Best mic under $15.00

best mic under $1

radio shack piezo contact mic. tape it to any acoustic instrument. move it across a TV screen. tape it to your throat.
 
The one you found at a yard sale. "Yeah, they're old RCA's, Uncle Bob used to be in radio"! Got my SM82 for $20 that way.-Richie
 
Rich, you're a dick. :) (like you haven't heard that one before)

I built this little mic out of a headphone driver from Parts Express. Makes for weird, usable bass drum hits for experimental rock. It's also useful for some backup vocal stuff. I just tape it into a corner and scream/yell into it. Add some reverb and delay...
 
...just about any German mic with a little diamond-shaped logo on the side, sold out of the trunk of a car...
 
Screw that, I can easily teach you to MAKE one.

Step one: Get a paper cup

Step two: Poke a hole in the bottom

Step three: push a piece of string through the hole and tie it on the inside of the cup by knotting itself so that it won't come out the hole. IMPORTANT: make sure the hole is strong enough to hold when the string is held taught!

Step four: On the other end of the string (at a length of which you decide) attach another cup in the same way

Step five: Hold the cup up to what you want to record, pull the string taught between the two cups. Put your ear up to the cup that is not pointed at the recorded object and you have your self a Telephone!

Wait a minute...
 
one time i wrapped a set of some of those wannabe studio headphones (not sure which brand) around 2 toms and just plugged their 1/4" cable into a mixer and i used only a speaker on the bass drum and only used 2 mismatched over heads and a mic on snare and a mic on the floor tom..............i did it because i told my friends that i would record them....but then i forgot that i said that..........and so i didn't have enough mics at the time and normaly i borrowed mics from my friend, but like i said i forgot and i had to use whatever i could find..........................

the toms actually sounded o.k.........not anywhere close to my best work..........and the bass drum sounded like complete poo cause i only had the speaker...........but i just cut everything but the click and it sounded alright.........and my friends actually like the sound of the bass drum cause it was kind of deathmetal sounding...........................I would never ever just use a speaker ona bass drum or headphones on toms......but it was a fun experience and i think it's kind of a cool story.......maybe it's just me though. like i said...not my best work....but if that's all you've got.......then it's better than nothing..............well, maybe not. :)
 
Well I am just a home recordist so price is an issue for me and $15.00 is way out of my price range. I am sure for $10.00 I can get a good mic and i'll be able to get professional results with it. any suggestions? I mean really, how much better can a $4000 Neumann be? haw haw haw. Dumbasses now pay less for a large diaphragm condenser than a decent xlr cable would cost to hook up to the damn thing and they wonder why their recordings don't sound professional.
 
sweetnubs said:
I mean really, how much better can a $4000 Neumann be?
Click to expand...

Well, the problem with that line of thinking is that the price/quality curve seems to be logarithmic rather than linear, meaning that, in many cases, the $4000 Neumann will not give you a sound that is exactly 8 times better than a $500 NTK. It will likely be significantly better, yes, but 8 times, in every situation? I don't think so.
 
P.S. - I don't wonder why my recordings don't sound professional. Especially when they do end up sounding professional. But if they don't, there's a reason and I usually know what it is (gear, lack of time, lack of a good space, lack of good musicians, my braindeadedness)
 
sweetnubs said:
Dumbasses now pay less for a large diaphragm condenser than a decent xlr cable would cost to hook up to the damn thing....
Click to expand...

You pay more than £100 for XLR cables?! ( In Britain a SP B1 is £67)

Are they magic leads or something? What am I missing out on here?
 
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