How to Clean Microphone Grills

There has always been a lot of debate about how to properly wash and care for microphone grills, in particular heavily used vocal microphones.

In these 2 videos from Live Sound Tips and Shure Microphones, we should you how to properly clean your microphone grills.

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hey everyone thanks for joining me again I appreciate you coming back to more live sound tips been really happy to see that the first video that I made about washing the windscreens if your vocal microphones has been very well received by a lot of people a lot of people have been sharing it on Facebook and people have been messaging me and leaving comments and few folks have had some really good questions one of the questions that I’ve gotten from a couple different people is do I need to worry about the interior foam lining inside the gorilla 4:58 disintegrating or wearing out as a result of going through a dishwasher while being exposed to a lot of hot water and what I can say is that honestly my answer from my experience has been no you know I’ve been doing this for basically about ten years at the bottom of the hill and these grills have all been washed hundreds if not thousands of time and more likely than not I in a purely a guerrilla way long before the foam has ever desegregated just because the grill looks really shabby in appearance

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because they do drop they get dinged by you know drumsticks accidental hits from like drummers there were singers I think you know there there are other things that will end up wrecking the grill and make you wanted to get rid of it long before the foam is going to work out if the foam does happen to wear out or if you happen to lose the foam or if it was torn or something you could actually get replacements from sure it cost about 25 cents really I think I’ve bought a bag of a dozen of them a couple years ago just to have a few s Bacchus but I’ve never actually found that washing them it’s going to actually ruin the interior foam lining so not something a warrior the second thing that I wanted to talk to people about just the overall procedure of Washington Ritz really important to make sure that after I’ve given my first pass of pushing them through the dishwasher that once they

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come out the insurers foam is sopping wet it’s really easy to just flick the grill like this and get the interior sock to come out and then all the infant carrillo size on this washing car run them through again while they’re empty of the phones and I’ll wash all the foam inserts by hand over the sink here alright now that they’ve been washed separately I just take all of the interior foams line them up on the alternating pegs on the dish rack and then usually I just go put it up in the window let them dry out overnight let it get some Sun but that’s all you have to really do it’s just important that you do separate them and make sure that it’s a exterior grill and the interior foam are completely dry before you put them back together I have found through trial and error that if you don’t separate them and you wash them together the grilles will rust in no time definitely what’s going to happen we have huge waste of money all right that’s it thanks everybody I appreciate you coming and checking in for more lives town tips

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videos if you’re enjoying these and you think it’s useful look please be sure to share these videos with your friends whether they’re engineers or musicians or anyone you think will get something good out of this and keep sending in your questions and comments and if you have questions I’ll address them in future videos or in written blog posts depending on you know what time allows and and what’s the easier it is to get the information across so thanks again and let’s get back out there make the next show even better than the last one to try but [Music]

Video Text:

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hi I’m Chris Lyons and we’re here today talking about how to clean your microphone and here with us is Shores John born to help us understand more about this process now John first of all why would you really need to clean your microphone ah two reasons you want to keep it clean for hygiene purposes make sure it’s healthy to use your microphone it’s especially important if you’re a venue that has a set of house mics with different bands going through every night and the other reason is to make sure the frequency response to the microphone is still still accurate to much grime and stuff inside the grill can cause a degradation in response okay now clearly this is a problem primarily with vocal microphones what’s the easiest way to clean a vocal mic all of our popular vocal microphones feature removable grills so you can simply unscrew the grill and you want to take the grill off before you clean it and we have a toothbrush here and a q-tip and some mild detergent dilute it with water and you’re just going to dip the dip the toothbrush in there with a little soap brush off the lip stick and grime and chapstick whatever is on there if you’re

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gonna get the grill really wet it’s a good idea to pull out the foam inside there you use a needle nose pliers and yank out the foam if you notice that it’s really degraded then you’re gonna want to replace the whole grill assembly mm-hmm okay and then how long do we let let the grill dry before we reinstall it on the microphone definitely wanna let it dry overnight overnight before you stick it back on the grill especially if the foam is wet and if you want to use other there’s other accessory kits out there a company called micro foam has kids of accessories that you can use with foam and cloths and swabs and stuff like that that’s a good option – all right well thanks for giving us insight into how to keep our Shore microphones sounding their best Thanks for more information about Shore microphones please visit sure calm