Baofeng handheld - Speaker mic modification

[Ragnar406]

Edited to add - the modification on the handheld mic below turned out not to improve the audio enough to be beneficial - recommendation now is to not buy the speaker mic pictured - thread below still has good information and will continue to update


The benefit of using the Baofeng handheld are that they are cheap. The downside is that they are cheap. For those of you using one of their speaker mics you may or your friends may have noticed that the audio is actually worse when you ate talking into the speaker mic. That is because the actual mic hole is misplaced, too small etc. So feel free to try the following mod and your audio will improve. - Does not improve how you hear people but it does improve how they hear you.

Here you can see the mic hole

So go ahead and turn over the mic and unscrew the three screws in the back

Separate the front and the back and take one additional screw out

Once you peal back the circuit board you can actually see the mic and the hole that your voice is coming through

What you want to do is enlarge this hole - I used a drill bit

Now if you have an old earbud or mic foam you can put that in there but it is not needed. Go ahead and reassemble and you can test it out. -

 

[GlockMeister]

Can you post a link to the mic. Need to get one before the takeover.

 

[Ragnar406]

Link to Mic for handheld

Edited to add - even with mod performance is still sub par.

 

[Ragnar406]

I did some more testing with @nbomar this evening - the baofeng speaker mic I linked above is crap - even with the mod.

I am ordering a kenwood speaker mic to test out. I do not recommend buying the baofeng speaker mic linked above ... waste of money

 

[GlockMeister]

I did some more testing with @nbomar this evening - the baofeng speaker mic I linked above is crap - even with the mod.

I am ordering a kenwood speaker mic to test out. I do not recommend buying the baofeng speaker mic linked above ... waste of money

I shall await your recommendation!

 

[JTW]

This is the mic I have and I don’t have any complaints..

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00Z4X3MM6?tag=sxsweb24-20

 

[Landman]

This is the mic I have and I don’t have any complaints..

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00Z4X3MM6?tag=sxsweb24-20

This is the one I ordered. The baofeng mic reviews were pretty horrible so I didn't bother even trying it.

 

[Ragnar406]

This is the mic I have and I don’t have any complaints..

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00Z4X3MM6?tag=sxsweb24-20

Thanks @JTW. I can tell you when we were testing I would transmit using the speaker mic and then using the just the radio and the difference was significant. That is an easy way to tell if your mic is really an issue.

I looked at the reviews for this one and I thought they had some good ones so I ordered this and a real kenwood mic. We will test them out

 

[allgm1]

I have had good reports with this one Wouxun WXSPK Microphones Hand, WXSPK read the reviews on the boafeng one and steered clear of it.

 

[Ragnar406]

I have had good reports with this one Wouxun WXSPK Microphones Hand, WXSPK read the reviews on the boafeng one and steered clear of it.

Thanks for posting the link - I have read some good reviews on that one as well