Shure SM5b replacement windscreen set

Customer Reviews

An awesome set of fresh SM5B windscreens with a few nitpicks Review by Bryan

Quality
Usage
Price
Appearance

I want to first thank the people here who made these windscreens, as getting new ones for this vintage microphone was impossible before then. They even got the porosity of the two foams correct! I bought these almost 2 years ago and I am still very satisfied! However if I had to nitpick, there are a few issues I found. As someone else mentioned, the windscreen diameter does not perfectly match the microphone's diameter. It's pretty close, but you'll always have one side of the circle that's not completely covered, both front and back. Secondly while the two windscreen colors are different, the front one is not accurate to what the original windscreen front windscreen was. What I mean by this is the front windscreen (less dense foam) is darker than the rear windscreen (denser foam). The original set had the front windscreen as a light gray rather than black. The rear windscreen color though is still accurate to the original (dark/charcoal gray), but this is lighter than the front when it should be the other way around.
Again, these are just nitpicks. The windscreen set is still great! But if the sellers decide to correct these small issues (Especially the color), I'd certainly order another pair!

RESPONSE FROM OUR SALES:

Hi Bryan. Thanks for your review. The foam is not available anymore in these original colours, so the colours we can't change. But the our new 2.0 versions have a slightly better fit than your 2 year old first batch we produced. The new version has also the original holes in the windshields instead of slits. (Posted on 9/26/2023)

Not totally correct measurements for both my sets Review by Seth

Quality
Usage
Price
Appearance

I was astonished that a company was brave enough to make the foams again. Happy that they are back in production, but there are two major complaints. The holes are not cut out for the spokes from the frame so you are forced to DIY it. Was hoping it can be done at the factory, but the second major complaint is that the diameter is a little off. The foam doesn't completey go around to the edges. For the price I paid, I was hoping it would be manufactured and measured correctly, but for the time It's taken and the fact it's foam for a mic from the 1960's - I will cut some slack. But I hope to see these improvements as more units are manufactured!

REPLY REPORTERSTORE:

The slits in the foam are the only option, since boring is expensive and on the 45ppi half we can’t even do those bores because they are to close to the wall. It will tear the foam. The slits were the best option to make it durable. Normally this should just fit fine, the slits go over the spikes and the foam folds around them. Our reticulated foam does not tear like China foams do. It is much tougher.

We now spray out the sm5b windshields before shipping and found out that this makes about 2mm difference in the overall diameter (foam expands a bit), so this might be a bit better to make it fit (deeper and wider).

If we get to make a new batch, this one will be slightly deeper and wider, but on the spike hole bores we probably cannot change anything unfortunately. It is just the best next thing. And we don’t want to be making foams that no one can pay. Always tricky to find a balance there.

We also got remarks that the former old SM7b windshields were the other way around in colour (the dense one blacker, and the more open one greyer), but we work with reticulated best quality audio foam that is on the market and the lower density is black, the higher density foam is a bit more greyish.

We have some pictures from customers that glued them on and the end result is still really nice. We made these without having the original windshields at hand because there are no original non-desintegrated ones any more probably. (Posted on 11/27/2021)