Sometime ago an Avon S10 gasmask came into my possesion. I personally think it looks rather cool. But that is not the point of this post. The mask has a plethora of features, from drinking tubes to very thought-thru air circulation. But more importantly for this article: the S10 has a “secondary speech module” on its side, where you are able to add an external microphone for use with radios or other means of communication.

A clansman microphone module with a short wire attached to it. The microphone module is made from black plastics, the membrane is green with a red stripe across.
The S10 clansman microphone

The microphone itself clips onto the side of the S10 fairly easily. Its connector, however, is a little trickier. It uses a British military standard called “Clansman”, which contains a set of three pins in a locking connector. Procuring the microphone module was fairly simple, I got it from eBay for cheap. Finding a receptacle for it, however, was not. So it was time to make one!

A top down view of a worn-down connector with three pins in the center. The casing is in a dark military green.
A top-down view of the clansman connector

After stuffing some jumper cables in the connector, just to check if the microphone even worked. Which it did! (more about that below) I decided to 3D print a fitting connector to ruggedise the setup a little more:

A simple 3D rendering showing a plastic part with three extrusion.

This design allows you to stuff three normal jumper cables in, add some hot glue and shrinkwrap. In my experience it works well, I’ve had no issues yet.

Electrical setup

The electrical setup is very simple. You have one ground and two pins for the microphone. Building an adapter to convert it to regular audio cabling is a trivial task.

Pinout of the Clansman microphone, if anyone should need it:

A simple image showing the pinout of the clansman connector. Three pins are shown. The pins at one and four o'clock are marked with "microphone". Another one at eight is marked with "ground".
Top-down view of the pinout

A few more photos

A styrofoam head wearing an S10 mask with tinted lenses. The clansman microphone is attached to the mask and a black tactical helmet.