Hi, I'm Mike Padgett. Today we're talking about the microphone handle for the Sony NEX
FS100. I recently discovered that I could not get my sliding piece to lock into place.
I did a little troubleshooting and realized that this knob was stripped. Because my camera
is still under warranty, I wanted to make sure that just the screw was stripped and not the
threaded hole itself. That way maybe I could get Sony just to send me a new screw. I know there's
been some discussions and questions about the strength of this handle, so I decided to take
it apart to check out the threads and to see how it's made. I hope you enjoy it. First thing
you have to do is take out these two screws, and that lets this piece slide in and out.
I like to put my parts in a little bag so I can keep the screws together. When I go to put it
back together, I know where they go. This just slides right out. Next thing we have to do is
remove this plate right here. The reason we have to do that is because there's a C-clip on here
that's just a little easier to get off when this plate's missing. When you pull this out,
there's a spring on there, all this junk in a bag. In order to take the rest of this apart,
you have to take this off. You just have to gently lift up the front edge,
and then it slides back out of the way. Four screws here. Once again, put this in a bag. To
take this off, there's two screws here, this one and this one. Once those are undone,
this piece just slides off, and this piece falls out. I'm going to put that back in when you're
done. I'm not going to put this in a bag. I'm just going to lay it over here out of the way.
Take this other piece off. You need to take this screw out under here. This is the piece right
here. I was looking to see if the threads were compromised. It doesn't look like they are,
but I also wanted to see how this was put together. There's a couple more screws to get
this apart. The next thing you have to do is take out this plastic piece. As you can maybe see,
it doesn't go all the way around, so you just kind of have to collapse it on itself and pull it out.
Then it comes out. You just have to fiddle with it a little bit. Once you have that out,
you have this access hole here, which allows you to get to this screw right in there that takes
this plate off. This is the plate that applies pressure. There's a little nipple in here that
guides that plate and then the screw hole. This is the hole here that I was concerned might be
stripped. At this point, you can see kind of how this bracket's made. I'm going to continue to
disassemble it just a little bit more. Take this screw out right here, and that allows this to
slide off. This lets you see that the bracket itself is made out of a casting, kind of a Z-shaped
casting, and it has these stampings applied to it. There's two stampings, this back stamping,
it's like three, this front stamping, and this C-shaped thing. At this point, I could tell that
the threads are fine. It's just this little screw that's the problem. That's not a lot of threads
that lock down that sliding microphone holder. What I've done, I've taken a little sandpaper
and I roughed up the edge, the surface of this piece in order to provide a little more friction
so that in the future, this doesn't have to be tightened down so tight to possibly hold it.
I've contacted Sony and they're making arrangements to get me a new lock knob. The official part
description for this part is Knob HN Lock. This part sells for $43 US. I hope you find this
helpful and thanks for watching.
