Shure PG48

The Shure PG 48 was a mic that I purchased years ago, probably around 6 years ago just because I needed a mic to record with on my laptop from home. Just do lay some pretty basic vocals down. I didn’t even have an audio interface at the time I just had the right wire connections and plugged it right into the mic in port on my laptop. When I purchased the Shure PG 48 for around 60 bucks or so I was very skeptical , I normally don’t use mics that are that cheap because that’s exactly it, they are cheap and provide poor quality.


OVERALL OPINION

Now I wont sit here and say that it sounds perfect and there wasn’t a need to upgrade to a different mic or anything like that. Because it wasn’t perfect, (could have been better if I had an audio interface at the time). But just using it how it was on my laptop still gave me the decent recordings that I needed to get some ideas and know which direction I wanted to go when I really went to the studio to lay the song down. But I don’t think its possible for this mic to be used as a main mic even in your house because it just doesn’t provide a clear enough natural sound. Everything kinda sounded muffled and really low quality to me. But It really didn’t matter because I didn’t need great quality just to record some stuff on the go with my laptop. So it served its purpose for a few months. Shure should have put a little more effort into making this mic a better quality even if they had to raise the price of a little bit. There are already enough cheap mics on the market that provide similar quality to this one. If you are just starting out, this could work for you or if you just need something simple to demo with it could work. But you wont get quality that you are happy with or quality that could be your master.

The Shure PG48 is a Dynamic microphone.  It can be used in almost any setting.  I don't recommend it for Vocals in a Studio setting because you should really be using a quality condenser for that.  But, I was told a few times by a few different people that the PG48 and the SM 57 are identical microphones with the exception of the Grills.  With that being said, I have used my PG48 on all sorts of gear including Guitar amps, bass amps (in conjunction with a Beta 52a), drums (snares and toms) and yes, even vocals (before I got some nice condensers).  With the exception of Vocals, this thing sounds great on everything in the studio.  There is a reason that Shure SM mics are the industry standard.  They are very clean and crisp and they can take a really good beating and keep on trucking.  When it comes down to preference however, I always take my PG48and my BG 5.1 vocal condenser if its just me singing through them. 


OVERALL OPINION

One of the best things about all Shure Mics is the amazing warranty they have.  Even when its out of warranty, no matter what happened, or what condition it is in, you can always send it to shure with a nominal fee (about $35 to $40) and get a brand spanking new one in return.   Besides that, this mic also gets props for its ability to take a beating and still sound great.   For the price )and its durability, this is a great mic.  The precision and quality of the sound is excellent for a mic in this price range.  I have used many different condenser mics including Samsons, Audix (also very nice), and behringer and the only one that can share the stage in my opinion is the Audix.  The rest are just wastes of money.  Yes, I would definitely keep a few of these around all the time.  You never know when you might need one and you can always be sure that it will live up to its reputation.

The Shure PG48 is the extreme budget vocal microphone for someone who apparently does not care about sound. There; you have heard all you need to know, but if you need more convincing, read ahead.

The Shure PG48 has a frequency response from 70-15,000 Hz, so it is not actually terrible in that regard. What is terrible about the frequency response, however, is the shape of the curve. The PG48 has a rather disgusting midrange hill, while obviously sloughing off in the higher and lower ends. This means that the PG48 will honk, and will lack any sort of detail in either the powerful low end or the defining high end. The bright side is, of course, that this also removes any sort of electrical hum. But it is not exactly worth it when the noiseless sound that comes out is not at all pleasant.

Moreso, the Shure PG48 has a rather questionable (but apparently accepted) impedance of 600 ohms. So try not to run this microphone's sound through any long cables of any sort. Also, the microphone needs a painful amount of juice, resulting in inevitable noise.

I should also mention the existence of an on/off switch on the microphone. Some may view this as a feature, but I personally think they look rather silly, but I suppose that for this reason they might work well enough for karaoke.

OVERALL OPINION

When Shure mentions on the website that this microphone should be used for karaoke, they are not saying, "This microphone is okay for karaoke and live sound, but because it is not that expensive, and the bottom of the line, we are going to tell you that this does not work for live sound and push you up towards a better microphone."

No. They are saying that this microphone JUST DOESN'T WORK for anything but.

Do yourself a favor and if you're on a budget, grab yourself a Behringer XM8500. It's cheaper, and leaps and bounds above this abuse of the Shure name.

(Originally written by phenix!/translated from Audiofanzine FR)
Dynamic mic with unbalanced output transformer.

It's virtually useless live if you want to connect it along with other condenser mics to the same mixer because of the unbalanced output transformer (unlike every single stage mic, Behringer included!).

In consequence:

- the output level is lower than a normal mic, so you'll have to seriously increase the input gain, which in turn will cause more noise and a poorer sound.

- Don't use it with long cables (longer than 23') otherwise you'll get noise (so forget about with your multicore).

- If you also use condenser mics and you turn the phantom power of the mixer on you'll break it, unless you have a high-end mixing desk with separate phantom power buttons on each channel).

I give it a point because it does produce some sort of sound.

OVERALL OPINION

Poor sound response. It's probably good enough for karaoke applications or you grandpa's birthday party.

But it's way too expensive considering the quality!!!

You can get much better mics to use in real live applications for less money.

Even the much cheaper Behringer XM85000 sounds better than this PG48.

And both of them will be appropriate for karaoke parties or your grandpa's birthday.

This mic is just a rip off!

Shure has a hard-won reputation thanks to some of their products but they exploit that to sell extremely bad and overpriced products!

To warp it up: don't buy this mic!

PS: I can't wait for Audiofanzine v4 so that I don't have to bear with MTV or Google ads anymore lol