The PZM microphone is weird. It's a 5 by 5.5 inch piece of black flat metal that somehow picks up sound in a really different way. All the sound around it is received in a large hemispherical pattern and it pretty much hears everything equally. And it sounds decent. And you can get it cheap at Radio Shack!
The first time I had to seriously consider the PZM microphone, I was recording with a band at my friend John Baccigaluppi's Enharmonik studios in Sacramento, CA. He had a couple of PZMs mounted up in the air above the drums for left and right overhead mics. I had previously seen these odd looking gizmos at Radio Shack and had assumed they were as useless as most Radio Shack junk. Instead, the sound these mics picked up on the cymbals was crisp and clear and a nice complement to the overall drum sound. Not long later, I saw a band place a pair of these mics on each side of a stage, flat on the floor, and plug them into a recording walkman. I asked them how these tapes sounded and they were very positive about the results. I was curious, to say the least.
Radio Shack, under the imprint Realistic, sells the Pressure Zone Microphone (PZM) at all their weird, little stores for $59.95. I believe they are actually manufactured by Crown, as they own the name PZM. Don't bother looking for the higher priced Crown versions though, there's a lot you can do with these little buggers!
First, if you have XLR inputs, you'll want to snip off the molded 1/4" plugs and wire up a male XLR plug. Amazingly, there's a three conductor wire in these thin cables and the rewiring for low impedance makes a big difference in sound clarity. See illustration 1 for wiring information.
The next change I made to the PZMs was to do away with the need for batteries. I opened up the battery compartments and soldered the two units together, parallel (+ to + and — to -), and then hooked up a 6 volt wall wart power supply to them. This seemed to give a higher output level as well as eliminating my fear of batteries running down during a session!
