For some reason, the cords on my older microphones seem to be disintegrating. This has happened across all brands and is not isolated to just one. Looking at some of my older Alinco radios, most of the microphone cables are shot.
The Alinco EMS-57 microphone has a very nice PCB area where the mic cord is soldered to that indicates the color code and function for all of the connections. Unfortunately, the original mic cable was soldered down to the back side of the board where the color codes are not labelled! Figuring there must be a reason for this, I wanted to do the same.
Luckily a vendor on Amazon has replacement cords for my EMS-57 microphone. The only problem was that the color codes they used did not match the existing microphone. Amazon also sells a complete replacement microphone for more money.
To figure out what the old to new color codes are, I removed the shells of both old and new Foster/GX/Aviation 8-pin mic connectors so that I could make a translation table from old to new.
Once soldered down to the PCB, I was able to mount the PCB back into the mic shell. Note, the tiny screws are very poorly supported in the plastic shell and are very easy to strip out. Closing the shell while aligning the PTT button anchor point into both housings was a little tricky.
Testing the mic out yielded positive results with 100% functionality restored and a nice looking mic cable (with a factory strain relief) that will hopefully last a while.
Here are photos of the old microphone cord. The plastic coating is sticky and falls apart when stretched.
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