How to Create a Stereo Microphone From an Old Telephone Handset

Did you know that speakers and microphones work on the same principle of transduction? Transduction simply means converting energy from one form into another. In audio terms, a speaker and microphone work by either picking up or creating vibrations which are audio! The difference between speakers and microphones is the flow of energy (as voltage). Voltage flows to a speaker to make it vibrate and produce sound, whereas the diaphragm on a microphone vibrates from sound and sends voltage down the line.

In this video, we turn an old telephone handset into a funky stereo microphone. A quirky feature of this microphone is that we will be using both the microphone and the speaker from the handset to turn it into a microphone that can be used in mono or stereo to give it a bit more pizzazz.

You might recall we made a sub-kick microphone out of a speaker cone in 2020. Similarly, in this video, we show how to do the same out of an old telephone. This telephone microphone is not as straightforward as the previous sub-kick mic, it’s more of a novelty microphone that can be used to create that ‘tinny’ telephone effect on whatever instrument you are recording.