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Would everyone here like a laugh? I was reading what Crochambeau said about condenser microphones and I thought, I'll just look that up on Amazon, maybe they won't cost much. First item that appears in the search results makes me think 'hang on, I've seen that before somewhere..." and a few misfiring synapses and neural disruption issues later and I remembered where... I own one of them It was a Behringer C-1 and I bought it 5 or 6 years ago when I was just starting to play instruments again (after a break of over 20 years) and wanted to record an acoustic guitar, but didn't realise the microphone needed phantom power - I bought an XLR to 1/4 inch jack cable, plugged that into a 1/4 inch to 1/8 inch converter and stuck that into my PC's mic input socket and got hiss, extremely faint sounds and loads more hiss... and deduced that it was rubbish and I wasted my money, cursed a lot and dumped the box at the back of a storage tub in the garage...

So I've just spent the best part of an hour rummaging through plastic boxes in the dark (does creating music make the mind more conducive to eccentric / abnormal behaviour? PhD for someone there I reckon) and I found it, plugged it into my 6i6 and wow, 48V of power means it actually records sound! There's no hiss I can hear, just some low electrical power rumble that might be everything else in the room I'm in and was easy to remove in post production - it sounds fairly good to me - it recorded some vocal tests and my son's ukulele; I'll try an acoustic guitar and glockenspiel and kalimba tomorrow (it's after midnight and everyone else is asleep). It seems to only record sound well from the front, and I need to stay within about 30cm / 1 foot of it, but the same was true of the rubbish soundLAB dynamic microphones I have been using.

Thankyou very much everyone, this wasn't the result I was expecting, I was going to bid on some SM58s on Ebay - I was thinking of using actualidiot's very good advice, but now I'll run more tests with the C1 first because it sounds fine so far.

Ahhh only issue is I can't run this C1 through effects pedals? hmmm wonder if I could take a cable from the 6i6 headphone jack to the pedals, then back into the second input jack of the 6i6 and then record and get dry audio on one channel and wet on the other? Or maybe just screaming feedback loops? I think I'll try this now! Thanks very much everyone, you've been a great help!

OK I just discovered a new way of creating really loud feedback (with an interesting pulsing oscillation and fairly low pitch too) but no actual discernible music... damn... so I might still need a good dynamic microphone as well, time to look at Ebay!

Last question - there are loads of SM58s and some SM57s on Ebay in the UK, mostly around £45 which I think will be fine - one slightly worried thought in my head is, if these microphones are so good why are there loads of them for sale at reasonable prices? Or are they just the microphone equivalent of a Boss SD1 and everyone and their grandmother has half a dozen of these at home?

I'm glad you found a solution!

moid wrote:Last question - there are loads of SM58s and some SM57s on Ebay in the UK, mostly around £45 which I think will be fine - one slightly worried thought in my head is, if these microphones are so good why are there loads of them for sale at reasonable prices? Or are they just the microphone equivalent of a Boss SD1 and everyone and their grandmother has half a dozen of these at home?

They're fairly common to say the least, but, as lame as this might sound - you find them on stages, for various purposes, with really the biggest musicians anywhere and it's been like that since forever. Both are classics and staples, durable too.

Hahaha, awesome.

Yeah, SM57 and SM58 have been produced for decades.. something like 40 years or so (and there are Unidyne 2 & 3 mics that became them that go back into the 1960s). Decent mics, well worth having one around.

everything everyone has said so far is what i would say too. the only other thing i can think of is that you could try a Behringer Ultravoice Xm8500 if you want a dynamic mic. i haven't tried them personally, but a lot of people talk very highly of them compared to the sm57s. I really want to try one just because of how low the price is. They are super cheap and if you could find a used condenser mic on ebay, you could probably buy both this mic and a condenser mic for the same price as a brand new sm57

Thanks actualidiot and crochambeau.

Ibarakishi - I'm a bit dubious of Behringer products - the quality seems very hit and miss. I've owned one of their mixers (it was rubbish, kept malfunctioning) and two of their pedals (both have now broken; the only pedals I've ever broken... tell a lie, I broke a Joyo Chorus once as well), and the fact that the Behringer microphone I'm now using is actually working is something of an unexpected blessing... I suspect they do make some good equipment, but their QA is highly lacking or non existent, so if you get a good one, you're lucky, and if not, you've got some rubbish to sort out alas. I've done more recording with the C1 today and it worked well on a variety of instruments, so that's great. The only issue so far was when I tried to use it to record my bass amp with a bass guitar going into it - it was picking up the sound of the bass strings in the room as well as the sound of the bass coming out of the amp which makes it sound like an odd slap back delay... I guess real musicians are not squeezed into a small room with their amps when they record

I'm watching some SM58s on Ebay now but I've noticed the actual selling price of these microphones seems to be around £60-70... they just start at around £30. I may have to wait for this one... but I will try some re amping of the clean recordings through some effects instead.

Not at all what you're looking for, but you'd probably dig this:

https://reverb.com/item/6622522-aquaria ... one-system

haha, that is really cool and surprisingly cheap

Whoops I missed this! Looks funChank, not sure how I'd use it though! Sadly microphone purchasing is on hold; my wife's PC's graphics card just died so that needs to be sorted out first

Phantom is spec'ed at 48v, but phantom it is not always 48v. Some mics will operate fine on like 24v and up, so, particularly before the DAW home studio revolution took hold around the turn of the millennium, some manufacturers of preamps and mixers cheaped out and only built 24v-ish into their products. Works with a lot of mics but not all.

Safe move is to research the mic and the gear providing phantom before you buy. Probably overly cautious for most gear, but you won't have to deal with disappointment if you pre-screen the issue.