At this point in my life, it’s fair to say that I’m a gear head. As a musician, I like having gear around – it’s good to have options. When you have other gear head friends, things like the results of this post happen!
During our holiday break, my friend Brandon and I convened on two separate days to test some microphones. One day was for snare drums (I’ll post that later) and the other was for guitar amps (We had also done this a few years ago for kick drums, but I have to find those files again before I can post them.). In order to eliminate as many variables as possible, I played the same riff through the same guitar amp (pictured above) with the same settings and we placed each microphone as close to the same spot and distance as possible. In addition, the only EQ placed on the guitar tracks after recording is a high pass filter at 80 Hz and no mastering effects were used. I compressed and EQ’d the bass track… well… because. Besides, the guitars are the important part here.
I now present our results – eight microphones, two at a time. The first microphone listed is panned hard left and the second is hard right. And before you ask: Yes, it’s the same riff as the Guitar Amp Test, just slowed down a bit.
Our first matchup is the ol’ standby facing one of its many challengers – Shure SM57 – vs. Blue EnCore 100i.
Next is probably the least fair matchup – Audio Technica Brand X XM3 (discontinued) vs. Electro-Voice N/D478.
Next we have the Audio Technica Battle – ATM63 (discontinued) vs. ATM650.
Lastly is the matchup of the microphones that need phantom power – Blue Ball (discontinued) vs. Groove Tubes Convertible.
The interesting thing to me was the difference in microphone input levels. We set the input level on my interface at the same spot for each microphone, but some mics were much quieter than others. Not surprisingly, the Ball and Convertible were by far the loudest – we were so close to clipping on the Convertible track…
So there you go. What do you think? Personally, I’m pretty sure this is the last time I record guitar amps with just a 57.
Ed Makes Things 