A good mic

Not even close. Both had a 150Ω element.
Only the Road King came with a matching transformer to bump it up to 600Ω.
Road King also included a high pass filter which Astatic didn't have.

Results vary by technician. It's all about the tune.

 

Ok, but what about what you can buy off the shelf today?

 

Unltil you can try out a few to see what you like its just anothers opinion..
Also depends on your tech as rabbi said but if you wanna compare oit of the box with same radio,youtube has comparisions..

 

SRA 198 is king right now. Nothing else comes close. Unless.... like already mentioned, the tech has tune the radio per using a premium mic. With that said...... every one that I know have gone from the RK 56 and astatics 636 to the SRA 198 and are more pleased. They wish they have listened before.....

 

Mmm, Astatic seemed to have a higher tone "hollow" sound to it and the RoadKing had a lower tone "muted" sound to it.

It depends on what kind of voice you have as to which will sound better.

 

The weird thing is in my experience it was the opposite. Since the Astatic did not have a high pass filter, It had a much richer tone but the audio output level was much less due to the impedance mismatch. The road king didn't have any of the bassy tones due to the high pass filter clipping off the bottom and the output level was much greater.

 

Just saw RQ56 @ Loves $51.00

 

You mean RK ...... you couldn’t give me one for free unless it was one of the early ones built. Turner.

 

Would have to be back around 2000ish..

 

Wish I still had my old RK, bought it in the late 90s, sold it with my Galaxy 99 12 yrs ago when I thought I was done with OTR

Ok so I’m sold on the Ranger mic, I see it listed on eBay for $26 right now with free shipping.

What’s a decent radio nowadays, let’s say under $300?