Built-in mic seems loose?

[J.J. Kim]

I am pretty sure it's flexible, but man.. it's extremely flexible... I put shotgun mic AND the wireless mic receiver, so I thought I was putting too much on it... It's not loose.. The screw is really tight.. so i assume it's flexible... very.. very.. flexible...
my old A1 is not that flexible and that's why I was concerned a little bit.
Thank you!

jj

[Todd Weiss]

I have 2 xha1's.....I have spoken to Canon....this is the way it is to absorb vibration.

[Pavel Tomanec]

It may be good feature this shock-mounted mike on A1, but the price for it is that it is very fragile too. The mike on my A1 got gradually so loose that in ended up in my hand completely separated from the camera body.

Pavel

[Paul Digges]

Did this just happen naturally? You weren't storing the camera with any pressure on the mic, or trying to rest anything on top of it that was attached with rods or the hotshoe or anything?

[Shawn Levin]

Originally Posted by John Bergquist

So after reading 7 pages of this discussion I was pretty surprised no on had actually just troubleshot the loose mic. While shooting in China we noticed the mic starting to droop more and more until one day it stopped working. Before any of you start in with "why are you treating the camera like that" I will tell you my crew is very careful with equipment. Shooting on location like that has its wear. Anyway we simply removed the two screws on the base arm below the start stop button, the two screws under the eye piece (which allows access to the control ribbon plug in the back. Then remove two screw under the control ribbon plug are removed allowing the whole handle to be removed. Once you have the handle off there a several screw mounted underneath the handle. Remove those and the handle assembly comes apart. The Mic wires are simple ribbon that slide into a slot plug. The shock absorber is assembled using two plastic plates held in place behind the handle casing. Unless these plates break apart the mic WILL NOT FALL OFF. We replugged in the the ribbons and everything was back to normal. To say the least we have a few wraps of gaffers tape wrapped around the base of the mic now to ensure the play does not lend to loose mic ribbons again. I hope this helps.

Hi All,

There has been so much said about the 'loose mic'...
Mine too started drooping, it seemed to droop more and more.
It never stopped working, but always worried me, till today
curiosity got the better of me.
I read John's post a few months ago - John, thanks for the information about the procedure to remove the handle assembly, it helped me alot.
I removed the handle assemblembly, to see what was 'really going on'.
I would have liked to offer photo's, but alas no still camera.

PLEASE NOTE: I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS PROCEDURE.
(Unless your mic. is broken and you cannot have it repaired)
Therefore, I will offer no further information here about actually opening it all up

What I do want to add is the following:

Firstly... As Chris says: It's Supposed to be loose !
(A big thank you to Chris for always offering spot on advice and information about a
huge variety of topics).

So, you see... between the back of the mic and the front of the handle,
there is a ribbon cable connecting the mic to the pc board inside the handle.
One gets the impression that a 'drooping' mic would put pressure on the ribbon cable,
but obviously Canon are smarter than that.

The ribbon cable has quite a bit of 'slack' on the handle side before it enters the
ribbon connector, so even a gap of a few millimeters (between the mic and handle)
would not put strain on the connection.

The rubber itself is mounted very 'loosely' (I'm not sure why - but I guess the less rubber
in contact with both the mic and handle would transfer less 'noise' from touching any
part of the camera') to the microphone.

So after all, there is nothing to worry about.

I am thinking of putting some black silicone between my extended gap
(between the mic - rubber - camera) to take up the slack and hold the mic. more
straight.

I hope this adds to your clarity and removes doubt.

Thanks to an amazing forum of XH-A1 users all around the world
which I read every day.

From the tip of Africa
Shawn

[Len Kaufman]

Contrary to many statements along the lines of "it's supposed to be loose," my XHA1 was way too loose. The wires were showing, and it seemed just a matter of time before the mic would be separated from the camera. Using the input of John Berquist from an earlier post, I took the thing apart, and found a broken plastic insert that was meant to (loosely) connect the mic to the handle. I purchased the plastic insert from these people Performance Audio - Your Source for Professional Audio & Video Gear (copy and paste). Actually, I purchased 2 of them as the flimsy piece is likely to break again. Total cost, with shipping, for the 2 was about $12.

If I were to do it again, I would probably purchase the part from Canon's very good parts department. I've subsequently purchased other parts for some flash units from them. And I would also purchase a packet of the screws from them, as the heads of the tiny phillips screws are easy to damage. The story has a happy ending, and everything worked when I was finished. The most difficult part of the entire project was getting the screws out.

Len

[Chris Hurd]

Yes indeed, if the wires are showing, it's too loose! Thanks for this report Len and I'm glad it was a happy ending.

[Chris DeVoe]

I took my camera apart and rebuilt the microphone. I wound up drilling through the base of the microphone and mounting it on the camera with a pair of tiny bolts. I'm sure the isolation is nowhere near as good, but I almost never use the microphone, either using external mics or a board feed via the XLR inputs. I just didn't want my camera to look like a clunker.