Sennheiser MD-421

Ive been making music ever since the first time I overdubbed with 2 boomboxes in my parents showere with a guitar and cheap keyboard...about 30 years...lol.
I have come a long way since then having paid off my house with a risidual payment from one of my clients.
I monitor through yamaha NS10s.

This is a dynamic obviously with a tight cardiod pattern...Im using it on guitar amps...some vocals...and bass drums.

I have a Shure SM7 which is one of the models that is similer in use by the broadcast community...the Senn MD421 is hotter than the SM7 without the pad.

My favotite was my price...I bought it in a case of mics at auction with 12 SM58's 4 SM57's...and a Beyer ribbon for $125...sold alot of the SM58s and made about $1000.

Work in a studio.

Literally the best all-rounder I've heard. Amazing dynamic mic with great depth and detail.
Perfect for Toms, Amazing for Kick (beats AKG D112 hands down). A/B it with an SM57 on a guitar cab and realise the depth you've been missing on all of your guitar recording. I also love this mic on Bass cabs. It literally sounds great on all of these things.

Guitar player for 12-13 years. Home recording for 2-3 years (not alot) I'm using a focusrite tone factory outboard mic pre going into my (don't laugh) M-Audio 1010. I'm looking to get a MOTU interface. I'm using KRK (V6) studio monitors. I'm slowly building a full studio.

Dynamic at it's best. I mainly purchased this mic for recording electric guitar rythym tracks (heavy rock, coc, helmet, etc.). Before I was using an sm-57 and hated it. the 57 cannot handle the rumble of a tube marshall cab. The 421 is night and day diff. I turn the bass roll off switch all the way clockwise. I usually have the best luck placing the mic facing the outer speaker cone about 3 or 4 inches away. I would also recomend a good mic pre. I'm using a focusrite tone factory. Compression is a must. This mike will handle my tube amp cranked up loud (where the 57 will flounder). I would recomend the 57 and or a large diaphram condenser for lead guitar parts. The 421 will give you a very low end bassy mid tone perfect for any clean or dirty rythem guitar tracks. I will get to drums another day. I'm new to the recording world and take things a step at a time. IBut I am for sure i have the guitar recording down to a T.

Making music 30+ years, recording 25+ years, done several Cd recording projects, mainly voices (solo & choirs) and acoustical instruments, ranging from guitar and violin to church organ.

Dynamic, cardoid. I used it on solo voices, especially for a warm sound on male voices, for choir recordings, even live recordings with choirs and orchestras. Nowadays I would prefer small-diaphragm condenser mikes for choirs and ribbon mikes for piano, but the MD-421 still is a great all-round microphone that even survives 'heavy' use.

I don't see a real need to fill my background out, mainly because it seems most people way overstate this part when they write it. the recording setup I've used the 421's through was a digi 002 through a soundcraft desk and a drawmer compressor. But I've also used them with quite a few live rigs, ranging from soundcraft series 2 desks with alan and heath speakers, too midas systems with Rcf boxes.

it's a Dynamic cardiod mic, that looks like it should have been a figure 8 condensor

My favourite position for this mic is on toms. It's quite simply the best Toms mice I've ever used. I've also used it on kick and it excelled at that, but I prefered the re-20 and the atm-25.

I'm a big fan of trying every mic avaliable on each source before deciding on one, so before using this I tried everything from an sm57 to an m88 to a 414, and many things inbetween. None of them had the same depth as the 421, and you should have seen the drummers face when he heard the rack toms. of course no mic will sound good if your source doesn't, but if your source sounds good, it'll sound great with this!

Personaly I've found this to be one of those mics that has awfull lots of uses. Theres seems to be alot of things it's extremely good at, and not that many it's awfull at. as I said earlier, it's the best Tom mic I've used, an excelent kick mic and great on a guitar amp. I've also heard that it's one of the better bass guitar mics around, but I havent tried that myself

Been recording for 15 years, record mostly to digital these days.

The 421 is a workhorse dynamic cardiod in a strange looking housing. It is a de-facto standard dynamic overhead mic for drums or close-mic for toms. It sounds _great_ just about everywhere. The 421 is one of the sweetest sounding mics I've ever used. Not to say that it's accurate, but it has a very pleasing presence boost. It is excellent on male vox and guitar cabs as well. It can take a ton of sound pressure, and it holds its value as well as any mic on the market. Used ones still cost as much as new. It has a bass attentuation slider to reduce proximity effect as well.

If this mic got stolen I would cry for a long time and then submit an insurance claim form. If I could afford it, I'd own ten of these. I own maybe thirty mics and this one ends up on every recording somewhere. One of the sweetest sounds I've ever recorded is a Fender Rhodes thru a Bandmaster amp with this mic on it. This should be the third mic anyone buys, after an SM57 and a Studio Projects C1.

I've been in the broadcast industry for 25 years. I mostly do repair and installation, but also have some production and voice over experience. We use mikes for live on-air announcing and recording to analog tape and/or hard drive.

The MD421 is a cardioid dynamic microphone. It is a popular broadcast microphone, but sometimes I fail to see why. It's not especially accurate, and has a noticeable proximity effect, but some DJs really like to sound deep and "resonant" by getting up real close to it, so I guess that's why its popularity lingers. The accountants like the fact that it is $100 cheaper than the venerable RE-20, another reason why I see the MD421 at a lot of facilities.

The mike can take a lot of physical abuse. I've seen them at college stations with the grille all bashed in and yet they still sound the same as the day they came out of the box.