Your home music studio can take many forms: a band’s practice space, a bedroom with an acoustic guitar, or a DJ setup. However, one thing is practically certain: you will need a microphone.
The microphone is the foundation of the home recording studio – getting good sound makes it easier to get good sound. To that end, there are hundreds of microphone models, from the high-end Neumann ribbon mic to the midrange AKG and Audio-Technica to the budget-friendly Peavey. Just sorting through them can make your brain hurt, and that’s before you try each one.
Eventually, you’ll want at least a small selection of microphones: perhaps one to better record your vocals, another that sounds better than others with your instrument of choice, or something you can plug directly into your laptop or iPhone for recording in the field. To get started though, you need to keep it simple, and luckily there is one microphone that has proven to be the most versatile for the money over many years: the Shure SM57. It’s the only affordable home recording equipment that’s also used almost universally by the biggest names in music.
Just google famous users of the SM57 and you’ll see that, from multi-million selling artists to the podium of the highest office in the country, it’s used almost everywhere. You can mike drums and timpani, and even bass cabinets. Plus, it’s built like a tank – mine has probably been around for 40 years, I bought it from someone a good decade ago, it’s fallen off quite a bit and still sounds better than some of my more expensive mics.
An SM57 will set you back under $100 new and $70-75 used, making it as cost effective as many budget sounding mics. The only advice I’d give you if you have a little more money is to go for an older model SM57 “Unidyne III” which sounds even better than the modern version. I have seen them for sale for around $150.
Other microphones claim to imitate or even improve on the SM57, such as the Audix i5. Many home recording enthusiasts use the Audix, and it’s about the same price as the Shure, so you might want to give it a try. But the Shure SM57 has stood the test of time, so you can’t go wrong using it as a key component of your home music studio.
