AKG C4000B

Making music since 1995, used to record in pro studios on an occasional basis, now have home studio with Mackie preamp, AKG and Audio-Technica mics.

Condenser mic with cardioid, omni and figure-8 patterns, used on acoustic guitar and vocals. Chose it because price has dropped now to about usd 500 from 840 that it used to be. I haven't used this mic extensively because a week of testing showed it wasn't suitable for the particular application I intended (acoustic guitar with lot of sharp transients).

Overall impressions: can deliver a warm, cozy and intimate sound for vocals, I'd say this would be a good mic for capturing a female alto voice. For acoustic guitar, I did not get the desired results because the mic revealed itself as somewhat overly bassy (big proximity effect) even with filters on; but, the main thing is that the transients really didn't seem to cut through the signal chain after I put this mic. The instrument's original tone has even bass,
mid and treble, with a shiny, crisp top (an artifact of the specially selected strings I am using). Through the 4000B it sounded like a mellow, sweet and rounded classical guitar from a analog tape recorder. Not a bad result if I was recording classical guitar, but for my purposes this sound was not appropriate. Also other studio folks with bigger studios have told me they also find it somewhat bassy. With that respect, I find the review on mixguides.com for this mic overly optimistic. It is a good mid-line product, not anywhere in the quality range say of 414 or SolidTube. For vocals and more mellow instruments can work fine, but you have to keep in mind the peculiarities. Comes in a nice solid case with very effective shock mount, well done indeed. At the same time the original list price of $840 leaves me aghast, even given that now it sells for about 500$. There are $100 mics that will give you better trebles for acoustic guitar than that.
Overall: Not a bad mic for vocals and instruments with non-percussive sound. But I find it somewhat weak on the transients and does not convey well any sharp and percussive sounds. The readers should decide for themselves if its a good value for their studio, because the results with it greatly depend on the application.

Been recording music about 6 years, mostly rock/pop/acoustic -music. Been workin in my own project studio as well as quality commerical studios. Mostly I record to Pro Tools, but also like to use quality analog tape recorders when possible. My own mic-pres are dbx 586 and custom-made rack model SSL.

Technical discription: http://www.akg.com/products/powerslave,mynodeid,186,id,219,pid,219,_language,EN.html

I have two of these and have been using them for allmost anything (vocals, acoustic guitar, mandolin, upright bass, drum overheads, percussons, guitar and bass cabinets, piano, ambient...).

These are my number one choice for drum overheads for clean natural sounding drums. Also great fror acoustic gitar - in omni-mode you can go really close and get large-than-life acoustic sound. With three polar patterns, low cut, extremely low self noise, -10db pad and good capability to handle high volumes these are really suitable for many kind of situations.

Really good sounding allaround workhorse for the studio.