Radio Shack?? Opinions welcome!!

[Pinky]

I have been using a pair of $20 Radio Shack mics for about 1 year now. Have been looking to get back into the swing of things with some universally adaptive Shure Beta 58 mics (I think that's the standard I'm thinking of), but they are a bit pricey (when you're already spending too much on electronic equipment) and for what I'm doing and from past experience know that once I get the sound into the PC I can do just about anything with it, so mics are less and less important in home recording... blah blah blah...

At the same time I've heard several of your recordings and must say that I'm impressed with their vocal and acoustic clarity (when compared to my own) and think the mics you're using are making the difference.

So I need an inexpensive solution. I make no money with my music (currently) and only want this for personal use.

 

[crazydoc]

Notwithstanding that a great performance on poor equipment is usually better than a poor performance on great equipment, there is a point at which a great performance is just too crappy to tolerate. There's lots you can't fix with software. "You can't polish a turd" as I've seen posted here several times.

You might as well bite the bullet and invest in a mic (and preamp if necessary) because your stuff is probably going to be shit without it. I was amazed at the difference in audio quality going from a cheap Shure dynamic, to a more expensive one (SM58), to a preamp, to a large diaphragm condenser mic.

Unfortunately, I've found it's not so easy to upgrade performance...

 

[esactun]

I feel your pain!!!

Hey Pinky--

Let me guess-- you have the 33-3018's, the SM58-sorta-looking things that go for like $30 but are on sale for $15 every other week?

I feel your pain. I was a longtime user of these mics. They sound GREAT when compared to the crappy things that come packaged with your boom box. They suck otherwise. I learned this the hard way.

Trust me-- no amount of digital processing and funky stuff will get those mics to sound good. Prior to finding this site and getting half a clue etc., I spent many months on EQ freakouts and other such things in an attempt to wring nice sounds out of what are really lousy mics. Lots of songwriting and work and toil for an end result that you couldn't pay me to post on the MP3 clinic here.

The cheapo good mics like Shure sm57's will smoke the Radio Shacks to such a degree that you'll wonder how you ever got by with RS mics. Trust me, this is all still very fresh in my mind! O, the pain! O, the old harsh recordings! You CAN do lots with digital processing... but you need good sounds to start with. Fixing in the mix just don't work.

What will work: A 57 ($80!) or a 58 ($100!) or two will make a very noticeable difference. Throw in another cheapie like the Studio Projects B1 large diaphragm condenser ($79!!!!) and you'll be startin' on the road to stylin'. There are other cheapie options too-- but you won't do better than those three for under $100 apiece, methinks.

Are you recording a full band or are you a small or one-man outfit? If you're doing a band and are on a budget, keep the Radio Shacks around until you can afford more mics for the drums. You can get away with them on drums (esp. inexpensive drums) for a little while (until they start to annoy you greatly!).

After you get some decent mics, then you have to think about preamps. Condensers like the B1 need phantom power. Cheapo preamps like the ones in the tiny lil Behringer boards ($70-$100), or the Audio Buddy ($80-$90), or the ART Tube ($80-$100) provide this, as well as about 60dB of gain (unsure about the Audio Buddy on that). The ART also happens to kick ass for recording bass guitar direct, IMHO.

Unfortunately, this is as cheap as it gets. Fortunately, $500 will get you much better sound today than it would have a few years ago. A decade ago, $500 would have barely gotten you a four-track!

 

[detuned6]

i got a radio gack mic, im thinking of smashing in with a cylinder block in my yard for a shitz and giggles. Esactun are you in?(LOL)

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

You forgot a 4th option:
d) ick...

 

[Harvey Gerst]

What Radio Shack carries as their own brand is dependent on the buyer for that department. In the past, some of them were very sharp, while others remained totally clueless.

When I worked there in the late 70s, the microphone buyer (Gary Burkhart) was very sharp, and R/S offered several good rebadged Sony condenser mics and he was also responsible for the R/S PZM mic.

