Atlas had a single piece stereo microphone bar for around $20 last time I bought one. Lots of us have made our own from pieces of microphone stand hardware. It really depends what kind & style of microphone you are going to place upon this. I have to use different stereo bars depending upon what microphones I use & the type of stereo mike technique I choose to use. Sometimes it's XY, ORTF, Blumlien, MS. And it makes a difference whether it's a Shure SM 81, AKG 414 or Neumann U87. So your question is sort of like "which hand should I wipe with?" What if I told you I had 7 different kinds of stereo microphone mounts? Which one should I use? Any cheaper??! Are you going to hang a pair of $5,000 worth of microphones on this thing and you wonder what's the cheapest? That's scary. How about, what's the sturdiest? I'm not always right. But I'm never wrong.

Atlas held up the world. So what's a couple of microphones?
Ms. Remy Ann David

Oh. Well, then. I prefer to wipe with my left on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays and my right the rest of the time. Gives me ample time to wash either and preferably both hands. Sundays are my dirty days.

At this point I'm going to have to pick up an XY. Should handle ORTF, too, I believe? I'm relatively new and it's been the most successful so far, though I've no fig-8s and MS is out of the question. The Atlas bar looks beautiful. Naturally sturdiness is important and that's exactly what I meant, though I never once said that which is incredibly silly. I meant: is there any reason cheaper is worse? Sturdiness makes perfect sense. I suppose, however, that a pair of pencil condensers, MXL 604's can't be difficult to hold up and if Atlas fails, I'll send him to the gym and hope he washes both hands before lifting any weights.

Thanks, Remy.

Edit. Also. Do you look at all like your avatar?

I have a Sabra Som bar and it is my favorite. (Though as Remy says, no one bar is best for every situation.) We had some discussion of it in [="http://recording.org/ftopict-40066-sabra.html"]recent [/]="http://recording.or…"]recent [/][[url=http://="http://www.recordin…"]threads[/]="http://www.recordin…"]threads[/].