SM 57 is garbage

  • Thread starter Thread starter rapper2001
  • Start date Start date
Were just having fun, in a silly thread...

Stop being a smartass!
 
A1A2 said:
rapper probably isn't reading this thread by now, but, shit, most of you smartasses really should back the fuck off.

AL

Why?
 
Even though someone may find themself the total minority in a situation, the human psyche will just not allow you to abandon what you have already started.

Don't be fooled at all...."rapper"is still reading this...

Question is, has he learned anything from it?

There are alot of very smart people here that know what they are talking about.
Did they get through?


Happy in a 57 state-of-mind!
 
Very good points...

He still reading it and laughing.. He knows that 57's are good, he was just fuckin' with us...
 
Yo' rapper, holla back! Let me know if you have tried to use the SMack57 using a different signal chain/or vocal technique than what you were presently employing!
 
jeap said:
its far better to be a smartass than to be a dumbass.

I really don't like neither... I prefer to stick the asshole routine.
 
Track Rat said:
I think some of the old "High Balls" were made by Shure.

I used to love those, back in the eighties you could find them in a pawn shop all the time. You could tell the sure ones by looking into the xlr connector. The sure ones still said sure on the plug. They were great for gigs, because if something happened to them, it was no big deal.
 
shure has made a lot of questionable mics for radio shack over the years. lots of low end manufacturers labeled their 2nd tier crap for radio shack.
 
jeap said:
shure has made a lot of questionable mics for radio shack over the years. lots of low end manufacturers labeled their 2nd tier crap for radio shack.
Jeap, while I love to bust Radio Shack for some of the stupid things they've done over the years, you don't know what you're talking about when you make a statement like that.

Radio Shack buys from suppliers to sell at a particular price point. Do they tell the supplier, "Hey, we'll take all your crap stuff, if you sell it to us cheap."? No they don't work that way. They decide they want a mic that they can sell for X dollars, with a profit margin of X%.

They then go to several mic manufacturers with the specs they want and say "Can you build us this mic, with these specs for X dollars per unit?". Why should a manufacturer be interested in doing this?

Radio Shack has over 8,000 stores. Figure each store has to have one on display and one in stock. That's an opening order of 16,000 microphones (plus the warehouse will have to carry another 4,000 or so to fill orders), bringing the total to around 20,000 mics in a single order!! That ain't chicken feed.

If you're Shure, AKG, or Sony, you want Radio Shack's business, and all these companies have supplied products to Radio Shack. And it's not Shure's rejects (unless you think that Shure has about 20,000 rejects of the same model just sitting around in a giant "reject" bin).

I guarantee you that no other single customer of these mic companies buy 20,000 of any one microphone, or even close.

You may think that a lot of Radio Shack's products are crap, and I won't disagree with you. But if you think they're in the business of selling or getting second class merchandise and rejects, you're very wrong.

R/S tries to buy stuff that will hold up, but sometimes they screw up, and sometimes, they even get it right.

I worked at Tandy, Radio Shack's corporate headquarters for several years, and I can honestly say, they mean well. The biggest problem is that they have people in charge who really don't understand the products they're trying to buy and sell.
 
chessparov said:
A quality mic pre will also bring out the "hidden beauty" of a '57.

Just curious . . . anyone know what the ideal match would be? I've gotten a little confused on this. Someone on rec.audio.pro was saying that a smaller load, high-impedence pre was the best match for a 57. Yet I seem to remember someone else (may have been D. Kennedy) saying it was the opposite. I'm confused. Anyone have any light to shed?
 
Harvey, great post....

But ,just in the interest of Jeaps defense... I think his post was basically saying what you said.. (Although his was a bit harsher)..

Radio shack comes to these companies with a budget mic design or spec sheet...Companies build these mics and put radio shacks name on alot of these "inferior" recording mics, and the mikes are sold at Radio shack stores...

And Shure was probably part of this at once also.

I don't see anywhere in his post, that he was implying that the Mics Radio Shack sells are Rejects from manufacturers. That would make a pretty inconsistant catalog.. In fact, it would be luck of the draw, or whatevers in the "bin" per se.

Radio shack sells, for the most part, junk mics, at a damn good price... A good enough price that we shouldn't complain..

Are they great mikes?... No not really (depending on the use), .....Are they sold at a fair price for what they are? YES.

Joe
 
in the old days the speakers at radio shack were all crap. it was said that most of them were made by utah and that they were not as good as anything sold under the utah brand.

the radio pzm was made by crown but was not the same quality as the mics sold under the crown name.

the highball mics were not as good as the sm58. shure also made other mics for radio shack. if you dont believe me i have one i can take a picture of and show you. i may have some old catalogs that i can scan for proof. the mic i have is pure crap. i got it on sale for half price but its not even worth that. it says shure right on it and is supposedly a "pro" model.

radio shack PA equipment is a joke.

anyway harvey no matter what you disagree with in my statements i cant see anything wrong in them. its obvious to me that shure made lousy mics for radio shack. i can send mine to you for review and im "shure" you will agree its crap. ive had the least expensive mics sold under the shure name and they sounded fine for what they were. much better than the radio shack "pro" model shure!

