Best Vocal Mic For under $500???

[Domurb]

my band is looking to spend up to $500 on a new vocal mic and were wondering which would be the best in your opinion??

[thesilentdrummer]

Originally Posted by Domurb

my band is looking to spend up to $500 on a new vocal mic and were wondering which would be the best in your opinion??

Why not buy 5 $100 mics (or any combination of mics adding up to $500)?? The more mics you have, the easier your recording job will be. Shure SM57/58, MXL990, Shure KSM27, etc. If it were me, I would buy a condenser and a dynamic (1 each at least).

[brandondrury]

Within reason, it's my opinion that there is no direct correlation between price and "quality". Even the quality part is a myth. Mics simply convert acoustical energy into electrical energy. For better or worse, mics are not very accurate at doing this. Different designs impact the tone in dramatically different ways.

The idea is not to use the most expensive mic or even what you may consider to be the "best" mic, but to find the mic that best compliments what the singer is trying to do.

For example, an expensive mic may be bright and "clear', but this may make a singer with a not-so-thick voice sound harsh or shrill.

So, choosing the vocal mic is much more an issue of finding the right match for the right singer.

Now, if a guy had to take a guess as to what a great vocal mic would be, I'd start with a
Shure SM7B Microphone

Brandon

[Jroye82]

brandon is right - mic to singer - singer to mic....mic pre's are just as important! room you are recording in, too.

My first mic i bought for vocals aside from an sm57 was a AKG C-3000B


check it out - listen to www.myspace.com/foreverthesickestkids
- can you tell me what vocals were recorded on a Blue - Blue Bird through an old school megga $$$ API console?? and which were done with the AKG i mentioned above??

[apumic]

Honestly, go to a music store and start singing into different mics and choose the one that best fits your vocalist's voice. That's what it really comes down to. For rock vocals, the SM 7 suggested earlier might be a great choice (it is in many cases), but that's not to say it's the best in every case. It really just depends.
A couple of other places I might suggest looking at are the RED Type B (designed by BLUE), BLUE Baby Bottle, AT 4040, AT 4047, AT 4060, and the Rode NT series.... Just start singing on some of those and see if any of them fit you! (Those cover the gamut of $200 on up to about $700...look on ebay to find good deals but be careful of scams!) It should also be noted that the more expensive a mic is, the more likely all the mics of that model sound the same (or very similar) since much of the price of a mic goes into quality control (for example, I am told part of why Neumanns cost so much is because Neumann actually rebuilds or throws away approximately 3/4 of the mics they make! So you're basically paying for all of the additional labor and materials as they throw out anything that sounds just a bit off! Hence... it's possible for a very rare NT-2 to actually sound comparable to Neumann equivalents simply because every NT-2 is going to sound a little different...which then impacts your ability to choose an excellent low-end mic without listening to that exact one)

Also, this is a mic for recording right? Otherwise... just go with an SM-58 and forget the others (for live sound).

On the other hand, if you really want to record a decent album or something, spend your $500 on studio time, not on a new mic! ...$500 will buy you 5-10 hrs in a decent studio (not top of the line, but I doubt you're ready for Eldorado (http://eldoradorecording.com/) or the other $250/hr top studios quite yet!)

[DT Chris]

Originally Posted by apumic

On the other hand, if you really want to record a decent album or something, spend your $500 on studio time, not on a new mic!

So true. Although this is a Home Recording Forum, care has to be taken that we all don't get hung up on the equipment and the 'means' and forget that in the end, we have to get the sound out and recorded at some point.

[brandondrury]

All great advice thus far!

A person has to decide if they are a "recording person" or a "musician". There is a difference. While there is some overlap, I've dedicated A TON of time to recording and still have a lot to learn. I could have been a doctor (not that I want to be) in the amount of time I've spent learning recording.

Brandon

[the_kiddy]

Why not buy 5 $100 mics (or any combination of mics adding up to $500)?? The more mics you have, the easier your recording job will be

why is this Brandon?

[brandondrury]

Why not buy 5 $100 mics (or any combination of mics adding up to $500)?? The more mics you have, the easier your recording job will be

why is this Brandon?

Let's pretend that I want you to color a picture of your house with the grass, the sun, and all that crap just like you did when you were 5. I'll give you one crayon...blue and I'll get five crayons....blue, yellow, green, red, and brown. Unless we are going for something crazy, both of us are going to want a yellow sun. Well too bad, because all you have is a yellow sun.

Read this:

Microphones Don't Make THAT Much Difference

[weefolk]

I found the Rode K2 to be extremely nice on vocals, **** and clear, have had some hair raising close up vocal takes that have convinced me this mic is silky and sexy and reliable, I did change the valve for a $30-40 one. Not cos it broke, but because I heard it could sound better with a non stock one. Also found recently that the Rode NT5 sounded great on a gentle male voice, sort of folky, whereas on a great but high pitched female voice it sounded shrill and honky! these (matched pair of NT5's) were an essential buy for me (£200), for overheads, acoustics, bouzuki's, and other stringed things, also great on pipes and whistles... or bells... Wonderin why not many people talk of Rode in this forum, I suppose there is a big choice of mics out there. I used to use a Sennheiser MD 421 for vocals, and was very pleased with it, until discovering the condenser option, although it can still be great on some vocals, it mostly sits in my Kickdrum or on a rack or as a splash (not cymbal) mic. This is a mic placed about 2-3 foot from the front of a miked up Kit. In between the overheads, roughly... it pics up the overspill it can be driven quite a lot (distorted), try it...