What mics to buy/best bang for the buck/first post?

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 4:02 pm

Hi All,

This is my first post. I'll tell more detail below if you'd like.

I'm looking at getting
1. a Blue Bluebird
2 a stereo pair (rode nt5, cascade m39, josephson someday maybe, etc.)
2.5. Cascade fathead pair
3. Some Shure sm 57, 58s to round it out
4. Some pzm's.
5.Presonus Firestudio (diff btwn this and studio version?)

Thank you in advance...

My first gig (in my new life) is recording musical saw (playthesaw.com) with piano and perhaps voice. I'll start another thread about that. I'm thinking bluebird or fathead for the saw...

What do you guys think?

Background: experienced noob:

Full Sail 1988 -> Interned/assistant eng@ Quantum Sound, Jersey City for one year->frustrated, quit->BS in Computer Science->10 Years of IT work->spark of inspiration (I love/miss recording)->Bought Logic 8, want to record Grandfather in law rocking the saw for first hobby gig... Found this forum, enjoying it.

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 9:15 pm

Respectfully, your 57s and 58s should probably come first and then everything ELSE would round it out.

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 9:42 pm

ok, why? Their resolution is nowhere near good enough for strings, vocals ( There are a lot of chamber music gigs near where I live...)

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 10:21 pm

Quote:

ok, why? Their resolution is nowhere near good enough for strings, vocals ( There are a lot of chamber music gigs near where I live...)

because you haven't supplied a budget and/or a time frame to which you'll want all of these things. if you could give us both, that'd help a lot. since you haven't supplied a budget, we'd have to assume that you're trying to work on the cheap, and...well...the 57s and 58s are as best a bang for the buck as you can get.

out of the mics that you've listed, other than the 57s/58s, i've only had the rodes. i bought a pair of nt5s the day before a gig and used them to record a live drum kit as a spaced pair at a jazz recital...i've never had a better drum recording ever...no matter how many mics i used before. i have a pair of nt2-a's as well, and just love the rodes all together.

as for the presonus, it's pretty good stuff. i had a firepod and liked it a lot for the cash i spent on it. i mean, there's better stuff out there, but it's not bad at all for what it costs.

-dave

Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 7:01 am

kjfarley wrote:

Their resolution is nowhere near good enough for strings, vocals

???

What do you mean by resolution?

I won't argue whether or not they'll work on strings, there are certainly better choices, but I'd like to know how you come to the conclusion to say that a 57/58 aren't good enough for vocals?

The Bluebird is a nice mic btw.

Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 6:31 pm

Hi All,
Thank you for your responses. My time frame for buying the presonus, bluebird and a stereo pair is approx. 1 month.
The rest will be over the next year or so. I've heard good things about the Cascade Fatheads, especially for strings.

I'd love to get an Apogee Ensemble, but $2k is way over my head for now (so is an api board and a Studer A-80 24 Track, but the lottery might just come in...)

From what I've learned, sm 5* are not good enough for vocals, kind of crude, not very detailed, but excellent for guitar, etc.

I guess I'm wondering does this setup sound good, or are there other mics I should be looking into in the sub $500 range?

Perhaps Bluebird vs AT 4040 range, etc.

Thanks!

Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 4:50 am

SM58 is certainly good enough for vocals, in fact it's excellent for vocals, at least certain types. It probably isn't the top choice for recording a classical singer (never recorded anything like that myself, so it's just an semi-educated guess), but for pop/rock/metal/folk etc type of music it's a very good vocal mic. In my experience it just needs a decent preamp to really shine, and it's being used (and has been used for decades) as a vocal mic both live and in professional recordings all over the world.

It's not always the right choice of course, but it's a very good dynamic mic, and should definitely not be dismissed out of hand. It's true it's not as detailed as a condenser, but I often find you don't want too much detail when recording vocals.

Now I'm no expert, just a happy-go-lucky amateur recording enthusiast and life-long musician, but there are several members here who are experts. Remy especially can tell you about the wonderful world of SM58s...

Just my 2p.

MetalGod

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