Sennheiser e609

This mic was designed for micing guitar cabs. I bet when they designed it they were micing a Marshall tube amp. This is the only mic I have used that can reproduce what my ears hear from my Marshall cab. I listen back to recordings and say to myself, "now that's it, exactly what I hear live". I can NOT say that about an sm57 or any of my other mics including expensive condensers. If you play thru a Marshall tube amp and want your sound to sound just like it does live-GET THIS MIC!!! I do have to boost the bottom end very slightly and cut just a wee bit of the mids but.....perfection! To give a little more reference my Marshall is a DSL 100 with KT77's and celestion GT1275's. So, if you have something different then you may get different results. It does the distorted tones and clean tones equally well. For years I have tried to find a mic that can do this and now I have it! Thanks, Sennheiser!

I play harp. I've been playing since high school. That would be about 45 years. To amplify "Chicago style" I use a couple of relatively small, old (as old or older than I am) tube amps. My favorites are a Premier 50 and a Danelectro Special. I also have a new Epi Valve Junior. The only effects I use is a Toadworks Meat Jr. pedal to fatten up the tone even more and to give me a boost to compete with the massive amps guitar players love so much. I just bought a Danelectro Echo pedal but I haven't used it yet. I anticipate using it only for a limited number of songs.

This microphone does exactly what it is made for and does it well. It fits my needs perfectly. What are my needs? Quite frankly, I need to be heard every so often. Buying massive amps is not the answer for me. The sound you get from small class A amps is unique and not even a Fender Bassman can get that sound. Besides, who wants to spend that kind of money? So, I put my Sennheiser e609 on a desktop mic stand with a weighted disk base and point it at the sweet spot just off the center dome midway to the edge, angled slightly ouward to match the angle of the speaker cone. I have installed substantial feet on my amps so that the stand slides right underneath. I like using this type of stand because it takes up so little room on a crowded stage. Much harder to trip over or tip over. I then plug into the PA. I make sure my volume on my bullet mic and my amp are turned back a bit during the sound check. This way the guy at the board sets my volume high enough and I can then control the ultimate volume easily at my amp and harp mic.

I went even further. On my Danelectro amp, the speaker cloth surface is recessed into the box. This gives me a little ledge on the bottom of the cabinet. I drilled into it, improvised a plastic sleeve and put a thumbscrew into the front. I then installed the mic on the 4" upright from the mic stand and now I stick it into the hole I drilled. It goes directly into the amp- no stand. I then use the thumb screw to secure the upright. The business end of the mic is actually in contact with the cloth. No one can trip over my mic stand and the mic is exactly where I want it.

How does all this sound? It sounds like me (the most important part of my entire setup) and my harp through my bullet mic and my amplifier. The e609 neither adds nor takes away. It just transmits. Whatever is wrong with the sound is my fault and not the mic's.

You could do a tap dance next to it and no one would ever know. The isolation is amazing. That's important when your stage is crowded with Leo's most monstrous boxes! (Thank God blues player don't often use Marshalls!) But this mic just lives in its own little world, unaffected by what's going on anywhere except directly in front of it. It's like a horse with blinders.

One annoying flaw- The clip it comes with is so tight it is a real struggle to get it on and off. My solution- put it on and leave it on. I bought a cool rubbery pencil box at Staples and the whole assembly fits in nicely.

I understand people who may think somewhat less of this mic than I do. However, anybody who gives this mic less that a seven or eight I think just has different needs from mine and simply bought the wrong mic. For me, it works perfectly. Nobody notices it. All the comments I get are about my harp playing. That is exactly what I want.

I am now 42 years old have been listening to musicians play since I was in the womb (litterally) and playing since I could sit up. After setting up a digital home studio recently, including a seperate guitar amp room, I thought I would try the e609 as a means to break away from the defacto SM57. I prefer to record louder than everage but not at stack saturated levels and thought this would be a perfect mike for close micing. I was wrong or mislead.

Establised brands are shoving junk down our throats based more on hype and the need for improve their bottom line than they are concerned over quality.

This mic is useless.

For a dynamic mic with high SPL's it is way too agressive for close micing as suggested. If you want a close proximity effect, you won't like this mic. Draping it over the grille resulted in grainy tones that were not pleasant and very hard to Eq out, even for metal flavors and the bottom end of both my Mesa 4x10 and a Rivera 2x12 were almost non-existent. (This mic sucked the life out of two very warm Class A tube amps). What I heard naturally and what was recored was worse than any dynamic mic I have ever used or heard. I even tried different sampling rates and all the old trick from my analog days and there is no post-mic fix for this.

