Peter wrote:

To replace a wire which broke in the swivel
of the boom, I reconstructed the boom of an
Altec Lansing headset. This included
resoldering the wires to the back of the
electret capsule. The speakers still work
but the mic does not after this repair.

Found a similar failure after soldering a
new electret onto the wires of an inexpensive
Creative/Telex desktop mic.

Is the electret mic particularly heat sensitive?
If so, what technique is recommended? Already
I was careful to apply minimal heating.

My experience with soldering hundreds of Panasonic WM 55A103 electret
capsules is that it takes quite a bit of abuse and clumsy
soldering/desoldering before anything goes seriously wrong. You
wouldn't normally expect to experience a problem from using ordinary
soldering techniques. If the job looks as though it might turn into an
awkward one and require a bit of messing-about, it may then be a good
idea to provide some sort of heat sink on the capsule body.

Where you might have got a problem, however, is if you have accidentally
smeared a whisker of solder or dross from the live contact to the
capsule body and cause a short-circuit. That can sometimes be difficult
to spot unless you are really looking for it. It is best removed
mechanically with a scriber point; if you try to unsolder it, the
chilling effect of the casing on the solder blob will just create a
worse and worse mess.

--
~ Adrian Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk