Whatever your opinion on these, it's always useful to be able to recognise them and know what they're really like.

I always but them, when I spot them to have a look. Some new ones - with rather odd performance this time.

Decide for yourselves, and beware on Ebay - I sense these are the new SM57 and 58 flood the market types.

As a public service to RO and its potential visitors, I thought I'd research this topic and post a thread explaining the differences between real Shure SM58 mics and counterfeit models. In the last few years, a serious number of fake 58's have hit the global market. This isn't a myth, these fake mics are indeed out there, so here are some things to look for:

I upgraded from an AT2020 to AKG c214, i am currently running a Lexicon alpha into my laptop and adobe audition 1.5, after connecting the AKG the sound is a lot lower with the Lexicon setting untouched and the white noise is a lot higher than i expected, so i need to turn the mic volume louder than i had it with the AT2020, which also increases the white noise.

I got blindsided by the 32GB SDHC memory card I just bought for my brand new Marantz PMD620 digital audio recorder. It should have let me record 54 hours of continuous stereo 44KHz WAV (i.e. - CD quality) audio.