Parabolic Microphone

This article is taken from Five Gallon Ideas, which features over 100 uses for 5 gallon buckets with more being added all the time.

Reporting from Vancouver today with something I’ve never seen before – a 5 gallon bucket parabolic microphone!

I stared awestruck at this proud recording equipment today, cursing myself for not bringing a camera. This would have been the first bucket parabolic microphone on the internet.

What is a Parabolic Microphone?

A parabolic microphone looks like a satellite dish. It’s primarily used to collect and amplify ambient noise, such as the stadium noise being collected here.

Professional parabolic microphones are very rare and rather expensive, which is why this brilliant innovator was using a 5 gallon bucket and a standard news microphone.

He was recording today’s Dragon Boat Festival in Vancouver. If I can find the footage on youtube I’ll post it here so you can hear the audio quality that a bucket can deliver you.

Bucket Protected Microphone

This is a similar idea, it’s a microphone along with some recording equipment mounted inside a bucket, which effectively waterproofs it and makes for some great outdoor recording equipment which can be useful, for example, as part of a security system. For more about this device visit the originating site.

For many more ways to use 5 gallon buckets for self sufficiency, visit Five Gallon Ideas. When citing this article, please link to