Maestro C - Microphones with TS Mic plug + CTIA Y Cable.

WB2RRF · March 14

I have the Maestro C Y Cable and I am trying to connect a Heil ProSet Elite headset. Audio works fine Mic does not assume its because Heil has a TS plug. If I take a female TS connector and wire it as follows to a TRS male plug would this solve the problem. TRS tip and ring to the TS tip and TRS shield to TS shield. The Heil is an IC element so also assume I need to turn on Bias in Mic settings. Thanks for any comments.

Mike-VA3MW · March 22

Hi Russ

tldr; replace the TS connector on the Heil mic lead with a TRS connector

A CTIA Y cable works well with Microphones with a TRS (stereo) Mic plug.

Some Mics (such as Heil) have a TS (mono) Mic Plug and it will not work with the CTIA Y cable as the Shield part of the plug shorts out the TRS Jack. This needs to be converted to a TRS plug as outlined below.

I can confirm that radiosport works and our FHM-3 work as expected.

BTW, if you don't own an Omnifixo, then you should. Great product.

I cut off the TS from my personal Heil Headset (notice the really, really, really, fine wire that fractures so easily) and connected the ground to ground and Hot to Tip, and that solved the problem. It was in the junk box as the radiosport is just a much nicer built and robust product.

The Heil Proset has a Mono Mic connector on it, and inserting it likely shorts out the Ring and Sheild, which is something that isn't an issue on the 6600 or 6400, but it is on the Maestro Y cable.

Ken, NM9P came up with a quick solution by inserting a TRS to TS+TS splitter (Stereo to Left + Right) adapter. You can find these online.

de va3mw

Curt_AC9HO · March 21

I have not received any good guidance on this issue either. I purchased the Y cable and the FHM-3 hand mic and it works perfectly. I have a Heil Pro 7 headset and the BM-17 Heil headset and cannot use either of them. I want to purchase a TS to TRS adapter, but I am not confident that will fix the issue. I say this because I have a TS to TRS adapter that came with the Yaesu FTM400 and it does not fix the issue. I suppose it is possible that the Yaesu adapter is wired different than one I would get off Amazon, but not sure. I will purchase another TS to TRS adapter and let you know if that fixed the issue. I cannot believe that no one else seems to be having this issue.

As for the Bias you will need that turned on to use an IC element. I also have the Maestro B (that will be going up for sale) and I had to use the Bias for the Heil HMM hand mic that I use with my Icom 7000. It worked very well with the Maestro B but does not work with the C.

If you come up with a fix please post to your thread, so that I will see it and get mine fixed as well.

Thanks

Curt AC9HO

Russ Ravella · March 22

Hi Curt and WB2RRF,

I don't have this issue yet but apparently I will when my Maestro-C eventually gets delivered. I also have a Heil Pro 7 and I've been assuming a TS to TRS adapter I bought with a Y cable for it would work. It's very hard to understand how Flex took 4 years to come up with this new Maestro design and doesn't even know how to advise it's customers how to use it with one of the most common ham-dedicated headsets there is. But Flex often leaves this kind of stuff to their "marketing guy" and if that's what they did, all I can say is here we go again ...

Please post anything useful you come up with on this for the rest of us since Flex obviously isn't paying attention. Again.

Russ KR6W

Geoff AB6BT · March 22

Why can't you just look at the connection diagram for the jack on the Maestro and the wiring of the plug on the mic and figure out what is needed???

It can't be that difficult...

It seems as though everyone wants to figure out what to "buy" rather that figuring out how to solve the problem.

I guess that it asking too much.

WB2RRF · March 22

I started this tread asking if anyone thinks the following would work. Take a female TS connector and wire it as follows to a TRS male plug - TRS tip and ring to the TS tip and TRS shield to TS shield. Based on the TRRS design of the Maestro C I believe this will work for the Mic. This mic adaptor would then plug into the Y cable Mic and the headphones to the Y cable phones jack. It can be made from a bunch of spare parts I have or you could pick up all the parts and wire for a few bucks, I was just asking for thoughts if anyone in the community thinks this would work, last thing I want to do is connect something to the Flex and short out any of the Maestro's circuits. I don't think it necessary to spend the money Heil would price an adaptor for, if they develop one.

WX7Y · March 22

The MIC on the Maestro C if it is ACTUALLY a CTIA Audio I/O Jack from all I have read the Sleeve is the MIC + input connection and the 2nd Ring (toward the Sleeve) is the GND.

Mike-VA3MW · March 22

As Bret said, and it documented in the Maestro C FAQ.

