For $20 including labor it might be worth it.

The sound of that mic as opposed to the 4000 series has as much or more to do with the head basket and diaphragm/capsule as it does with the chip inside. It really was never meant to compete with the 4000 series so it is built to a price point by design.

Do you know the type number of the stock device that is used? I don't have an AT3035 so can't take a look.

I do have a 3035 here. I can't look now but I will try to take it apart tomorrow and see what's inside.

i'll have to take it apart, probably will post a pic cuz i'm not sure i'd even be able to identify what the chip actually looks like. This is my first potential venture into mic mods, sounded reasonobly easy to do. Agreed jack, i wouldn't expect this mic to compete with it's higher end siblings. That said i think it's an excellent mic for the price outa the box, and plays nicley w/ some of the higher end mics i use routinely. This mod is more for fun than anything else.

I took a 3035 apart today and I didn't see any ICs. There are two inductors, several capacitors & resistors. There are a few 3 pin devices which I assume are transistors. Those could be ICs as a 3-pin regulator is an IC but nothing that looks familiar to me like an 8 pin opamp. At any rate, it is very easy to open and although the components are surface mount, they are easy to get at so a substitution modification should be reasonably easy to do but I would hold out for a little more detail before I had it done.

TheJackAttack, post: 388156 wrote: For $20 including labor it might be worth it.

The sound of that mic as opposed to the 4000 series has as much or more to do with the head basket and diaphragm/capsule as it does with the chip inside. It really was never meant to compete with the 4000 series so it is built to a price point by design.

I had a 3035 for a while and it's a good mic for the price and for the color it offers but my 4040's are a cut above in terms of detail and information retrieval.

It does not need to be an Opamp or 8-legged critter to be an IC chip. My thought is that you need to track down the schematic on this baby. One way would be to call Audio Technica and tell them the mic was not working and you need to know what IC chips are in the schematic. They probably will either send you a parts list or schematic... However, they might not and my worry here is that IC transistors that you are looking at are house numbers where you might never figure out exactly what you are replacing. Try calling them give them serial numbers all that stuff and just act like you a tech guy that is wanting to fix this mic. They might just send you the schematic for the mic. It's probably a S-MOSFET IC component, but you won't get far with stock house number. What part numbers are on these chips that you see?

Edit: Even ask them to help identify these IC components for you to find out what types of chips they are... So you can replace them... They might tell you...

With only the AT3035 internal photo on GS to go by, it looks to me as though the only active component is a FET used as the input buffer. Given proper design, there is very little effect that this part will have on audio quality, and I seriously doubt that replacing it with a different FET would make an audible improvement.

Headroom is about the only aspect that might be increased by using a more modern device, but unless the only use you have for the mic is sticking it in front of a guitar cabinet, I would not even think about a modification. The output transformer may be the limiting factor in that department, anyway. Jack was right on track when he talked about the head and capsule design - that's where the major sonic differences between the AT 3000 series and the 4000 series lie.