Loop the cable when holding the mike…
“Loop the cable once and hold the loop against the mic with the same hand you are holding the mic with. This will reduce a lot of the handling noise. I let my students hear the mic cable being tapped about 12 inches down from the mic without the loop and it picks up a lot of noise. With the loop, there is very little noise.” Andrew Higginson as quoted by Jonathan Marks in his sporadic Broadcast and Podcast blog
This works! I’m seeing a significant reduction in the sound of light taps on the cable using this simple technique. I have often seen recordists doing this while interviewing with a hand mike but had not realised why until trying this out.
Here is a recording of a suburban train in England pulling out of a station [ mp3, 48kb/s, 670Kb ] taken with the WS-200S dictation recorder and using the Shure VP64L video/radio microphone hand held in the carriage. I did use the Audacity high pass filter to roll off frequencies below 220Hz to reduce the rumble on the track. There is always a geezer who whistles on any train or in any location in a major city in the UK. Can you hear the train going through a narrow cutting around 1:08 into the track?