budget microphones?

[betavision]

I am looking for some advice on purchasing a couple of lower end microphones. My price range would be about $25.00 a piece. I know, you get what you pay for. Still I need a single point stereo mic, to record in a coffee house singer song writter type of atmosphere. And a small mono microphone for random sound samples. If you could list a few models of microphones within this price range. I am recording onto an old mz-r37. Thanks

Edited January 31, 2006 by betavision

[A440]

If you're really broke, this Stereo Lapel Microphone for Minidisc regularly listed on Ebay will do pretty well. The case picks up a lot of handling noise, though, so you have to place it somewhere and not touch it.

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-STEREO-LAPEL-MICRO...1QQcmdZViewItem

Church Audio makes solid little mics like this one, also on Ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/CHURCH-AUDIO-MIC-4-DAT...1QQcmdZViewItem

http://stores.ebay.com/CHURCH-AUDIO

But it's not a good idea to just plug the mic directly into the unit as shown because the unit makes whirring noises, so you also need an extension cord.

Note that a mono mic with a mono plug will only record into one channel. I assume the Church Audio reporter's mic is a mono mic with a stereo plug. If you get another mono mic make sure that it has two bands around its plug (like your headphone plug). If there's only one band, it's left channel only, and you'll need an adapter, though they are not hard to find.

Just a little over your budget is this, though you'll probably want to add a clip to it:

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

Take a look at their stereo mics too. Great customer service, very reliable.

Edited February 3, 2006 by A440

[RockyJ]

I wanted a starter mic to get the hang of my new recorder and play a bit before I bought a good one.

I found an AIWA mic on ebay. You can try ebay and see if you can send a message to the seller to see if he has any more. Mine developed a hum and I had to do some resoldering (the case didn't have a good ground I believe). Otherwise it is just what it is. It seems to have a lot of self noise although I don't know how to measure that.

The seller's ebay name is calvin829, and he calls it an AIWA Luxury stereo mic.

Here's a review of another AIWA mic (not my model) if you can find one.

http://www.minidisc.org/part_Recorders_Aiwa_notes.html

I got mine for $1.04 plus about $6.00 shipping

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[A440]

That's the mic that used to come with an Aiwa cassette recorder, and it was my first mic for minidisc too. It's decent for lecture/interview recording.

But when you move on up, even to cheap binaurals, you'll never go back. I don't know what the specs were for the Aiwa, but I'd guess it has a limited high end, because it sounded muffled by comparison to my Sound Professionals BMC-2. But for under $10 ? That's a find.

[RockyJ]

I've been doing some playing with it. I have a recording of the local College doing an Opera in their basement theater. I did some quick experimenting with its pickup of a sweep recording I made and notice it shows up at about 80hz and drops down about 10db at 2.6kh back up at 4kh and drops down at about 6.5k

then fluctuates mostly downward but keeps up some vol all the way to 21kh.

All of this is pretty unscientific and thrown together. My speakers and amp have a big influence on the results. I need a good pair to compare to for the best indication.

The model number on the case is CM 18 WB but I couldn't find any specs on the web.