The buyer for some of the hi-fi products, while a nice guy, didn't really have an ear for this stuff.

I remember one incident where he gave me a test pressing to play with of a Capitol Records Sampler that R/S planned to put out under the R/S brand. One of the cuts was Linda Ronstadt's song, "You're No Good", which I knew pretty well, since I was there when she/they recorded it.

As I listened, this feeling hit me - something was terribly wrong. So I pulled out my album and played the original track. Bingo, the entire bottom end was missing on the R/S disc.

Somewhere along the line during mastering, Capitol had used the wrong eq, eliminating the bottom two octaves - on every track of the entire album, and nobody at Capitol caught it. When I called him with my findings, he didn't believe me at first, and it was "probably already pressed, so we'll just hafta live with it."

When he came over to my house and heard the difference, he called Capitol and made them stop all work on it at once, till they fixed the problem. Capitol admitted they goofed, apologized, and eventually the record came out fine, but the point is that nobody at Tandy caught the problem.

 

[esactun]

Mic abuse!!

i got a radio gack mic, im thinking of smashing in with a cylinder block in my yard for a shitz and giggles. Esactun are you in?(LOL)

Only if it's live and run through the 3630...

Might be a cool, crushing, crunching, high-SPL sky-falling-on-you sort of sound. Talk about brutality!

 

[Pinky]

I have the 33-3021 (link below since it's so long), has a 60-16,000 khz range (which is why I bought it in the first place).

Fidelity is flat with these, I can compress it in Sound Forge enough to get a decent push and it seems to hold up relatively well to loud sources... but it's still not *crisp*, and no matter what I do the frequency response seems poorest in the highs (the hardest for mics to replicate/reproduce)...

I will probably have to splurge on a shure, for now I have to get another piece of hardware (Roland or Digitech guitar effects petal for the cover band I'm in), but I'm at least on the right track of thought in getting a better mic for my projects. Appreciate the feedback .

And it's really not that bad! I actually like the older style sound I get from the mics, but for a real clear recording I'll need to invest a bit... and besides, no one takes a producer with Radio Shack mics seriously

http://www.radioshack.com/product.a..._name=CTLG_002_003_005_000&product_id=33-3021

 

[esactun]

And it's really not that bad! I actually like the older style sound I get from the mics, but for a real clear recording I'll need to invest a bit... and besides, no one takes a producer with Radio Shack mics seriously

I'm no expert in this field (unlike Harvey!), but I bet that your opinion will change once you get an SM57. Really! I honestly once thought that my RS mics sounded good. Then I thought that they sounded OK. They don't. Compare it to a 57 and there's quite a difference!

I haven't used that particular one after all-- but it's an even lower-end model than the ones I used to use. I'm not busting on you at all, I know right where you're coming from.

I think (**others [esp. Harvey] would be more qualified to say**) that dynamics in general (**there may very well be exceptions**) aren't the best for the sorts of high highs you're talking about. Even 57s don't have those sorts of highs, IMO. If you want crisp, try a condenser. When I got mine, that was the first thing I noticed (after the floor vibrations from the fans that sounded like industrial machinery, the trucks driving over the sewer cap outside that sounded like a fastball hit hard from two feet away, and my clothes rustling that sounded like a freakin forest fire!) . Very sensitive microphones!

Experts: Feel free to tell me if I'm full of it here.

 

[Krakit]

Radio Shack mics suck, with the possible exception of the PZM they put out. A poor man's viable alternative to the Crown.

Carl

 

[FenderTL5]

Shure has this on their website concerning the "highball" (SM58 clone) mic sold at radio Shack.

http://shure.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/s...0zJnBfcHJvZF9sdmwxPTImcF9wcm9kX2x2bDI9fmFueX4

 

[Aren]

Fender -
This is not the mic in question. The mic discussed on the Shure website wass actually made by Shure. It's now discontinued.
I have it, and it's more then decent. Equivalent to most SM-58 knock-offs you can get from various Chinese companies. I use it mainly on guitar amps and for rehearsing vocals. It does the job. Nothing more nothing less. If it breaks, I wouldn't shed a tear, but it's handy to have, especially since I don't mind lending it to whoever wants a mic.

