The SM58...

Re: The SM58...

First,
Every singer has a mic that suits their voice. IMO the first responsibility I would insist on for any singer I was managing was to take some time, find that mic and buy it. End of story. These kind of discussions are the recycled stuff that wastes our own mental bandwidth! Seriously, guitarists spend years getting the right guitar, amp. Etc. yet singers... To the audience probably the most important person in the Band... uses whatever the house happens to have? Really??
 
Re: The SM58...

The SM58 is a versatile utility mic. Its ubiquity means that most singers know how to "work" it. Anyone who does sound for clients other than themselves should own several. Really.

I own around 80 mics, 6 of which are 58s. Another 6 are 57s. The 58s look nice (I don't do rock shows with my personal inventory) and get used when appearance is important. I should probably sell off the 57s as they almost never get used... but I have them in case they get requested.

But mic options are nice to have, so there are 6 Beyer M69, 6 AKG C-535 and 6 Shure SM86 in the vox collection, too. Only 2 Heil PR22 so far, I hope to add 4 more soon.

We have some original EV ND series mics but never accumulated enough of any one model to do all the vox on a stage, so my use and observations are pretty limited. They seemed more "personal" in that on some voices they were very complimentary, but on some they were just plain ugly and that there wasn't a lot of middle ground. The real prize of the ND line was the 308. It was a nice tom mic, guitar cabinet mic, horn mic; it was rugged, too. It's the mic EV needs to reissue and not change a thing from the original.

I agree with whoever said the Beta58 sounds unflattering on most vocals. I think they used the word brittle, and that's not exactly the word I have in mind (maybe 'crunchy'?)... but to me they sound like someone stole JBL's "icepick in the forehead" sound from the 1980s and put it inside a microphone. That same coloration seems common to the Beta line with the exception of the Beta57a. That bite is still in there, but the additional proximity effect seems to give a bit of balance to it.

With so much variety in voices it's nice to have microphone choices. When one has the luxury of working with the same acts on a regular basis, finding the microphone most suited to a singer can be a fun and frustrating pursuit but it can have a nice payoff. For one-offs, "put a 58 up there and get off my stage." 8O~8-O~:shock:

Have fun, good luck.

Tim Mc
 
Re: The SM58...

Chris Nixon said:
Does the SM58 have any specific advantages that wouldn't be true of any other good quality mic if people had the same amount of experience with it?

Chris
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That is a good question. The only thing I can think of is the SM58 never really sounds bad on anyone, just not as good as other mics can sound on some singers. It has a slightly "forward" sound to it with the presance peak and will often help a lead vocal to stand out in a mix. Other than the low cut filter I don't like to use ANY eq on the lead vocal with an analog console due to the phase artifacts that "smear" the sound and the 58 will always work with no or minimal cuts. Also you don't get "as" upset if they get abused because they are tough and cheap.
 
Re: The SM58...

Isn't it funny how we, as a community, the audio fools that we are always seem to question the items that actually make us money. I can pretty much assure you that almost none of us have microphones with as good an ROI as our 58s, period. Every single artist that I have ever worked with has been happy to sing into an SM58, no one has ever said they wouldn't use them. The artists that we have dealt with over the years that wanted something different were carrying their own mic kits and had a BE and an ME that we're used to using those Mics. I own several SM58s and 57s and I use them on almost every event.
 
Re: The SM58...

You know it never ceases to amaze me that ANY vocalist wouldn't own their own mic. $100 gets you in the game and $200-$250 gets you hooked up nicely. I would not want every other singer's spit just for starters. How much does everyone else in the band pay for their instrument? How much is a guitar? Drum kit? Keyboard? There is no excuse for this.

I worked (mostly volunteered) with a "School of Rock" organization that my niece was in. Out of 8 bands EVERY person who sang including instrumentalists who sang backup owned a SM58. Everyone brought their own mic and plugged it in themselves at the stand and unplugged when they left at every show. They all even made sure the channel was muted first. This should be just the basics for ALL singers.
 
