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I will agree with most (all?) of what Brad said and why he said it. I’ve had the same experience debating 48 vs 96 and microphone selection at least.

I will also offer up another microphone choice at a similar spec and price point to the Shure, the Audio Technica ATM650. It is designed for mic’ing guitar cabinets and drums. It can accent that same mid range crunch that the Shure is used for and can handle volume and fast transients just as well, since it’s also a decent drum mic. It has a better proximity effect than the SM57 to my ears though, and the bass spectrum can sound warmer if you want a slightly more full response. Not enough to screw with the guitar placement in the frequency spectrum, but enough to hear a difference.

It’s not the first mic I would reach for, but if you need an extra mic on toms or a 1st ir 2nd mic on an amp, it can hit the sweet spot.

Whole song recorded with nothing but SM57’s! Fun experiment. https://youtu.be/Qkh3LYlwaFo

There was a thread on gearslutz about it a while back.

I am just a home hack recorder, but I've liked the mics that I've bought and used on my amps, especially having no other reference but them to skew my opinion of them. I don't know if I've ever used an SM57, so I have no real opinion on that, but it is widely used as a standard.

The ones that I have are all Sennheisers - the e609, the e906 and the MD 421 II. The e609s are always under $100 (I'm pretty sure), and I recently bought a e906 that was on sale for about $100 (usually $200). And like Brad said, the 421 is a lot more, like $300 - 500.

Other people may have a more experienced opinion on these, but they work for my purposes.

Just another suggestion to complicate your decision.

That track with all 57’s is actually really good..when I had a listen on the studio speakers it felt like everything sat together really well. They also do one with an IPad and 57’s iirc.

I really like the SM57. With guitar cabs, it's all about placement for me. And as someone with a giant-sized voice, it's my preferred vocal mic, only because I don't have a Senheiser MD-409. (Yes, I'm a total Jame Murphy fangurrrl.)

Once you grok its proximity effect, you can use it to great advantage.

Oh, and I've been playing with it through a JHS Colourbox preamp and have had some very promising results.

sennheiser 609's have served me well with homerecording guitar rigs, i prefer them to 57's
if you want to hear some super lo-fi stuff recorded with e609's let me know I have a ton of crap up on bandcamp

I almost bought a 906 over Christmas.

Maggieo wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 22, 2019 9:56 am

Oh, and I've been playing with it through a JHS Colourbox preamp and have had some very promising results.

That's pretty cool, I hadn't thought of trying that.

I'm very happy with my Sennheisers, but I just bought a couple more mics because they were on sale - an MXL 990 condenser and an Audix i5, which also comes with a cabgrabber mic stand (they cost like $50 alone). Haven't gotten the i5 in yet, but read good things about it (vs other similar things). It will be nice to see how these mics all differ, and hopefully and more importantly, which pairings might complement each other best.

I'll have to pull out my Colourbox and check out using it with a couple of the different mics, that's a cool idea - thanks!

Larry Mal wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 24, 2019 10:38 am

I almost bought a 906 over Christmas.

I don't think you'd regret it. But everyone has their own ears & opinions.

I'm nowhere near skilled/experienced enough to have or offer a strong opinion in this area, I'm just trying to make what I have work for me.

Superlux pra-628 mkii great mic and you can just hang it over your amp no need for a stand.