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Published on 07/18/11 at 09:45
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.
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.