DIY Pasta Measure & Tripod Microphone Stand

Pasta measure mic stand

What do you do when you find a great deal on a USB microphone at a secondhand store but it doesn’t come with its desktop stand? Simple: you dig through your junk drawers and messy office until you find a wooden pasta measure, a broken tripod, an old guitar pick, and the perfect rubber band.

The very top of the tripod, the plastic piece where the camera mounts, had snapped while its tilt was being adjusted. Glue, not surprisingly, was useless.

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That still left most of a working tripod, including the two pieces for adjusting the mount’s horizontal rotation.

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The pasta measure was still fully functional, since it consisted only of a piece of wood with four holes in it for estimating one, two, three, or four servings of spaghetti. Okay, and a fifth hole for the leather tag holder / hanger. I believe I’d used this thing approximately never, because there’s not really such a thing as too much spaghetti.

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The hole for two servings fit allllllmost perfectly around the base of the telescoping portion of the tripod. A small rubber band, slightly stretched, filled the gap with some nice cushioning.

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The microphone itself? Roughly cylindrical, but tapered, so it naturally slipped through the hole for four servings just enough to be snug.

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After slipping the pasta measure over the extended top rod, I reattached the horizontal adjuster.

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Then, using an old guitar pick as a shim, I lowered the telescoping rod down.

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A plastic outcropping and the vertical handle of the tightened bolt served to press the pasta measure securely onto its new tripod base.

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Some leg adjustment to ensure the whole thing doesn’t topple off balance, et voila!

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A used mic is put back into service, a broken tripod begins a second life, and a pointless pasta measure ($6.99? just to avoid leftover spaghetti? come ON) gains a noble purpose. Huzzah!

The microphone’s first recording on its new stand was, of course, a vocal track for I Was a Dinosaur. It’s pretty happy here.

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