We are Singstar addicts. I’m not proud of it. It’s just a fact.
We love it, and it has become the family game of choice. The kids have worked out the exact drone you need to not actually sing but still win the game. Groover and I prefer the “sing your heart out approach”.
Funny to watch. To hear? Not so much.
But it came to pass that one of the microphones broke. A wire loose I suspect. Whatever. It wasn’t any fun to play when one of the mics wasn’t recording your singing properly.
So we decided to buy a replacement microphone.
Dead air is the term radio people use to describe the sound on the wireless when NOTHING is going to air.
Dead air is the term I’m using now to describe Sony’s response when we asked where we could get a replacement microphone. That’s right. If your microphone breaks – Sony expect you to buy another full game. $109.
So we decided to try and use the microphones from an old kareoke game we had. Problem. The input jack of the kareoke mic is 6 cm and the input of the little dongle thing from Singstar is 3.5 cm.
No worries, I thought, we’ll just go to Dick Smiths and get an adapter. Problem. Sony has cunningly made the hole just a little bit smaller than the adapter… and all the microphones for sale have this larger input jack.
I didn’t give up. No corporate giant is going to get the better of me! I went to my local guitar shop – Just Music – and they managed to find me a skinny 3.5 cm plug on a cord and a female-to-female plug which allowed me not only to fit my old mic to Singstar but also gave me a couple of metres extra cord so I could sing from my favourite couch on my lardy arse.
Totally love that.
So if your Singstar mic breaks – you can use any other microphone. Just pop down to your local guitar shop, take your Singstar USB dongle thingy with you so you can fit the new bits, and you can be singing as sweetly as me.
For a grand total of $17.
See the red plug? That’s the Singstar microphone plug. The trick is to find a skinny plug to fit into the Singstar dongle. You also need an adapter to fit a bigger plug – the one most other microphones use.
Our new set-up to replace our broken Singstar microphone.
{ 5 comments }
‘Fun to try to figure out what this attractive and youthful couple might actually be singing in the pic.
The gal is all soulful and intense whilst the Groover is a bit ‘All Rightee’ and ‘go-gettem’ – but their both duetting on the smae number…
So what is it – that can make a gal go all misty eyed for times gone by and allow the fella to wallow in a little macho feel-goodedness?
My (totally-uninformed) vote goes to ‘I Had the Time of My Life’ from Dirty Dancing.
Imagine if I was right, how spooky would that be?
BTW – well done Oz, beat us Green-Lads fair and square at the rugger but Bow/O’Driscoll got a good ‘un in before the end.
We love to torment our neighbourhood with long bouts of Singstar also! It’s such ridiculous fun:-)
Good advice about spare parts – I’ll definately remember that !
Similar deal with mp3 players. I had an original ipod shuffle. Works through itunes. Transferred music files to itunes, no problem. Now I have a sony walkman mp3, works through windows media. Tried to transfer music files OUT of itunes – NO GO. I spent a couple of hours installing all my cd’s into windows media.
It is a pity that we don’t get singstar in my town. I am not even sure if we get those things in India. I have read about them on a couple of blogs and they do seem like great fun.
I love it when you outsmart big corps. I had a similar problem when I lost a charger to my mini hand vac. Then darn charger plug was more then half the cost of the vacuum. I refuse to pay and the vacuum sits on my shelf until I can figure out a charge I already have that will work.
Dorothy from grammology
remember to call gram
grammology.com