[Microphones on eBay]

Only your first listing came up. It looks decent, but with those clips emerging directly from the mic they will be much bigger than they have to be.

I strongly recommend these, although they'll add up to $50 (with the clips) plus shipping.

http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/item/SP-BMC-2

You do need the clips.

They're tiny, they're hi-fi and they have a 30-day guarantee. Sometimes Sound Pros puts a pair on Ebay for $29, but I don't see any there at the moment.

That little mic you got probably also uses the same basic capsules, but it's a one-point mic, so there's no stereo separation. The listing is so vague it might even be a mono mic. But what was your problem with it? If you got clipping with loud music--just a big blare every time the bass hit--then you need something you'll have to use  anyway: the Radio Shack Headphone Volume Control ($7), which works as an attenuator. You'll need that with any mic you get because the MD's mic jack just can't handle loud music, particularly bass. Take a look at the pinned thread under Live Recording .

If you look in the Gallery under my album, you can hear some of the recordings I've made with BMC-2's.  BMC-2-->Headphone Volume Control (turned up)---Mic-In, with Manual Volume set to, oh, 18/30 for something as loud as Mars Volta, should work for you. Please take the extra steps to use Manual Volume--it's worth it.

Arcade Fire, Mars Volta and SOAD are well worth recording.

←

Hey, thanks a lot for the advise! So, does that mean that my mic, on its own, has the same volume-recording capabilities as those other mics? That's the only problem with it. I tried recording loud volumes by playing an Arcade Fire bootleg at full volume through headphones, and recording that through the little one-point mic. I tried all kinds of recording volumes, and none of them sounded good. Is clipping where you set it to a recording level, so it won't allow the incoming sound to go any louder than that? Stereo separation is not important to me, but getting it to record really loud is. It would be helpfull if the volume controller is what I need. I've been looking at that for a while now.

[Microphones on eBay]

I don't know a whole lot about microphones, but I already made a very very bad decision buying this cheap mic.

I am planning on recording the Arcade Fire in San Francisco, and possibly The Mars Volta and System in Oakland. I have a Sony MZ-R700, and I need a good mic to go with it. I have been looking at these two mics on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/MINIDISC-or-DAT-mic-ST...1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/STEREO-Y-MICROPHONE-PA...1QQcmdZViewItem

Will either of these do a good job in recording loud loud rock concerts? If so, which one would you guys recommend? If not, what mics are in the 20-30$ range that are perfect for what I'm looking for? Thanks a lot for any help.

[A Solution To Blankdisc And Recording Problems.]

Problems Re: Skipping & Blankdisc (when write-head cable is perfectly fine)

I've recently been having problems with skipping when recording. Pretty weird as it occurs seemingly at random positions on different discs. At first I suspected dirty discs but after rigorous cleaning, the problem persisted.

Anyway, as usual I opened up my N1 and checked for anything weird. I became worried when my unit was blanking discs and I lost recording capabilities, even with the ribbon cables intact. Very interesting!

Well, after a few days working at it, I finally figured out what may be the problem:

My magnetic write head was not in contact with the disc surface when writing, hence no data was written to disc. In conclusion, for proper writing capabilities;

the write head must be in contact with the disc surface.

By extension, make sure you clean both sides of the disc if you're running into skipping issues. You may also want to quickly wipe the bottom 'contact surface' of the mag head as well, with a cotton tip, as I've found grime buildup there that lifted the mag.head, hence no contact. Be careful!

Oh yeah, very light contact between write-head and disc surface is enough.

←

Wait, so what do I do if the ribbon is not damaged in any way? My mz-r700 was getting the blankdisc error, so I opened it up. I got it to record a minidisc while still open, so I could see what the little recording arm is doing. It's not coming anywhere near the disc when recording. It's about a fifth of an inch away. How can I get it to write on the disc? Thanks