CAD M177

Update to the review below:

The link where you can hear the mic on female vocals is now myspace.com/justlovemusic.

I'm plugging the mic, not the band...

I've been recording at home for fifteen years, learning as I go. I engineer and produce for the casual band I play with: acoustic/contemporary folk/singer-songwriter. On my own I record mainly ambient/techno. Go figure.

We record to a Yamaha 16G DAW, using the M-177 for vocals, especially our female singer. I run from the mic through a Presonus M-20 with just a little compression from an Alesis 3630. Then it gets some of the built-in reverb and the mastering compression on the Yamaha.

This inexpensive mic opened up a whole new level of sound for our band recordings.

The M-177 is a condenser mic in a fixed cardio pattern, with pad and multiple high-pass filter, which really help keep rumble out at the gate. The mic is both rugged and very sensitive. The cardio pattern is good at rejecting off-axis sound but the drop-off is a bit steep, so it's unforgiving of any moving around.

The M-177 responds bequtifully to acoustic guitar and to quieter voices, opening up the nuances and character. For our louder vocalists it does very little, actually. I recorded with this and an SM58 (dynamic) side by side: for our male vocalist's high volume and harsher voice the dynamic was a better choice. Also I've returned to dynamic mics for guitar cabinets, except for lead when I want it to inhabit the same sonic space as the vocal.

You can listen to examples of what the mic can do for amature musician/recorders at myspace.com/sunshowermusic.

My recommendation: buy it. But if the price difference isn't too great, get the M179 instead. It's identical but has multiple polar patterns. I'd love to have omni to let in more air and not have to glue gun my vocalist to her chair.

i've been playing the drums for 8 years now, the guitar for a year and a half and been recording since then, im using a alesis firewire interface for recording and a pair of roland monitors.

This is a cardiod pattern condenser mic, i've been recording everything with this, voices, electric guitars, drums, percussive sounds, etc. and it works great, i was amazed of the incredible sensitivity of this mic, when i put it on the corner of the room it could capture the sound of me breathing. I chose this mic because a friend recommended it, he told me that the singer from limbeck told him that this mic sounded great and it was cheap, so i bought it and it does sound very clear. I like that its built well, heavy duty i mean and that it has a hi-pass filter and a -20dB for very loud instruments like drums, its very handy for me cause i record drums a lot . I would certainly recommend this mic, it a very good mic for the price.