Mic Cartridge Mount for Shure Model 55S (or similar) by Mr_MinerAl

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

This Thing holds an "SM58 replacement" cartridge (of the <$10 Chinese counterfeit variety) inside the Shure Model 55S microphone shell.
I "won" an old Model 55S in an online auction. The description was "see pictures" so I should have been warier.
Of course when it arrived, it was just the outside cage of the mic. No innards that would've made it a functional microphone. So, rather than complain because I wasn't a careful shopper, I decided to make the best of it. Original innards for this mic are not made anymore, so I needed a way to mount a modern microphone cartridge inside the 55S shell.
It is designed to not use a transformer (which is a big part of what makes the cheap counterfeit mics sound so bad), but instead to wire straight to the original 91-MC3F connector in the base of the mic.
It should work equally well with any small-bodied/non-FatBoy Model 55 (including the 556S, 55SW, the '70s versions with XLR plugs, and the still-manufactured Model 55 Series II and 55 Super), as they all have the same mounting holes.
It will probably work with a real Shure SM58 cartridge, but I don't have one, so I can't say for sure. Wrong. The real Shure 58 Cartridge is quite different from the Chinese replacements commonly found on ebay. I have another (much improved) Thing for the real SM58 cartridge: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4787253
(update) I let some high schoolers borrow the mic for a musical production prop. They didn't treat it nicely and the PLA printed Cartridge Mount broke. I swear they must've used the mic like a hammer (or just knocked it over really hard on a high stand). Lesson learned. They can buy props next time.
The new version has a gap so the cartridge can be already wired to the mic when installing the Cart-Mount. With 75% infill, even in PLA, it is very tight on the cartridge. I haven't abused it (and don't intend to), but it works great and I didn't have to do any re-soldering.