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RE: PZM mic mounting

Posted by thump on January 8, 2017 at 17:43:31:
i bought my pair SPECIFICALLY to make binaural recordings after reading about frank zappa doing it by wearing a pair in some magazine that went a little bit further into their potential.
at first, i mounted the pair at approximately head width on a large format hardcover book and managed to make some really good, especially off center, pseudo-binaural recordings including one that REALLY captured a hot city weekend's ambience including a thoroughly convincing bus passing down the block, but traffic flowing in front of my apartment sounded slightly artificial and lost some imaging in the center.
later on, i was gifted a used (smallish) dummy head from a beauty school when i inquired about buying one. head shaped binaural mics are supposed to image and record better. once i had the head, i used a few packages of "steel putty" to make slightly forward and wider than the dummy's head mounts that i could velcro the mics to. it's made some EXCELLENT recordings including a train pass, except when its horn caused distortion at close distance, but otherwise sounded great, especially after it was in the distance and you could just about feel the cool summer sunset air in the recording made on a sony TC5DM portable cassette recorder.
sometimes though, the mics have a slight metallic resonant signature i've heard in other mics too.