Shure SM81

Great Mic!

An allrounder of a microphone, good on Over Heads, Hats, acoustic guitars.

Decent price!

Nothing to fault

I'm using them to mic up acoustic nylon and steel-strung guitars. Solid construction, proven recording pedigree. What's not to like!

Very good mic use for drums over heads natural clean sound love it

Sounds great and neutral for almost every purpose

I use it on guitar, overhead, room mic and even vocal. This one sounds great everywhere. Very neutral sound. Typical Shure.

Great mic!

I'm using it for acustic guitar recordings and it rocks!

good sound

good sound easy set up

Great Recording Mic!

I use it to record in studio violins and acoustic guitars.

It's perfect of solo instruments, it gives you exactly the clarity which you would need in a mix. The only eq that i use with this mic is just a high pass filter.

It's really sensitive for live envoirment. At my church we use it to mike a cajon and sometimes jembe. The sound outfront is good, but you cant volume it up too much, cause it gets feedback. If you cut the low's it gets better, but if you want to have a bassy sound from the cajon or the jembe you would need a bass drum mic, and this is not what i would recommend for bass.

Pros:

Overall great mic, great clarity of the sound, great for studio purpose for recording acoustic instruments like violin , cello, acoustic guitars and maybe drum overheads.

Cons: Not so great for live playing at high decibels.

If you want a good, neutral mic for affordable price...

I like recording acoustic Instruments.

I wanted to buy a pair of quality smal diaphragm cardioid condenser mic what has linear frequency response, and really wide transparency, so what can transmit well also below 100 Hz, and really brings high frequencies (also 15khz-20khz) without annoying colouring. So what can give a neutral and full picture of an instrument in a not distant

mic position where a cardioid characteristic is enough.

And I like its sound.

I listened to a huge amount of records, I read tons of tech spec, user rewiews etc.

Finally I found this Mics: Schoeps mk-4, Neumann km-84,

Shure Sm-81. The Schoeps was the best for me. The Km-84 was the Second, Shure was the third.

I needed more money for the Schoeps. The Neumann firma doesn't produce the Km 84 anymore. I bought the SM 81 stereo pair.

And I'm really satisfied! I have already recorded steel string acoustic guitars, drum overhead, percussion and saxophone. All of the records were really successful!!! This mic brings excellent clarity for the price.

Important: I have high quality audio interface ( RME FF 800)

And: This mic doesn't have high output. (5,6 mV!) If you have a silent sound source, for example a small bodied nylon string guitar, you need an appropriate quality audio interface for good result. (It's actually an elementary thing.)

And! Don't forget: this is a mic with cardioid characteristic!

Cardioids has proximity effect (increased lowend) at nearfield recording situations! If your instrument quiet silent maybe you have to put the mic so close to get a transparent sound, but in this case you may have strong proximity if your instrument has significant lowend. And It can be

annoying, in case of any audio interface!

A silent nylon string guitar can be difficult also because of

the boomy sound of the sound hole.

So if you want to record acoustic instruments with cardioid, you like the neutral character, you have a good audio chain, and your instrument not a silent one with significant lowend, and you don't need the absolute high end and you don't want to sell your car for a pair of sdc, i can recommend this mic!

Studio classic that goes beyond advertisment

It is a very well-known acoustic guitar mic, which would beautifully record both nylon and steel strings. But, although it is never advertised as a vocal mic, it can do an amazing job with bass/bass-baritone voices, making frequencies between 1500-2000 hz blend into the mix.

Pad and high-pass filter make it even more practical.

It will be very useful both as a single mic and as a stereo pair (shure says that sm81's "quality of the microphone is such that you can purchase two SM81's at random and know that they will be the equivalent of a matched set.")

Great condenser mic

All but nice thoughts about this mic. Recording quality is reallly good. The casing and the wind shield are a big plus as well.