AKG d770

Making music for many years, studied it at uni. Run a small on location recording business (www.completemusicandsound.co.uk). All recording and editing is done in the DAW.

This is a dynamic cardioid instrument mic. It claims to be suitable for backing vocals but up against our other vocal mics it didn't fare well in this application. The diaphragm is good, as is noise and it WILL NOT feed back, it is fantastic for miking guitar cabs. The reason for this review is that in many situations, both live and recorded, it absolutely pummels an sm57. The grill is solid (unlike sm57) and it never sounds nasal or "honkey" like the sm57 can either. The area where it gets beaten by the sm57 is on "punch" (whatever that is). It is too natural to cut through the mix occasionally, and eq-ing doesn't seem to change that, so keep an sm57 handy for when you need that "slap in the face" snare sound. They also cost significantly less than the sm57. Our pair come out on pretty much everything we do. I don't know whether the new version- the d77s is as good, I couldn't find any mention of the varimotion diaphragm that makes the d770 sound good and it is part of their budget range whereas the 770 was part of the same range as the legendary d112. It gets a 9 cos it doesn't sound as good as an md421- but thats hardly a fair comparison!