Is anyone going to try...

[dgatwood]

I have VERY little elctronics experience. Some soldering but almost no expertise as t what does what. What would be an example of a better transformer? I assume you can't just mix and match willy-nilly. Or can you???

As long as you're not using it for something like a power supply, they're pretty interchangeable, I'd say. You'll get different output levels dependeing on the number of windings on the primary and secondary side, so if they're severely different, you might find the mic not hot enough or too hot, but....

Lundahl and Cinemag are a couple of good names in audio transformers. They probably have something appropriate.

 

[ADATlove]

I think I'm going to odo the mod. I have 4 or 5 SM57s and I might as well sacrifice one of them if there's a possibility of getting a new sound out of it. What about installing a switch to turn the transformer on and off? I also heard about the xlr cable mod and plan on trying that too since it seems to just require jumping one pin to another. That fits my limited knowledge of wiring and electronics!

 

[dr.colossus]

Just finished an intensive little session at the weekend and the "57XT" is my new favourite bass cab mic.

We did a quick shootout on the bass drum, but went for the sennheiser 602, as that thing has bottom end up the whazoo. On the bass cab however it beat out the Studio Projects B1 and the AT25. We used a pretty distorted bass sound for most of the trakcs. While it didn;t quite capture the bottom end the AT did, or sound as 'natural' as the B1, but the 57XT it had detail in all the right spots.

Whats more, as soon as i pushed the faders after doing a scratch rythym track (I was on drums so I couldn;t really listen while recording) the bass guitar and the bass drum sat in the mix like best friends. Hopfully I can get a rough mix up some time soon.

I gave it a really quick shot on vocals, but I haven't come up with anything conclusive as yet. Definatly a mod worth doing just for a nice bass cab mic