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Re: The SM58...

Eric Cagle said:
You know it never ceases to amaze me that ANY vocalist wouldn't own their own mic. $100 gets you in the game and $200-$250 gets you hooked up nicely. I would not want every other singer's spit just for starters. How much does everyone else in the band pay for their instrument? How much is a guitar? Drum kit? Keyboard? There is no excuse for this.

I worked (mostly volunteered) with a "School of Rock" organization that my niece was in. Out of 8 bands EVERY person who sang including instrumentalists who sang backup owned a SM58. Everyone brought their own mic and plugged it in themselves at the stand and unplugged when they left at every show. They all even made sure the channel was muted first. This should be just the basics for ALL singers.
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Now you are talking crazy talk! What is this "take responsibility for my own self stuff"?

Quoted for good measure
 
Re: The SM58...

Jared Koopman said:
Now you are talking crazy talk! What is this "take responsibility for my own self stuff"?

Quoted for good measure
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Yea I know, but I am a libertarian at heart. The poor little sheep singers will sing through anything we give them so I guess we are going to have to be the ones to wake them up. I think we have done a pretty good job of getting the guys with in ears to carry their own mic kit, and even a console sometimes. You don't really think anyone other than sound engineers figured that one out do you? Ha Ha Ha, now that is funny!

When I worked at the Masquerade in Atlanta I didn't even want to touch some of the gross vocal mics there......and people actually put their lips on them. Yuck! I do actually think we as engineers created this situation by wanting to control things like having a known quality for all the vocal mics, and for that matter all the other mics. In that taking responsability for the sound thing there most likely is a little control freak in all of us, I will speak for myself......There is. I will deaden the ringing on a Drum kit in a heartbeat and convince the drummer why they like it. It is for their own good and for the good of the band you know :) Yes the change will have to start with us, we have the power. I would really rather ALWAYS use my own vocal mics. I hate letting go but it really needs to be done. We already at least have our singers carrying their mics at a national level and I'm am willing to bet it is most (if not all) of the BE's who are responsible for that. Food for thought.
 
Re: The SM58...

Kemper Watson said:
Most of the lead singers I come across in bar world can't tell a MixWiz from a Stagesetter 8..
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Posted by Tim Woodworth in the Basement on PSW:

The tour manager goes down to the hotel desk and ask the receptionist if she could call his lead singers room because they did not answer the door and they are late . The receptionists tells him that there was a terrible accident last night and that the lead singer was killed! The tour manager says wow...and walks away.

A few minutes later the tour manager comes back up to the receptionist and asks if she can call the lead singers room because they are late. She said...sir I already told you...there was a terrible accident last night and your singer died. The tour manager says wow and walks away.

A few minutes later the tour manager comes back up to the receptionist and asks if she can call the lead singers room because they are late....and she yells at the tour manager.....SIR YOUR LEAD SINGER DIED LAST NIGHT!!

The tour manager said...yeah I know...I just like hearing it.
 
Re: The SM58...

Spenser Hamilton said:
+1. Personally, I can't help but cringe when I see a singer unplugging our 935s to plug in a Beta 58.
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Of course I prefer to use my own mics but it still makes me happy to have a singer take the responsability and have their own, even if it is something less than what I am providing. If you have the time to let them experiment with a better mic for their voice for a few minutes usually you have made a friend and they will at least be thinking about buying one. If your mic is noticeably better and CLEAN more than likely they will be glad to use it for the show. I have this happen all the time. There are also the times where they come in with a mic that really works well for their voice. I had a female singer come in with a Neumann KMS 104 that sounded better than anything in my collection on her voice. This time it was I who took a few minutes to experiment and compare a few others to it. The KMS 104 is not the best on every voice but it this case it was stunning.
 
