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Kenwood Mobile Microphones Comments by John Haserick W1GPO and Roger Coulson WA1NVC HTML'd by Robert Meister WA1MIK Maintained by Mike Morris WA6ILQ

Note: This article was written in 2017. In July of 2023 the page maintainer had to research DTMF microphone options for a commercial customer that needed to add DTMF capability to several TK-8180 mobile radios and a TK-8360 radio that was used as a base. The page maintainer changed the DTMF column from No/Yes to No/12/16 (buttons) and added photos for the microphones he had available. No slighting of the original authors work is intended.

There seemes to be several versions of the black microphones, 6- and 8-pin, three of which said Kenwood and one was an obvious Asian clone without the Kenwood label. We then searched ebay for Kenwood KMC-30 microphones, where the microphone purchased was shown, stating "8-pin OEM KMC-30 microphone" for $22. Since it originally did not list the TK-6110 in the long list of compatible Kenwood radios, many of which were more recent production than the TK-6110, we concluded that the grey KMC-27 microphone was the only original equipment issued microphone for the TK-6110, but that the KMC-30 8-pin microphone was to be used as an improved replacement microphone for the TK-6110. The microphone we finally agreed sounded the best was the 8-pin OEM KMC-30 microphone from ebay seller 2010lindawang. Here's a photo montage of this microphone. Click on it for a larger view.

We feel the black KMC-30 Kenwood microphone definitely delivers crisper, more robust, and pleasantly intelligible audio than the stock grey KMC-27 microphone with its more range-restricted and muffled audio, especially when operating through a repeater. The KMC-27 microphone may be perfectly fine for base station use with optimal conditions, but when you really need to get the message through, the KMC-30 punches through all the mobile noise.

Some people found the Kenwood KMC-30 microphone gave better audio than the stock KMC-27 grey microphone, which sounds muffled and hollow by comparison. Some say this microphone is not OEM, but a clone, but for $22 including shipping from ebay, we thought it had better PTT action, the circuit board looked OEM, the case was light plastic, but felt comfortable, and the audio was the best of the four Kenwood microphones we tested (others were KMC-27, KMC-35, and KMC-36.)

Our experiments with microphones, along with other hams in the area trying different microphones, encouraged us to bring out a pile of Kenwood microphones. We tried several microphones including the original KMC-27B (black dot), the KMC-27A (red dot), KMC-35, and KMC-32 (DTMF) on a TK-690H at home while several people listened. We connected microphones at random without saying which one was being used, switching back and forth frequently and also used more than one sample of each model.

Just about everyone said the KMC-27B (with a black dot) was consistently the worst of the bunch. Surprisingly many liked the KMC-27A (with a red dot). The red dot means it has electronic noise canceling using a hole in the rear of the housing that supplies audio to a second microphone element (i.e. sound heard by both microphones is cancelled). Most agreed the KMC-35 sounded better than the KMC-27B. The surprising winner was the KMC-32 DTMF microphone that we used in the car. We never expected this to be the winner.

Amateur 8-pin Kenwood microphones are not wired quite the same as commercial 8-pin Kenwood microphones. Using an amateur microphone on a commercial radio or vice-versa may cause damage to either the radio or the microphone.

Here's a summary of the various features of the mobile microphones mentioned above. This data comes from their respective service manuals. In the table below, "DTMF" is either No, 12 or 16 (buttons). "CONN" is the connector type: "Round" is the 12-pin round connector with the offset indexing post, RJ-45 is the 8-pin modular connector. "ELEMENTS" describes the one or two microphone elements present: Main faces forward while Sub faces rearward, and Dynamic is unpowered while Electret requires power to operate.

Model # (click for photo)	DTMF	Conn	Elements	Notes
KMC-27	No	Round	Main: Dynamic Sub: Electret	Both elements feed the same op-amp input. If these are noise-canceling, one should provide an out-of-phase signal and it doesn't seem to. Perhaps the element polarity accomplishes the phase shift. The manual claims this is a noise-canceling microphone.
KMC-27A	No	RJ-45	Main: Dynamic Sub: Electret	Both elements feed the same op-amp input. If these are noise-canceling, one should provide an out-of-phase signal and it doesn't seem to. Perhaps the element polarity accomplishes the phase shift. The manual claims this is a noise-canceling microphone.
KMC-27B	No	RJ-45	Main: Dynamic
KMC-28	12	Round	Main: Electret Sub: Electret	One element feeds the op-amp inverting input, the other feeds the op-amp non-inverting input, so this seems to be a true noise-canceling microphone, and the manual says so.
KMC-28A	12	RJ-45	Main: Electret Sub: Electret	One element feeds the op-amp inverting input, the other feeds the op-amp non-inverting input, so this seems to be a true noise-canceling microphone, and the manual says so.
KMC-30	No	RJ-45	Main: Electret
KMC-32	16	RJ-45	Main: Electret
KMC-35	No	RJ-45	Main: Electret
KMC-36	12	RJ-45	Main: Electret

Contact Information:

John can be contacted at: jhaserick84 [ at ] comcast [ dot ] net.
Roger can be contacted at: his-callsign [ at ] arrl [ dot ] net.

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This page created on 20-Apr-2017.

Article text and photos © Copyright 2017 by John Haserick W1GPO.
Additional text © Copyright 2017 by Roger Coulson WA1NVC.
Converted to repeater-builder format by Robert Meister WA1MIK.

This web page, this web site, the information presented in and on its pages and in these modifications and conversions is © Copyrighted 1995 and (date of last update) by Kevin Custer W3KKC and multiple originating authors. All Rights Reserved, including that of paper and web publication elsewhere.