Physical barriers detiorate the sound. You can try foam pop filters or pinning the mic under a piece of clothing but I don't think you'll get good results. Lav mic's are like all mic's, some are quality and some are not.

martinjohnson, post: 386667 wrote: Looking to reduce the level of sound into a lavalier mic by physical means, NOT via an audio pad.
It's an EBay bought iPhone mic which is very sensitive, good quality but the capsule is easily overloaded. Figured that some sort of physical barrier would be best. Appreciate any ideas.
Thanks

Kind of a weird question with absolutely no information....maybe this is some experiment?
What are you using it for?
How is it located?...on whom or where?
What are you pluggin it into?..what brand/model of equipment is it?
Physical barrier?....what?...that's pretty counter intuitive to what a microphone does.
It's sensitive for a reason.
Maybe wrap a bunch of duct tape around it??...that'll cut the sound getting in!...weird

Right, but it must be quality because it plugs into something made by Apple.

Yeah...well I didn't see where it was mentioned it was plugged into an iPhone?
And we all know how quality Apple stuff can be....
But I wonder how...."the capsule is easily overloaded"!?!?!?
That must be a lot of "SPL"!....maybe rocket launches or explosions??

I doubt that you are overloading the mic capsule itself. These sort of mics are usually powered by "plug-in power" from the recorder, and this can be as low as 1.5V, causing the mic output buffer FET to be easily overloaded.

You could try using an external pass-through battery pack between the mic and the recorder. The ones that use 9V batteries would be the type to try, as this would give you much more headroom, and it means you may be able to go into the line input of the recorder if the signal is too hot for the mic input.

[[url=http://[/URL]="http://richard-mudh…"]Here[/]="http://richard-mudh…"]Here[/]'s a short web piece about plug-in-power electret mics and high SPLs.

There are a lot of crap items "designed" to be plugged into an iPhone or whatever. Consumers often are beguiled by the Apple. Remember that one then has to use the iPhone itself as a preamp. So we have essentially a cheap chinese capsule going into at best a mediocre preamp. While Blue does make some mic's for iPhone or whatever that doesn't make them equal to normal gear for sure. Or Shure.