Samson C02 Matched Pair Studio Pencil Condenser Microphones with Cardioid Capsules for Instrument and Dialog Recording

I was looking for a good pair of condensers to record guitar and cymbals without having to spend too much money right away, so I ordered these. They seemed like exactly what I needed. Eager to try them out, I first set them up to record my acoustic guitar. One aimed at the fingerboard, one aimed at the soundhole, I recorded in stereo and was amazed at the sound I got without even having to experiment any with my mic positioning. If you want to hear an example, search Robert Bassett Acoustic Guitar Recording Example on SoundCloud. I can't link to it in a review, but you should be able to find it easily. That recording I got is exactly the signal I got coming in, without doing any EQing or anything. The excess noise is due to the environment I recorded in, me breathing, and my laptop's crappy soundcard, not the microphones. You can hear the full range it picks up, and even the decent bass response. The closer I positioned the mic to the soundhole, the greater the bass response.I tried drums a few weeks later, and that was when I really fell in love. I had these guys set up over the drums to capture the cymbals and whole kit, as well as mics on the hi-hat, snare, and kick drum. After listening back to the sound I got, I realized how well the Samson's were picking up the kit on their own, so I ended up pulling out the mics on the hi-hat and snare, and just using a mic for the bass drum and the Samsons for the rest of the kit. The kit we recorded with didn't have the greatest cymbals on it but you couldn't tell that from the recordings we got. The Samson's made them sound crystal clear.Another few weeks later, I tried capturing a baby grand. I positioned the pair about 5 inches back from the hammers and 5 inches up from the strings, one aimed at the lower strings, one aimed at the higher strings recording in stereo again. The recordings I got were awesome, and their wide frequency response picked up each note beautifully throughout the full range of the piano. I just used another condenser five feet or so back from the piano to capture the room sound, and a little reverb of course, and I was more than pleased with the recordings I got from such an affordably priced pair of mics. I would have payed much much more for these.So basically, if you're looking for a matched pair of condensers for recording stereo, you really shouldn't look any further than these. For a little over a hundred bucks, they really took my recordings to the next level. Their wide frequency response makes them excellent for use in any application. And the carrying case they come in is really handy too. I didn't think I'd use it since I already have a case for my mics, but I ended up using it anyways since they fit so nice in it.Oh and no i'm not affiliated with Samson in any way, I just fell in love with these mics haha. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions, i'm not an expert or anything but i'll do my best to tell you my experiences i've had with them.

Yes, I know that this mic is intended for choir or instrument mic'ing. But read on.I sing bass in a quartet, and the mic I had used for awhile seemed to be not sounding as good as it used to. I started searching on the internet to see what bass singers were using. There were 4 or 5 mics that kept coming up as being excellent for that application, but they were all very expensive mics. I'm just an amateur, so I didn't want to spend several hundred dollars. I ran across a forum where a guy mentioned this mic. He said someone told him about it, so he tried it, and was tremendously impressed. Then I found another forum where a guy was raving about it. So I thought what the heck; for that price, I'll give it a try.Let me interject this....the discussions I found on the forums mentioned a problem with the wind screen that comes with it. This is a condenser mic, so it must have phantom power. And like condenser mics, it's extremely sensitive. Using it as a handheld, you must use a windscreen because it's so sensitive it pics up every p-pop and breathing noise. I put the windscreen on, but immediately noticed that it muffled the mic. After inspecting it, I found that it has an inner layer of felt type material behind the foam. I reached in with needle nose pliers and pulled that out. That fixed the problem! With that layer gone, the wind screen did it's job without excessive muffling.With that modification done...WOW!! I did an A/B comparison, and couldn't believe the difference I was hearing. So I called my wife down to the studio to get her opinion. She had the same wow factor I did. This $55 mic (the come in a 2-pack for about $110) made the $200 dynamic mic I had been using, as well as the other mics I have, sound like crap in comparison. So sensitive, so clear, unbelievably rich! When the guys came over to practice, they couldn't believe their ears either.It should work equally good for any vocal range. It's truly one of the great deals in pro audio!

These mics work perfectly and capture amazing audio of choirs, drum sets, bands, and anything in a theater. They even work really well for my studio TV show where we use the mics above our talent as dialog mics. To hear examples of how these sound, check out Powered By Rainbows on YouTube because we’ve used these in every video with exceptional sound quality.