Quote:
Originally Posted by loco gringo
If a person were wanting to purchase one mic for the purpose of Dexterizing guitars, lets say $400.00 max, what would be a good choice? Maybe discuss lesser priced mics as well. Would a mic in the $400 range give you a better dual purpose mic, say Dexterizing as well as a recording mic, than say a $150 mic?
Let's assume said person has no mics and can't experiment with several that they have on hand.
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It's a very good question. The SM81 is a gold standard, and in our experience will always yield great results on any guitar. And it's a good mic to have in your mic locker, if you are into recording.
However, the new Slate ML-2 is every bit as good in our experience. It is not quite available yet, that's the downside. Slate tells me that it will be available very soon, before year's end for sure. It has other advantages if you are into recording, as it comes with some software modelling capabilities that can give it a bunch of other personalities in your recording environment. But for purposes of Dexterizing your instrument, it can't be beat. And that's not just for guitar, but other instruments including upright bass.
I believe that the mics with the flattest on axis response will yield the consistently best results across all instruments. You can go to recordinghacks.com and look up the response of most mics if you want to check a particular one's response curve.
We haven't tried these, but based on their response and price, have reason to believe they would work well: Line Audio CM3, Rode NT5, Marshall MXL-600, Sterling ST-31.