Aviation headset for com system?

avp

avp

Well-known member
I recently acquired ($0) an Anchor Portacom system that has scarcely been used. Seems to be mostly crap, especially the headsets. 2 of the four had failures (broke) at the connection point of the earmuff and head piece. Beltpacks and base station seem to be fairly well built, however. In looking at replacing the headsets, and pricing out new units, I thought maybe aviation headsets may be a viable replacement option as they are well-built and priced about the same. Usage will be often in noisy environments so noise canceling is a plus.

Does anyone here have experience and/or suggestions as to adapting an aviation headset such as this or others for use with a standard 3 pin xlr com system?:

http://www.pilotmall.com/product/Softcomm-Silver-Fox-Headset/softcomm-headsets

Or maybe I'm way off on this one and looking down the wrong road. It just seems the build quality is better with the aviation units.

Thanks, Jeff
 
I bought two sennheiser HME26 aviation headsets and have modified them for use on sports commentary.

They work fine but the only difference I found was the impedance of each headset is higher at 1,200 ohms rather than the normal 50-600 ohms, I therefore need to drive them harder and don't get the same levels out of them but they are acceptable for most uses as my headphone amps can drive well and I usually have two sets on each output so the impedance is lower anyway.

They were $100 each so far cheaper than a bespoke audio version and the mic's work fine with phantom power as they are high impedance anyway and suit a termination of 150-2,200 ohms.

I just cut the aviation jacks off and soldered an XLR for the mic and a 1/4" TRS jack for the headset.
 
As Gary says but be aware that many commas headsets for aviation use also have mic specs to mimic the old carbon mics with a dc supply. Lots of people have bought second hand older ones, like the drakes, and discovered no audio output from the mic.
 
Thanks for the information. This is a big help and confirms what I suspected.

Best to you, Jeff
 
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