Arfa wrote, "... they are polarity sensitive, as they
contain a FET preamp ..."

On the Altec, I had the polarity wrong. Should have
trusted the mark I applied before removing the wires.

The headset works as well as ever now.

In this poor picture, the original capsule from the
Creative/Telex desktop mic is on the left.

http://carnot.yi.org/Mics.jpg

The replacement, on the right, has no silver
trace from a solder pad to the capsule. Half of
the head of the capsule is a brown Bakelite color
typical of a PCB. The other half is black. Is that a
conductive layer to connect one pad to the capsule?

In any case, I can buy another mic and try again.

Thanks everyone for the help, ... Peter E.