Of course I tried many different mic positions and ended up at 2 feet away, off center from the cone by 4 inches on average which resulted in a room sound more than a cabinet sound.

There is a high-mid boost that will in fact get you above the mix as they say, but it's not what you are hearing from the actual cabinet, speaker or room for that matter.

I hate this mic and can't find a proper use for it. (What a waste of time and money). Maybe it's good for live micing applications but I don't know of any club owner that wants to hear a piercing grainy high-mid frequency coming from a guitar amp and the associated grating that is added to the signal.

I couldn't be more dissapointed with this mic. I WANT MY MONEY BACK !

SM57 are not a great mic but they are useful and useable, and don't trash the tones of multi-thousand dollar amps with the click of the XLR.

I'm 44 yrs old and these days mostly do home recordings on a 16 track ADAT setup.

I bought one of these after hearing all the buzz about how they are excellent for miking guitar cabinets.
When I took it home I did a scientific comparison between it, a Shure SM57 and a Sennheiser 421, (i.e. miking all three on a 1x12 guitar cabinet at the same cone location and simultaneously recording to different channels on my ADATs). I tried clean electric as well as heavy distortion sounds.

Point 1 - All three mics had similar output levels in general.

Point 2 - Both Sennheiser's blew away the SM57... it sounded boxy, constricted in range, with minimal top end and added an outrageous upper mid hump that almost sounded like adding a fuzzbox or additional overdrive pedal against the distorted guitar sounds. (Lord knows how the 57 ever became the de facto standard for micing guitar cabs?!?!)

Point 3 - The e609 has a HUGE proximity effect... miking close to the grill cloth yielded so much bass overload that the mic sounded terrible. This was surprising to me since I believe a lot of people would position it this way live, especially if just "draping" it over a guitar cab. I had to back it off the cabinet a good two inches to get a flatter, usable sound.

Point 3 - Backing it off the cabinet it yielded a nice, accurate, and exciting guitar sound, comparable to the 421 which costs about 3 times as much! Upon closer analysis, I noticed that it did have a hotter response in the highest guitar frequency overtones, (i.e. 3 - 5K region), which I guess would make it cut through a mix a little better, especially if you were recording somewhat murky high gain, humbucker-driven metal-style rhythm guitar tracks. For clean sounds or single-coil tones it might be a bit much though.

Summary: A quick look at the frequency response in the spec sheet confirmed what my ears were telling me... a huge bottom end boost / proximity effect when close micing and an aggressive rise on the top end from about 2K on up. If you understand these characteristics and work around them, you can get a great sound out of it. A fantastic value for the price, but only if you know what you are doing.

I have been involved in live sound for about 12 years, playing guitar 10 and working on recording 3. I use the digi 002 factory, a focurite 4ch pre (isa428). theses are my mics Nuemann (TLM103 and 184), Audix Dp5 (d1 not I5) and Sure (57,58,beta58). I use event asp8 monitors. also sony 7506 and sennheiser 280pro headphones.

dynamic, cardiod mic. Long story short I've used it on Cajons, kick drums and cabnits. when setup correctly it works good on all, the best on Cabs. Used close, the way intended, it sounds very good for live. It looses a little presence on most electrics. Tried it with a d6 and sounded like a studio mic. Inexpensive, sound good (don't expect perfection), it's the best I've used (for itended purpose) under $100.
Basicaly almost all mics have some value (almost) and this one is very good and versitile. Although its still no md409.

Been playing guitar for 8 years and recording for 6. I currently run a home studio with a Tascam interface and DAW surface control station. We got an 800$ condenser by some German company that I can't pronounce, an AKG3000B to fill out the tone if needed, a gazillion sm57s, some Audix mikes for toms and the kick, a D112 and beta52 for the kick also, and some pencil overheads. All that comes out of a pair of EV TR8s. The e609 Silver is the newest member.

Supercardioid dynamic mic. I got tired of the 57. It always colored my tone. It's like a 20yr old mic, so I'm thinking there's gotta be something better. So I decided to gamble with the e609 and compare it to the 57.

It's allright. It's not like "WOW" better than the 57. I took a day off to record and compare the e609 to the sm57 at different positions playing the same music.

Generally, the sm57 had a more boomy sound and no crispness on the high end. When your using distortion, it picks up a resonant frequency at about 1.2kHz that sounds like the "shh" consonant. It's really annoying. BUT, the 57 has more growl in the lower mids that makes your distortion meaner.

