Gary: I own both a Koss SB40 and two Yamaha CM500'ds.
The Koss and the Yamaha are exactly identical, save for one thing... The microphone capsule. The Koss SB40 has a dynamic capsule while the Yamaha CM500 has a electret condenser capsule. Other than that, the headsets are exactly identical in every detail except for the name. Probably made in the same Chinese jobber. But here is where the simialarity ends: The Yamaha electrect capsule is flat and can be made to sound really great on the K3. The Koss dynamic capsule is all bass, very mushy, and has low output. Even engaging the K3 equalizers and tweaking a lot, I could not make my SB40 sound very good at all. The capsule just sounds ugly. The fix for this is to remove the two screws that hold the capsule on the SB40's boom and remove the offending microphone that looks surprisingly like a cheap Chinese dynamic earphone (its actually the same exact size as a IPod headset element and looks identical!) and replace it. In my case, I had an old Heil BM-5 with a bad earpiece but a perfectly good DX4 capsule. I removed the plastic mic holder from the rigid Heil boom, and with a slight widening of the boom inlet with a Dremel tool, it fits right on to the SB40 boom! Solder up the existing wires from the Koss mic and you have a wonderfully comfortable headset with a very flexible boom that, in my case, works great on my secondary Kenwood TS570 rig. Of course, YMMV, but it works for me here! Lu - W4LT Using the "AL/K-Line": K3/P3/ALS600/MFJ998 Al Kaline: 1960's Detroit Tigers Slugger --------------------------------- Message: 20 Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2012 22:33:06 -0500 From: Gary K9GS <garyk...@wi.rr.com> Subject: [Elecraft] Koss Headsets for the K3 (Was: Re: Yamaha CM500 Headset)www To: elecraft@mailman.qth.net Message-ID: <4f62b472.6020...@wi.rr.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed An update: I stopped by the Koss Factory Store today. I looked at the SB49 first. (The SB45 is identical to the SB49 but without the volume control in the cord). I didn't really like the way the SB49 fit. It's a very subjective thing but comfort was what I was looking for. The other thing I didn't like was the flexible boom for the microphone was very "whippy". It was almost like a wet noodle. Not good..... Next I looked at the SB40. The fit was great and very comfortable for the 5 minutes I wore it. The mic boom was stiffer too. The SB40 has a dynamic mic element. I ended up buying the SB40. The price was $39.00 plus sales tax. I was all set to buy a Yamaha CM500 but I really wanted to see how they fit first. I looked at a couple places and couldn't find a local store that had the CM500. For this reason I look at Koss. The other thing Koss has going for it is the limited lifetime warranty. Being that I live near the factory this is a big advantage. Second is that I've owned other Koss products and have always been very happy with them. As I said I've never used the Yamaha CM500 but the Koss SB40 looks very similar. I'm also kind of a headphone junkie. With the K3 I figure that most modern headsets have much more performance (frequency response, etc) than one needs for communication. So they are all pretty much up to the task. Same for the microphone. With the TX and RX Eq features of the K3 I decided to concentrate on fit and comfort. I think that juist about any headset and microphone can be made to sound good. I haven't used the SB40's yet but will report back once I've played with them a bit. Here's the link to the Koss website: http://www.koss.com/en/products/headphones/communication_headsets ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html