Color bands on Countryman B6

[Hartigan]

Can anyone enlighten me as to what the different color bands on the mic wire
near the connectors mean? This past week I used my B6 mics with 2
silver/gray bands along with 2 B6 with 2 blue bands each into Lectro 210's.
The blue banded mics had a great deal of hiss and sounded overall bad, while
my silver banded mics sounded great. Even with swapping mics and
transmitters, the hiss stayed with the blue bands. I changed to my COS-11s
and finished the shoot.

What's the difference in the colors? Does this explain the hiss?

Jay Hartigan
Shooters Post & Transfer

[Hartigan]

"Charles Tomaras" <***@comcast.net> wrote...
If you weren't changing the input level on your transmitter than you had
some really poor gain structure dialed in which would not fully modulate the
transmitter thereby causing the audio to noticeably degrade. So turn up the
input level on your transmitter for the Blue band until you see appropriate
levels on your transmitter and determine if that was the cause of your
excessive noise. Even with the transmitters properly attenuated, you should
notice a difference between the hot and colder mics because there will be
some additional pre-amp noise from the Lectrosonics pre amp that is turned
up further. On my 200 series transmitters I'm usually at around 9:30 to
10:00am on the input dial with my Yellow bands.

That must be it. Unaware of the level differences in the mics, I had the
inputs set to about noon and the outputs there too. The level on the
receivers looked ok (seldom red) so I never suspected input level problems.
Thanks Charles.

Jay

[Eric Toline]

The original B6's were very hot output, about 8db or so hotter than a
normal lav. They were color coded with a yellow band and maybe a red
band.

Countryman no longer offers the original yellow/red band B6. Charlie T.
bought up the entire stock.

The grey banded B6's are very close to other lavs in out put. The Blue
banded B6's are 20db down from the nominal output grey band units.

The Blue band B6 is designed for primarly theatrical use and placed
close to an actor/singers mouth (think Ethel Merman).

Remember the "B" stands for Broadway.

Eric

[Charles Tomaras]

Post by Eric Toline
The original B6's were very hot output, about 8db or so hotter than a
normal lav. They were color coded with a yellow band and maybe a red
band.
Countryman no longer offers the original yellow/red band B6. Charlie T.
bought up the entire stock.

Actually you can still buy them if you ask Rosa real nice. I just sent all
of my B-6's in for diagnostics to make sure they were still performing
within spec and to have a couple of the more worn ones replaced. A couple of
mine seem to have a bit higher noise floor than the others but all in all
they have held up and aged better than other lavs I've been enamored with
over the years.

Post by Eric Toline
The grey banded B6's are very close to other lavs in out put. The Blue
banded B6's are 20db down from the nominal output grey band units.
The Blue band B6 is designed for primarly theatrical use and placed
close to an actor/singers mouth (think Ethel Merman).
Remember the "B" stands for Broadway.
Eric