telephone interview recording
 

I need to conduct a phone interview in 3 days, and I'm stumped as to the best way to go about it. I have a direct phone--> tape recorder device from RadioShack, but with the 3 adapters I tried to put on it to make it fit into an XLR so that I can record directly into my camera, something is lost along the way and it doesn't work.

Any ideas? Besides putting a mic up to the phone which is NOT applealing? I have used this radioshack thing before and went directly to audio tape, but it sounds pretty crappy.

Thanks,

Emily

I have used an iRiver , put the phone on speaker, set the mic up that way and got a recording which was technically good but of course it is not great audio.Do you want it to sound like it's recorded over the phone?

Are you using your Radio Shack device with the same phone that you used before? Some of these devices don't work with newer electronic phones. Make sure you can get it to work with a cassette recorder first, that will be your backup plan.
If that works, then you should be able to adapt it to an XLR mic input on your camera, but it may be very weak. You also have to make sure it is set at mic level and that phantom power is off.
Which camera are you using?
What adapters did you try?
Can you borrow or rent a Marantz portable cassette recorder with the built-in phone jack? You connect to this jack with a splitter adapter and record both sides of the conversation.
As Jack said, you can simply mic the speakerphone. If you're in a quiet room that is acoustically soft to reduce reverb, then this is an option.

Just came across your post, and my reply is probably too late.

Type in "Getner" in an internet search.

Getner makes a lot of products. the one I think would serve you best is one I knew as a "Getner telephone interface". I used to work in the meetings and conventions industry and would often find myself in a situation where I needed to conduct a question and answer session with a guest lecturer who would actually phone into a meeting hall. The telephone interface would allow me to treat every microphone in the hall as if it were a phone, and introduce the entire conversation into the hall's PA system. It was really simple to set up, and actually had a line out for recording purposes.

Also check out the JK Audio interfaces (THAT 2, THAT 1 or the Quick Tap)

Here a Link to That 1 - I have used them to get professional recordings into Voice mail systems that only have telephone interfaces - they work very well
http://www.markertek.com/Product.asp?baseItem=THAT%2D1&cat=INTERFACE&subcat=AUDINT&prodClass=TELEPHONE&mfg=&search=0&off=
or here
http://www.jkaudio.com/products.htm