Unsure of what to do about mic hiss - Apex 175

[Leo Mandy]

I am at a point of either throwing my mic against the wall or waiting until someone here can point me in the right direction.

I am definitely having a sound problem - I am not sure if it is caused by the camera or the mic itself. About 1.5 years ago, I was getting a loud hiss when the camera was plugged into an AC outlet. I took the mic and camera to a music shop and they pointed me to an impedence transformer that seemed to do the trick. Well, 1.5 years later and now I am getting that hiss even with the impedence transformer. Logic says it is my mic, but I am wondering if it could also be my camera. My mic has tele and normal. On tele, the hiss is really loud and somewhat unusable. On Normal, it is fine because the noise only comes from the end of the mic (although the volume is considerably lowered). So it was fixed, with the impedence transformer, and now the problem is back again.

So my questions is this - can a mic break down from use and cause the above problems? Does this sound typical for mic degradation? Does this maybe sound like an audio problem with the camera (pana 852)?

Thanks in advance from a man on the edge...

 

[Leo Mandy]

Well , I discovered this whilst testing things - when I plug the mic into my camera, there is a loud sound - it comes right through the headphones, even when the mic is not on - therefore I wonder if it is a bad connection or something that is causing this? If this is the case, I guess I need a new mic. I am going to try and connect another mic to it in a shop and see if this causes the same problem, if the hiss is gone, I guess the mic's gotta go. It will be a shame, $150.00 down the drain.
Any other ideas on how to test this?