DEADCAT: DIY or RODE
- Thread starter Emilio123
- Start date
Alpha Flying Monkey
Well-known member
It seems that the manufacturer's of the "dead cat" covers are sourcing a material with a very thin backing... That's what I've found when I purchased some furry material & compared it to the Rode, K-Tek & the Rycote materials. You'll be money ahead by picking up the Rode or the K-Tek to fit your mic.
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
The monkey man may be right. But Rycote uses an inside lining so I'm not sure what the difference would be in the end. As to quality, that depends a lot on you. Did you test some material and find something that seems transparent to you? Are you good and sewing? Can you produce one that people would think is "professionally" made. You could, in theory, produce a higher quality dead cat than the ones on the market. Only you can answer that question.
Personally I would buy one. I know my way around a sewing machine and could probably do all that is needed but at some point time comes into it. Plus I haven't seen any "fake fur" that I thought would work as well as what the big boys are using. I'm sure it's out there but I haven't seen it.
Personally I would buy one. I know my way around a sewing machine and could probably do all that is needed but at some point time comes into it. Plus I haven't seen any "fake fur" that I thought would work as well as what the big boys are using. I'm sure it's out there but I haven't seen it.
Remember that without the blimp, the dead-cat won't really give you much wind protection. What makes a blimp/dead-cat work is the air-space between the microphone element and the first layer of wind protection. Even the rycote fuzzy has about 1/2"-3/4" of airspace between the wind protection and the mic. The idea is to difuse the wind and scatter it into many directions before it gets to the mic, and it's the airspace that give the scattered wind a place to difuse.
John Willett
Veteran
The Rycote fur is also very special, it's not standard stuff. There is a lot in the design of the fur to cut wind as much as possible affecting the frequency response of the mic.,especially the high end to the minimum.
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
You can't even use a dead cat with out the zeppelin (blimp, usually refers to the sound dampening cover that goes over a film camera).
Also while it is true that anything between the capsule and the source causes some high end loss, for dialog it takes a lot to have much affect on the dialog tracks. The difference between "acoustic" foam and regular old open cel foam, in my experience, is almost non existent in normal use.
Part of what gets confusing is the difference between "accurate" capture and what one generally wants in film work. If it were possible to design a mic that only picked up the human voice Production recordists would be all over it, but it would be a very "inaccurate" mic. In FX work I'm often using mics that alter the sound in the direction I'm trying to go, "accuracy" has very little to do with it. So if you made your own dead cat and it really attenuated frequencies above 10kHz, that would be horrible for music or nature recordings but have little impact on dialog recording. Might even have some benefits.
The point is you need to look at what you want to end up with, first.
To get back to the OP. Most of the "fake fur" I have seen has a very thick backing, some even seems to be coated with a rubbery film. This would be, probably, a very poor choice. A dead cat that isn't made to fit well is almost worse than not having one in the first place. So all told I would not likely make my own because of the time and effort to get it right and the lack of decent materials to make it out of. Rode doesn't charge much for the whole kit and you need the Zepp to put the dead cat on anyway so I would just buy one. If you are totally strapped for cash and have some skills give it a shot.
Carlos Corral
Well-known member
I've got the $299 Rode package and it is pretty good for the price.