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In Reply to: RE: help finding best mics in the $50 range posted by thump on January 06, 2017 at 18:32:16
For under $100, a used SM57 is hard to beat. Actually, impossible to beat - they withstand anything. (Find the youtube vid of someone running over an SM57 with an 18-wheeler, and showing the mic almost still worked afterward. In a full-day mic shootout at a studio with all the big guns (U47, U67, AKG C12/24, etc) we always put up a 57 at the end. It wasn't as good as the $10k stuff, but surprisingly close, and certainly not embarrassed by the comparison. 57's are very tolerant of high SPLs. (The SM58 is the same mic with a pop filter built in.)
Another option is the AKG D200E. Find it used (long out of production.) Very flexible due to having 2 capsules - mids/highs, and lows. The mids/highs are top-addressed, and have no proximity effect. Lows are bottom-addressed. With this, you can vary the freq response by the angle of the mic. Straight-on for mids/highs; 45-degrees for balanced, and; 90-180 degrees for lows only. Decent vocal mic, and very handy for guitar cabinets, as you can vary the tonal balance by tipping the mic.
Audio Technica also have a great range of very affordable vocal mics. One of the mics Tony Bennett used for his Duets sessions was an AE5400, which retails for under $400.
The first place to put money in your vocal chain is mic preamps. Differences there are not subtle.
WW
"A man need merely light the filaments of his receiving set and the world's greatest artists will perform for him." Alfred N. Goldsmith, RCA, 1922
Follow Ups:
A shure sm57 is just not going to cut it for 2 point high quality recordings. Because of its far from flat response and limited dynamic range it makes for a great mic for live vocals, snares and guitar cabinets not for 2 pointt recordings.
The poster wants to make quality 2 track recordings.......not going to get it out of a sm57. Whether or not it can withstand being run over by a truck doesn't make it a good mic for 2 point recordings. It makes it a good mic for being run over though.
EXACTLY!
they aren't made for hifi recording, just high SPL.
You are correct. Unfortunately, a used 57 is by far the best mic I'm aware of for $50.
WW
"A man need merely light the filaments of his receiving set and the world's greatest artists will perform for him." Alfred N. Goldsmith, RCA, 1922
Btw, there are a lot of interesting things you can do with a PZM mic, like attach a polycarbonate plate to them. This can make them very serviceable as a free air mic in a two channel configuration. They do become a bit unwieldy, though, but they will handle high spl's.
i bought my pair SPECIFICALLY to make binaural recordings after reading about frank zappa doing it by wearing a pair in some magazine that went a little bit further into their potential.at first, i mounted the pair at approximately head width on a large format hardcover book and managed to make some really good, especially off center, pseudo-binaural recordings including one that REALLY captured a hot city weekend's ambience including a thoroughly convincing bus passing down the block, but traffic flowing in front of my apartment sounded slightly artificial and lost some imaging in the center.
later on, i was gifted a used (smallish) dummy head from a beauty school when i inquired about buying one. head shaped binaural mics are supposed to image and record better. once i had the head, i used a few packages of "steel putty" to make slightly forward and wider than the dummy's head mounts that i could velcro the mics to. it's made some EXCELLENT recordings including a train pass, except when its horn caused distortion at close distance, but otherwise sounded great, especially after it was in the distance and you could just about feel the cool summer sunset air in the recording made on a sony TC5DM portable cassette recorder.
sometimes though, the mics have a slight metallic resonant signature i've heard in other mics too.
Edits: 01/08/17
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