Oren

 

[Harvey Gerst]

Radio Shack mics suck, with the possible exception of the PZM they put out. A poor man's viable alternative to the Crown.

Carl

Carl,

You paint with a pretty wide brush. In the late 70s, Radio Shack put out the 33-1080 1/2" electret condenser mic, which was simply a re-badged Sony ECM-22 - a very respectable professional mic at the time. By replacing the 1.5 volt battery with a 12 volt cigarette lighter battery, you had a pretty damn nice 1/2" cardioid for about $100 (when the same model Sony mic was going for around $229).

The R/S lavalier mic was a rebadged Sony ECM-50, a very respected mic in the broadcast industry at the time.

R/S has a lot of clout when they buy, since they're buying for over 8,000 stores. If you have a factory that's capable of more production than they're doing, it makes sense to rebadge products, like the Mars versions of the MXL mics.

The Nakamichi CM300 mics that concert tapers love are simply rebadged Primo mics. The CM300s sell used for anywhere from $150 up. I bought the same mic under the original Primo name in a pawn shop for $20.

 

[FenderTL5]

Fender -
This is not the mic in question. The mic discussed on the Shure website wass actually made by Shure.

Oren

Sorry, I did not realize their was a particular mic in question.

I'm aware that the mic on the link was indeed made by Shure, that was the point in posting the link. I would venture a guess that Radio Shack often if not always buys this type of item from another manufacturer and re-badges them. In some cases it may be over runs and identicle to the manufacturer's own product, as Harvey pointed out. Other times it is a specific item built by the manufacturer for Radio Shack distribution, with differing specs, as with the now discontinued item I posted about.

 

[Pinky]

I'm no expert in this field (unlike Harvey!), but I bet that your opinion will change once you get an SM57. Really! I honestly once thought that my RS mics sounded good. Then I thought that they sounded OK. They don't. Compare it to a 57 and there's quite a difference!

I haven't used that particular one after all-- but it's an even lower-end model than the ones I used to use. I'm not busting on you at all, I know right where you're coming from.

I used to have a top of the line Shure, and it was an awesome mic all around. I stepped away from music for about 4 years and came back 18 months ago, had a limited budget to have a mini studio for PC recording, so professional or even industry standard decent really wasn't an option. I've since milked the mic for all it's worth, but now it's most definitely time for an upgrade.

Again, I'm not putting down the performance of this MIC!!!! It has served me VERY WELL for only $20!!

 

[TexRoadkill]

Pinky, when you first come out of an abusive relationship it is common for there to be a period of denial. It's hard to admit that you let Radio Shack take advantage of you and it's hard to admit that maybe you really set yourself up to be the victom.

But it's okay. That's why we are here. The sooner you admit that Radio Shack sucks the sooner the healing process can begin.

I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine. Her name is MXL and she makes some really nice mics.

 

[ad0lescnts]

I have some 33-3032's and they work great on toms. They're the instrument ones with the drum mount on them. I don't know how well they'd work for other things tho

 

[esactun]

Funny stuff, there, Tex!

Again, I'm not putting down the performance of this MIC!!!! It has served me VERY WELL for only $20!!

True, from a price standpoint one can't complain much. I did use the 33-3018 ball mics (the low-z mic with the hi-z plug!) for a long time under harsh conditions. The one I have left still works as it did when I got it. The ball top is held on by masking tape though.

I can't bring myself to go back... but I can't get rid of it either. Probably because I'm a pack rat.

 

[knownuttin]

Tex, this MXL, does she have a nice rack?

Sorry.
-kent

 

[esactun]

What gets me is how many GUYS around here brag about their nice racks

No one ever checks out your plug-ins.