JeffB Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 Guess this goes here. Bought a new sm57 after I got sick of repairing the couple Ive had for .. ...along time. While there I was having a casual look at some ribbon mics. Not really ready to jump in and buy but curious enough to ask questions and generally staff bother and kick tires. The young guy I was talking to was great, knowledgeable and had a easy going manner. He's my new best friend. I will bother him again with questions and details of my set up and needs/wants he probably doesnt care about. He was showing me the spendy stuff, they look beautiful! I could buy a 535 or a couple of strats for the same money. I kept pointing at the brands I hadnt heard of on the bottom shelf. He gave in and eventually I walked out with a SE X1R and the SM57. The SE X1R is a cheap passive ribbon mic. It was on the very bottom shelf. This demo isnt a scientific comparison at all and its not even a great tone I recorded. I was playing a strat right up until I hit record. For some reason I picked up the H150 and just played on without adjusting the amp settings or the trim on the desk. It peaks a couple of times and is a bit flubby in places. The mics were about 6inches from the grill cloth and aimed in the general direction of midway between cone and outer edge of speaker. The pics in the vid have nothing to do with where they were when I recorded. I threw the AKG D5 in because even though its really a vocal mic, (I used it gigging for a long time, it suits my tortured fog horn vocal stylings) Ive used it to record guitar quite often lately because it was easier than fixing the dodgy sm57's For those that dont like yt https://soundcloud.com/jeffbn/mic-thing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kbp810 Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 Nice comparison; I think to my ears the SM57 sounded the best with the D5 in a close second. The X1R sounded a little compressed/muted. Though I fully understand that with different positioning, configuration, and/or different scenarios there could be a different result. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conneazoo Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 I'd buy the X1R. Excellent clarity. However, it seems to be the one that would benefit the most from EQ. It picks up the bass hard. YMMV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LK155 Posted July 10, 2016 Share Posted July 10, 2016 Old ears here. The second and third samples sounded just about identical to me, with the SM57 somewhat darker. Any one of them would likely be totally suitable. I've been using an SM57 for a few years now and have no desire to look for anything else. No vocals involved, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffB Posted July 10, 2016 Author Share Posted July 10, 2016 I'd buy the X1R. Excellent clarity. However, it seems to be the one that would benefit the most from EQ. It picks up the bass hard. YMMV. The bass surprised me. It picked up the percussive aspect of it where to me the sm57 smoothed it out. I did mess around with distances from the speaker and combining mics. Got some pretty cool results with the X1R further from the amp and the SM57 closer. Its funny but I actually dont think the X1R is as terrible as I did initially think it was. Its a very cheap passive ribbon mic. It doesnt quite do what some of the more expensive ones I tried during the week do, its more modern sounding?? perhaps. But it seems like it might be a useful mic with a difference in a cheap and modest home studio set up like I have now. I have to try this all again with overdrive/distortion at some stage. My thinking is the X1R in dropped tunings and high gain is going to work out quite well because of the percussive bottom end. I guess to a degree none of this matters so much once you take an isolated recorded guitar sound and drop it in a mix with bass and high hats. Just like most things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwinking Posted July 10, 2016 Share Posted July 10, 2016 The 57 sounded tinny to my ears. Ribbons have a big time proximity deal where the closer you get the more bass you get. Back it off a couple of inches if it is to bassy. The Cascade Fathead BE is a fairly inexpensive stripped down ribbon that kicks ass: http://cascademicrophones.com/cascade_fathead-be.html#fhbe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffB Posted July 10, 2016 Author Share Posted July 10, 2016 The 57 sounded tinny to my ears. Ribbons have a big time proximity deal where the closer you get the more bass you get. Back it off a couple of inches if it is to bassy. The Cascade Fathead BE is a fairly inexpensive stripped down ribbon that kicks ass: http://cascademicrophones.com/cascade_fathead-be.html#fhbe It was one of the ones I was looking at online before I went to the store. They get some pretty good reviews. There isnt a distributor or stockist over here. Im without patience when it comes to buying online from OS. One turned up on a fb gear sale page last week but I missed claiming it by less than 2minutes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steiner Posted July 10, 2016 Share Posted July 10, 2016 On my POS speakers it awl sounds the same. Nice noodling though Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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