The CTIA Y Cable that we sell (or get your own from Amazon) works. When you connect the Y Cable Kit to the back of a Maestro C, you get the exact same connections as on the back of a FLEX-6400/6600.

RCA for PTT
TRS for Mic
TRS for Headset.

If you buy your own cable, it must be CTIA.

The only other thing that I have tripped on from time to time is that some OEM headsets use a TRS for MIC, but they don't use the Sleave at all. I have fixed this with a simple TRS (female) to TS (male) adapter.

Welcome to the Mic standard. Clearly, there isn't one.

73

Russ Ravella · March 22

"When you connect the Y Cable Kit to the back of a Maestro C, you get the exact same connections as on the back of a FLEX-6400/6600.

Clearly that's not true, Mike. That's what this thread is about." Curt reported above that:

"I have not received any good guidance on this issue either. I purchased the Y cable and the FHM-3 hand mic and it works perfectly. I have a Heil Pro 7 headset and the BM-17 Heil headset and cannot use either of them."

Note the expression, "...GOOD guidance...".

Russ KR6W

Russ Ravella · March 22

That's not an answer Mike and should not be marked as such. Just more of the usual obfuscation.

First, you completely sidestepped the issue which is your statement that, "When you connect the Y Cable Kit to the back of a Maestro C, you get the exact same connections as on the back of a FLEX-6400/6600." Obviously if that were true, this discussion (and others) would not be occurring.

And mutilating my three hundred dollar Heil headset to accommodate this significant design oversight is obviously not "good guidance". What would have been good would be if Flex had spent 10 minutes of the four years it took to produce the Maestro-C to consider how HAMS, not computer users, would be using it.

Mike-VA3MW · March 22

Russ, it has been a long week. I took time away from my family to dig into this for you.

I have apologized for my quote as it was wrong and I had bad information that I didn't follow up on. My mistake and I take ownership for that.

You may wish to discuss this with Heil as they build adapters for most radios. That is the business they are in. We had a meeting with Heil at Hamcation in January and we spent some time discussing the CTIA TRRS connector we chose to use, and the meeting seemed to go well enough.

They are in the business of connecting headsets to radios. FlexRadio is in the business of building radios.

radiosport had no issue getting the correct cable built in time. They were very pleased with our choice of moving to that type of connector.

John WA7UAR · March 22

Might an “open standard” for microphones and headsets be appropriate in this particular discussion thread? Would it help to resolve interoperability issues?

If not, then an admin can delete this message.

https://electronics.halibut.com/halibut-headset-interconnect/

Mike-VA3MW · March 22

John

Smitty's Open Standard is an absolute must for the amateur radio industry. He is onto an amazing idea. He met with us, but, by then, it was too late for anything we are working on.

We are onboard with it but we need 1 other vendor to do the same thing.

Curt_AC9HO · March 23

Hello all, thank you to those that contributed information to help resolve this issue. I do not believe the thread was meant to bash Flex at all, but to get good guidance from other Flex users with the same issue. It may be a little inconvenient for some of us with this new TRRS mic/headphone combination, but Flex chose to go that route and that is their right. As with all new equipment the accessories lag a little, but I am confident Heil and other mic manufactures will come out with something soon.

As for me, with all of this new good information I can now get mine working one way or another. I have ordered a TS to TRS adapter that should be here next week. If that does not work, I will be making my own end that will most certainly work. If the adapter works, I will post the amazon link for the one that I purchased.

Thanks to Flex and its employees for all the assistance and great products. All though not perfect or perfect for everyone they are still one of the best products for Ham Radio.

Mike-VA3MW · March 27

We have shared the requirement with Heil as recently as this week and they confirmed they have received it.

Reaching out to them directly will help impress upon them the urgency.

All their links have changed, so make sure you don't go to an old link.

https://heilhamradio.com/contact/

Curt_AC9HO · March 28

I have received the TS to TRS adapter and viola my Heil headsets and microphones work in conjunction with the Y adapter purchased from Flex. I was going to share my link from Amazon, but these are not very good quality so I will be looking for something different. It is good to know that a TS to TRS adapter will fix the issue if that is the way one chooses to go.

Russ Ravella · March 28

Excellent news, Curt ! Thanks for the update; much appreciated.

Russ KR6W

WB2RRF · April 2

Finally got around to building a solution. Very easy and cheap fix. I used a Female TS jack and wired it to a Male TRS, Tip to Tip and Shield to Shield, a few dollars in parts. Plug the TRS male into the Y cable mic jack and the Heil Mics into the TS Female and all works great. Using it with both a Heil ProSet Elite and with the Heil HMM.

Maestro C - Microphones with TS Mic plug + CTIA Y Cable.

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