The w609 has slightly less bass (which I found to be a good thing)and much much much more attack and crispness on the high end. It also has a little bit more of a cutting presence which sounds clearer. It's flatter response doesn't color your tone, but it also doesn't add the growl that the 57 does.

On cleans, the two are just "different."
On overdrive/distortion, the e609 is clearer and more articulate. Get's an 8 because it's not a wonder mic that totally destroys the sm57.

Been playing 30+ years.I've had every giutar under the sun and strickly play a PRS custom 24 for the past 10 years.I record for myself and my friends. I'm a die hard analog tape man.

I'm sure there are a lot of folks that find this mic to be soothing and user friendly,I found this mic to be muddy and flimsy. It has the feel of a plastic cheap mic and I wouldn't depend on it holding up very long. My SM57's have much more tone and are built much stronger.Once again I'm disapointed in Sennheiser.I'm not one for bashing but this is truly a flimsy bad sounding mic.

I have been playing music for most of my life and recording for 3 years now and i was in the market for a good mic. I use a MBox 2 which i recently purchased. I was thinking of a Shure SM57 or 58 but what attracted me to the 609 was...and this sounds shallow ...Pink Floyd live from Pompeii. They used the MD 409s and after ten minutes of searching the net i found the 609 which has a higher impedence and larger freq. range...10 Hz difference.

Though its super cardiod pattrens are meant for amps i used it on a vocal track...like Pink Floyd...and was it ever a holy sound. Nice range no loss of frequencies when distanting myself for louder parts, like the SMs seem to do. then on to my acoustic guitar and the mic punched me in the face with its exact reproduction of sound.

It is a pain in the arse to get it out of the mic clip and the price I paid for it was a bit more than I expected but with a ten year warranty and awsome sound price doesn't matter. YOU NEED THIS MIC especially if you want to start a home studio or a beginner...better to have a good mic to start than a bad one I always say!!

I've been making music for quite a while and needed a guitar cabinet mic for both my old rhodes which i was running through a fender deluxe and to mic my bad cat black cat. Never really been pleased with any of the 57's of ive used so thought i would give this a try.

I think im going to agree with some of the comments below. This is a pretty good mic recording but much more suited for live use so ill give it an 8 for recording and 10 for live. Granted alot of hobbiests might use this for home recording studios but i found when just doing really quick demo tracks that this mic ends up sounding pretty thin. I would defintely go out and invist in a higher quality condenser mic with a high spl rating for recording guitar cabinets if you can afford it. But for live use I really do enjoy this mic. It has great side and rear rejection so the only sound you get is the sound from the source your micing. I recently also bought the 906 that sennheiser came out with. It sounds bigger and the cut features are really nice. But if you dont want to spend another 70 bucks this mic will definitly do the job and do it well

Been writing/playing music for about 15 years; recording for about 14. Have used a wide variety of recording equipment - both analog & digital: 4-track to 24-track consoles experience; currently own a Roland VS2000 for home studio (which fits all).

Have used them on guitar amps, snares, and sometimes even (first by accident, and now for fun) used as a room mic on just about anything, and lightly introduced into a mix.
Placed at various angles and inches from guitar amps, and about 1 - 2 inches from snare/tom heads.

I was STRICTLY an SM57'er for about the last 12 years. There was no breaking me from it... probably because 57's treat my mid & low vocal tones, specifically for live shows, with the most honesty I can find. My 57 was my pride and joy when it came to amp and snare micing. At 12 years old they're still in great condition cosmetically as well as mechanically. My 57's could do no wrong. . .

Until about a year ago when I had to mess it all up and buy an e609 solely on a whim. Then. . . a couple more (for toms, and because I had enough cash for two more).
Since then, I'm severly guilty of having betrayed my 57's in the studio and out.

The e609 is ideally for amp and drum micing. However, the advantage is - whether it be close or distant placement/clean or distorted/wet or dry room - the e609 will translate exactly what your amps and drums are saying. You pretty much don't have to be too careful. It's like the "soul mate" of those sounds.

For the price (betwixt $80 - $100) they've given me more than I paid for, maybe even enough to make up for what I didn't know I was missing from my 57's. I'm only giving the e609 an 8-rating because I'm still feeling guilty about having ignored my 57's except for live vox.

I think the only area it falls short is the mic clip that new ones come with. You're best using a more universal or rubber clip.

I highly recommend the e609 as the "new" standard for all live and studio use, you see.