Eric Cagle said:
Of course I prefer to use my own mics but it still makes me happy to have a singer take the responsability and have their own, even if it is something less than what I am providing. If you have the time to let them experiment with a better mic for their voice for a few minutes usually you have made a friend and they will at least be thinking about buying one. If your mic is noticeably better and CLEAN more than likely they will be glad to use it for the show. I have this happen all the time. There are also the times where they come in with a mic that really works well for their voice. I had a female singer come in with a Neumann KMS 104 that sounded better than anything in my collection on her voice. This time it was I who took a few minutes to experiment and compare a few others to it. The KMS 104 is not the best on every voice but it this case it was stunning.
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Brings back a memory of a female singer who had her own KMS104 but didn't like it and asked me if I had something else I would suggest. Well back then most of my kit was $100 mics but I had recently bought some Senn e865s. She tried it and it was perfect for her. Ya never know.


Sent from my iPad HD
 
Re: The SM58...

RYAN LOUDMUSIC JENKINS said:
Isn't it funny how we, as a community, the audio fools that we are always seem to question the items that actually make us money. I can pretty much assure you that almost none of us have microphones with as good an ROI as our 58s, period. Every single artist that I have ever worked with has been happy to sing into an SM58, no one has ever said they wouldn't use them. The artists that we have dealt with over the years that wanted something different were carrying their own mic kits and had a BE and an ME that we're used to using those Mics. I own several SM58s and 57s and I use them on almost every event.
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No one is saying that the SM58 isn't needed for people providing sound. Myself, I am saying that if you do sound for yourself, the SM58 is a substandard microphone to do it with.

I get that you have to provide lemonade for the people who have always used an SM58. If you want better sound and less feedback, then for a few more dollars, you can get a much more capable microphone that sounds better, and rejects feedback better.

Perhaps it is just my testing environment, but seriously, the SM58 doesn't stand up to the A/B test with most of these other microphones we have been discussing here. Gold standard or not, it just doesn't make the grade in my testing. I would love to hear from others who have done their own testing and came up with a different outcome that I have.

The SM58 is not in the budget bracket of crap microphones either. Can you get through the night with it without sounding bad using SM58's? Sure, but you could have sounded better, and you could have had less issues with feedback using a better mic IME.
 
Re: The SM58...

Rob Spence said:
Brings back a memory of a female singer who had her own KMS104 but didn't like it and asked me if I had something else I would suggest. Well back then most of my kit was $100 mics but I had recently bought some Senn e865s. She tried it and it was perfect for her. Ya never know.
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That is for sure. The other ya never know part is how the mic has been taken care of. The KMS104 is one of those mics that doesn't seem to take abuse as well as some others. I used a brand new looking one that sounded terrible once and I opened the top to check the capsule and the inner windscreen was covered solid in some kind of crud that looked like greyish brown playdough. It turned out that the owner had been "cleaning" the mic after every use with some kind of antiseptic by brushing it on the windscreen. Ya never know.
 
Re: The SM58...

Scott Bolt said:
No one is saying that the SM58 isn't needed for people providing sound. Myself, I am saying that if you do sound for yourself, the SM58 is a substandard microphone to do it with.

I get that you have to provide lemonade for the people who have always used an SM58. If you want better sound and less feedback, then for a few more dollars, you can get a much more capable microphone that sounds better, and rejects feedback better.

Perhaps it is just my testing environment, but seriously, the SM58 doesn't stand up to the A/B test with most of these other microphones we have been discussing here. Gold standard or not, it just doesn't make the grade in my testing. I would love to hear from others who have done their own testing and came up with a different outcome that I have.

The SM58 is not in the budget bracket of crap microphones either. Can you get through the night with it without sounding bad using SM58's? Sure, but you could have sounded better, and you could have had less issues with feedback using a better mic IME.
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I have found that most anyone requesting a SM58 is usually very willing to try one of my better mics after I tell them "Sure, we have 6 of them and 4 of the Beta 58's in that mic box if you really want one but I would like to give this a try on your voice." If I have time during a sound check I will let them try both out and listen for themself. I still use the SM58's for some things like rentals and the couple of a particular genre of gigs I seem to run into evey year. I can honestly say the SM58 is my most favorite mic for any death metal singer. :)
 
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