it was lacking luster in the midrange so I had taken the cover off the mic to expose the mic element and taped up the shaft that hold the element which gave a nice midrange boost plus made the mic more unidirectional, now its a real vocal mic. It has enough bass for ssb use and I am not the kind of ham who wants my audio sound like a boom box on ssb. Just my 2 cents...
Your point on audio spectrum and SSB is correct, but there is a lot more to a good mic. The PR-40 has fantastic rear and side rejection.
I use a PR-781 with my FTDX-1200 and use the rig's built in equalizer to get the audio where I want it..
All fair and square, but there is no high quality in SSB transmissions, especially "at the other end" of the conversation, thousands of miles away. And our AM transmissions are also limited to a 3kHz audio bandwidth.
It hasn't. A side rejection of 6 dB is hardly impressive. If that would be important to you, you'd need to use a shotgun microphone. The PR-40 is no different than any other cardoid mike and I bet you couldn't hear the difference between a $39 Samson and a $400 PR-40, certainly not on the other end of a conversation on HF. From an audio-technical point of view, rear and side rejection are only important parameters when the distance to a mike is relatively large, reducing the sound pressure difference between source (you) and the surrounding sources. When using a hand mike close to your face, rear and side rejection become far less important because in that situation, the sound pressure of your voice is much much higher than any surrounding sound. Thus, rejection from surrounding sounds is already much higher without having a cardoid characteristic. Unless of course your PA has extremely noisy fans
Actually, for most hobbyist communications, a mildly directional microphone is enough to attenuate unwanted ambient noise or bad acoustics in the operating room. In more severe cases, a noise-cancelling microphone would be far better than a shotgun mic, since, as you point out, its effectiveness relies on the distance to the noise source as well as the predominant frequency of the noise. High frequency noise from blowers, for example, would be far less attenuated on a shotgun mic than would the low frequency rumble of a furnace. For severe noise mitigation, the Shure 488B dynamic hand-held mic has been my favorite. Used on 2m FM on a bicycle doing parade comms, and in an open convertible sports car. Another good hand-held noise cancelling is the Coles. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/356414-REG/Coles_Microphones_4104B_4104B_Lip_Microphone.html
The PR781 might look super cool as you put it, but in my opinion the Heil ICM out performs the 781 on the icom 7300 hands down.
I agree. even Bob Heil himself shows how you cant do much to a narrow bandwith transmitting radio in one of his videos. Some of these radios are 2.4khz wide. its communication only. No hifi and No mic can do much with 2.4khz period. people need to work on their antennas and get a amplifier not buy crazy mics. 73 all
