Good lightweight Comms - 100-200$ range?

[MultipleParadox]

So, I have scrapped my McKay Bone Conduction Earpiece at a game yesterday.... :banghead:

I still have the PTT (MacKay MWPTT)
The earpiece I had was the McKay 11FSES

I was pretty satisfied with that setup (beside the PTT being a bit easy to trigger and the clip not being strong enough for the way I set it up on my carrier)

Instead of going right through and buying a new earpiece at 100$, I figured I should check what were my other options for 1-200$

Not really interested in Peltor/Sordin type as I find them too bulky and hot

What say yoU?

[ThunderCactus]

Unfortunately for all of us, the good stuff comes in the $200-$400 range -_-

Nacre quietpro - $200-$300 plus cable mods if necessary
Iasus NT3 black ops 2 - $170 range
Sordins - $350ish, depending what accessories you get
Honeywell QP400 - fuck you, only I am allowed to have one =p
There's a range of speaker/boom mic, silicone earpiece/boom mic options that are decent that other people will recommend as well

Apart from the stigma surrounding the iasus NT3, they actually work VERY well, when they do work.
If you have too much muscle mass on your neck, apparently they don't work well. But when they do work they are crazy clear even when whispering. The silicone earbud is so comfortable I could wear mine for 24hrs straight, didn't affect hearing too badly either.
Just pair them with a good radio. I paired mine with a GP68 and it wrecked the ptt. That in turn wrecked my next GP68.

The $30 throat mics are actually decent, surprisingly enough. Again, if you have a compatible throat lol

Downside to really GOOD comms, is they're often listen-thru hearing-amp type comms. And that is annoying in itself. It's great if you're constantly getting thunder Bs thrown at you though.

Boom mics work for some, I always find myself yelling at people because I can't understand them on the radio. Either their mic is too far away from their mouth, they're chewing on it, it's picking up a shitload of ambient noise, they're crazy loud because they don't have the right impedance on the mic, or it just plain doesn't work well.
Bone conduction is fantastic, but I looked at 2 dozen units and they all looked like crap for $200 or less, and I wasn't going to drop $600 on the good ones. The cheaper ones are often bone conduction speakers, and boom mics.

I've spend about $1200 on comms so far and all I have to show for it is a wouxun dual channel radio and a honeywell QP400 headset -_-
So take my advice and buying something really high quality now, and save a LOT of money down the road lol

[Red Dot]

Code Red Headsets gets good reviews online, if my ZTac stuff goes sideways I'd try out one of their systems.

[daishi]

Lol the Honeywell QP400 are like mystical. There's literally no place that sells those.

[ThunderCactus]

Because they all know I'm the only person allowed to have one! O_O

[Azathoth]

Their are some professional grade ear bud style radio mic's that are fairly good in the 100-200 dollar range.

But they are not all that great compared to Anything thundercactus listed.

[Amoki]

A bit biased and possibly beyond your budget, but I run the Invisio M3*. It's worth spending that money compare to the various throat mics and boom mics out there. You might be able to pick up the odd one off ebay for ~$200.

Throat mics are hit-and-miss. I suspect body fat around the neck makes all the difference between garbles and clear transmission.

* Invisio M3 paired with a Ztac PTT - which I opened, modified and resoldered. How ironic is that?

[ThunderCactus]

that looks pretty good actually. Bone conduction mic, or in-ear mic?

[MultipleParadox]

Thanks for all the answers

I am pretty thin so I am guessing those throat-mics might be an options
I'll take a look at the Iasus - links to where it's in stock at a decent price would be appreciated - Looked around but didn't find conclusive results yet

-> Thunder: What's up with that "air it up with a good radio" exactly? how could it fry a ptt plus radio? (Actually have a Wouxun KG-689) - I think they're sold with PTT yes?

Invisio is a bit out of my budget (couldn't find them under 300$ or so)
Seems to be similar tech as the McKay I broke, if I'm not mistaken (in-ear speaker, bone-conduction mic)

[brock0]

My ultra budget setup has served me well for over a year now.

Ztac TEA Cobra headset - it comes with a head strap, but you can mount it to a helmet with the included clip. It's sort of rests over/near your ear, but not directly in which I like. The boom mic on it works great, no tx issues or ambient noise.

Hooked up to a Ztac U94 style PPT, into a cheapo motorola talkabout.

I was semi-intrigued by the code red battlezero (bone conduction) headset which is about $130 but it's fairly new and the demo I saw seemed a little meh on the transmit quality.

[ThunderCactus]

GP68's aren't water proof

Had the NT3 hooked up to my GP68 at claybank II, it rained. Hard.
Fried the radio
This in turn fried a part of the PTT, I'm assuming because it may have been trying to transmit for a long time? I really don't know. Best guess it got so hot it de-soldered and shorted something.
Buy new radio, hook up PTT
Fries the PTT circuit, radio always transmits when PTT hooked up
sell that radio, buy all new cables, test on other radio, works, sold everything.

Case and point, all of this would have been averted if the radio were waterproof lol

[MultipleParadox]

Haha shit, bad luck you have! :P

Thanks for the precision

[daishi]

Just spend the 100 bucks to replace what you know worked for you.

Or you can always contact cancom and ask them on opinions for a set that goes with your existing PTT. I know they have WAY more selection that what they post online.

[DipTwit]

Originally Posted by ThunderCactus

Unfortunately for all of us, the good stuff comes in the $200-$400 range -_-

Bone conduction is fantastic, but I looked at 2 dozen units and they all looked like crap for $200 or less

Just curious, since the most obvious recent unit to fall in that class is the Code Red one, whether you have ever looked at one to see if it's really crap+hype or not?

I may consider picking one up to find out- if I do I'll let you have a look sometime...

[ThunderCactus]

The last time I checked code red, they only had the $380 bone conduction speaker thing with the goddamn boom mic.
That $98 fully bone conduction setup looks like it might work really well, I'm wondering about the long term comfort of it though. Might be worth someone checking it out.