can you point out any examples of companies manufacturing for radio shack where the radio shack items are of higher quality than those sold under the manufacturers own name? probably not. the fact that r/s now sells many brands under their own names clouds the issue but you know what i mean.

radio shack doesnt sell the top of the line audio technica or shure or, in the old days, utah speakers. they sell lower quality or "second tier" merchandise exactly as i said.

so wheres the beef? are you still enamored of your old employer?
 
in the old days the speakers at radio shack were all crap. it was said that most of them were made by utah and that they were not as good as anything sold under the utah brand.

the radio pzm was made by crown but was not the same quality as the mics sold under the crown name.

the highball mics were not as good as the sm58. shure also made other mics for radio shack. if you dont believe me i have one i can take a picture of and show you. i may have some old catalogs that i can scan for proof. the mic i have is pure crap. i got it on sale for half price but its not even worth that. it says shure right on it and is supposedly a "pro" model.

radio shack PA equipment is a joke.

anyway harvey no matter what you disagree with in my statements i cant see anything wrong in them. its obvious to me that shure made lousy mics for radio shack. i can send mine to you for review and im "shure" you will agree its crap. ive had the least expensive mics sold under the shure name and they sounded fine for what they were. much better than the radio shack "pro" model shure!

can you point out any examples of companies manufacturing for radio shack where the radio shack items are of higher quality than those sold under the manufacturers own name? probably not. the fact that r/s now sells many brands under their own names clouds the issue but you know what i mean.

radio shack doesnt sell the top of the line audio technica or shure or, in the old days, utah speakers. they sell lower quality or "second tier" merchandise exactly as i said.

so wheres the beef? are you still enamored of your old employer?
 
The radioshack high ball is a shure AXS7something, which was discontinued as of last year, and I believe the new equvalent of the PG series. So those of you who want those, now you know what you're really getting.

rapper:screw this shit! I gotta go buy new clothes! Its been almost a whole hour since I've changed!...word
 
Have I misunderstood another sarcastic thread again? I thought Rapper was just another new 57 user with high hopes, and got a broken mic. In that case, I won't take my previous comment back. If this thread was a joke, I guess I have been fooled :(

AL
 
I doubt it has anything to do with a broken mic and more to do with a question of recording skills (as in, using the right mic to get the right sound).........!
 
jeap said:

can you point out any examples of companies manufacturing for radio shack where the radio shack items are of higher quality than those sold under the manufacturers own name? probably not. the fact that r/s now sells many brands under their own names clouds the issue but you know what i mean.

radio shack doesnt sell the top of the line audio technica or shure or, in the old days, utah speakers. they sell lower quality or "second tier" merchandise exactly as i said.

so wheres the beef? are you still enamored of your old employer?
No, I'm not enamoured of my old employer, but your beef should be with a few of the buyers at R/S who screwed things up.

The old R/S 33-1080 condenser mic was made by Sony and was simply a rebadged Sony ECM22 - it wasn't any better, but it was exactly the same mic for a fraction of the Sony price. Same with their small lapel mic - it was a rebadged Sony, exactly the same mic as the highly regarded Sony.

They made a nice speaker tower in the late 7-'s that used a pair of 8" woofers, a 3" midrange, and a dome tweeter that was a really nice speaker system. One of the best I've ever heard.

The Lineum tweeters impressed the speaker buyers at R/S so much, they bought the company. All R/S video tape is rebadged Memorex; again, R/S simply bought the company.

The buyers fuck up more times than they get it right, and that's my main beef with them. It's not that they purposely go out and buy second tier products; it's that they don't know how to spec and source products in the first place. But sometimes, they do get it right.

I have a beef with some of the Marshall mics, some of the AKGs, and some of the Rode mics, but I don't claim that everything they put out is crap.

Is the R/S knockoff of the Sennheiser E604 better or even as good as the original? Hell, no, but at $30 (compared to $249), it'll do roughly the same job, and it's a good value at $30.

I guess we'll just have to disagree on Radio Shack's place in the audio universe. You'll just drive by, while I'll stop every so often and see if there are any bargains there. Most of the time. there won't be.

Same thing with garage sales; I once found a beautiful Altec M20 tube condenser mic at a garage sale for $5, with the power supply. Another time, I found a Sennheiser MD421 for $65. I found a brand new AT 831b at a flea market for $20.

You might say that garage sales sell nothing but crap, and for the most part, you'd be right. But I'll continue to stop anyway and look.
 
eek! i doubled a post!!

how i did that?

this forum can be really screwy!
 
okay harvey i can see that i may have to strangle you!

you may have thought i said r/s was selling factory seconds. no!

do you remember recently they had recievers and cd players that looked just like pioneer recievers and cd players? i asked a manager about them and he said that the optimus recievers and cd players in question were made by pioneer but that they had some features left off. as an example he showed me where the optimus model cd player did not have an optical output whereas the same pioneer did. i checked at a local appliance store and found he was right.

the line that pioneer made for radio shack had fewer features. this could be considered an example of 2nd tier!

the radio shack stuff was also selling for considerably more than the pioneer!
 
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