Shure SM57 "Tape Op" Mod Audio Comparison

[vanhalen5150]

Just watching some of those fake SM57 vids.....

I'm starting to wonder about mine.....

yeah, I saw that too. I bought mine from the local shop and my grill spins...on my mic.

The vid where the guy shows the box's. The fake box looks pretty familiar. He also said they are from a Canadian distributor that sells them on ebay. I got mine from a Canadian chain and paid $119.00 for each. If they are fakes I'm sure they didnt know. I think the grill spins on mine but he says they may have fixed that as well. He has a link to photo's of the inside circuit.

I just know mine do not sound great.

[rgorke]

So, the broken mic I picked up I am pretty shure was a fake but all I wanted was the body so I didn't have to take out the transformer in my real SM57. I switched bodies so the real SM57 has the Tape Op mod to it. It really sound a lot better. It use to have a honk to it but not any more. I may do some A/B ing to convince myself.

[Reeltarded]

Convention is pin 2 hot, 3 is -.

Don't think for a second that old mics sound better. Old doesn't mean shit to a piece of shit. Crap has always been crap, always will be. Modern mics might sound bad on average because the market is flooded with garbage made by slaves on third-hand CNC machines out of spurious materials and to an awful tolerance.

If you want to hear a real mic, get a golden era Sinatra recording. 57-62 or so. The golden years of German condensers. My knees are weak. I am such a big girl. Heh

[inkomodo.dragon]

In case you don't want to mess with your SM57 there's another (more civil) way of getting similar results. The idea is to lower the input impedance to a more healthy value (500R). You have to find out the input impedance of your mic preamp (in my case 1300 Ohms) and solder a specific resistor to ground (in parallel) effectively reducing the impedance. The value of the resistor required can be calculated with this formula:

Rp = (Rs*Rd)/(Rs-Rd)

Rp: Parallel resistor
Rs: Stock Input impedance
Rd: Desired input impedance

In my case Rs=1k3, Rd=500R so Rp=812R. I'm going to use a 820R 1% 1/2w metalfilm resistor.

You can implement this resistor in a couple of different ways. One would be to open the 57 and solder it inside. A more conservative way would be to place it inside a cable connector which would give you an easy way to A/B the sound change. You can also put it inside your mic preamp (not recommended).
Read THIS ARTICLE for a more detailed explanation.

[garbeaj]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E73QNHoPsqs[/youtube]

Jesus, that is night and day! Hook 'em 'Horns!

[SteadyEddie]

Just ordered a patch cable to try the resistor mod. Our band uses a behringer mixer and it appears to have a 20k input impedance, so I'm hoping that I get a big improvement from this.

In case you don't want to mess with your SM57 there's another (more civil) way of getting similar results. The idea is to lower the input impedance to a more healthy value (500R). You have to find out the input impedance of your mic preamp (in my case 1300 Ohms) and solder a specific resistor to ground (in parallel) effectively reducing the impedance. The value of the resistor required can be calculated with this formula:

Rp = (Rs*Rd)/(Rs-Rd)

Rp: Parallel resistor
Rs: Stock Input impedance
Rd: Desired input impedance

In my case Rs=1k3, Rd=500R so Rp=812R. I'm going to use a 820R 1% 1/2w metalfilm resistor.

You can implement this resistor in a couple of different ways. One would be to open the 57 and solder it inside. A more conservative way would be to place it inside a cable connector which would give you an easy way to A/B the sound change. You can also put it inside your mic preamp (not recommended).
Read THIS ARTICLE for a more detailed explanation.

[HTH]

In case you don't want to mess with your SM57 there's another (more civil) way of getting similar results. The idea is to lower the input impedance to a more healthy value (500R). You have to find out the input impedance of your mic preamp (in my case 1300 Ohms) and solder a specific resistor to ground (in parallel) effectively reducing the impedance. The value of the resistor required can be calculated with this formula:

Rp = (Rs*Rd)/(Rs-Rd)

Rp: Parallel resistor
Rs: Stock Input impedance
Rd: Desired input impedance

In my case Rs=1k3, Rd=500R so Rp=812R. I'm going to use a 820R 1% 1/2w metalfilm resistor.

You can implement this resistor in a couple of different ways. One would be to open the 57 and solder it inside. A more conservative way would be to place it inside a cable connector which would give you an easy way to A/B the sound change. You can also put it inside your mic preamp (not recommended).
Read THIS ARTICLE for a more detailed explanation.

I've read that same article and this is on my list of things to try as I do feel the need to cut some mids on the desk when I'm micing up my amp at gigs.

I'm using a slightly older desk (A&H GL3) with a 2k input on the mic channels, so I'll try a 470ohm resistor for around 380ohm input. Would be worth just putting a pot in parallel so you can tune it to ear, maybe as low as 250ohms up to whatever your desk's stock input impedance is.