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James... « Great value condenser »
Published on 09/29/11 at 17:24People should keep in mind. This is a value mic. You aren't going to get $3000 sound quality from it. I just wanted to say that up front. But for the price this thing is great. This is a very cut and dry condenser with no frills at all. However I was shocked at the build quality. It's built quite solidly despite the specs making it appear cheap. It's not cheaply built.
OVERALL OPINION
I initially got this for a friend who needed a cheap vocal mic, but during testing it we discovered it had a lot of other applications. Yes it does vocals pretty well. Particularly male tenor vocals. That seems to be the sweet spot. We did not try female vocals on it. It didn't like low male vocals very much. It takes a specific mic to do that well. It's not very forgiving if you have imperfections in your voice. A lot of cheaper condensers are like this. So if you are a bad singer it will show it with flying colors. If you have bad technique this mic can fix that. It's also very volume sensitive and it can peak pretty easilly. You have to play with the levels a bit to get it right. Not a huge issue really since this is a studio mic and you can control the environment.
We also found it was great on dreadnought acoustics and other smaller bodied guitars. The clarity and trueness to the sound was very surprising and this mic beat out a few small condensers we had costing a lot more. This gave us the idea that it might make a good ambient mic because of the clarity, but we tried it for hallway vocal slams and it was too "bouncy". I'm not sure how to describe it but it doesn't fair well as a room mic. Still though, for the cash this is phenomenal. Get one.
OVERALL OPINION
I initially got this for a friend who needed a cheap vocal mic, but during testing it we discovered it had a lot of other applications. Yes it does vocals pretty well. Particularly male tenor vocals. That seems to be the sweet spot. We did not try female vocals on it. It didn't like low male vocals very much. It takes a specific mic to do that well. It's not very forgiving if you have imperfections in your voice. A lot of cheaper condensers are like this. So if you are a bad singer it will show it with flying colors. If you have bad technique this mic can fix that. It's also very volume sensitive and it can peak pretty easilly. You have to play with the levels a bit to get it right. Not a huge issue really since this is a studio mic and you can control the environment.
We also found it was great on dreadnought acoustics and other smaller bodied guitars. The clarity and trueness to the sound was very surprising and this mic beat out a few small condensers we had costing a lot more. This gave us the idea that it might make a good ambient mic because of the clarity, but we tried it for hallway vocal slams and it was too "bouncy". I'm not sure how to describe it but it doesn't fair well as a room mic. Still though, for the cash this is phenomenal. Get one.