I recently asked my friend, who's brother was coming from the USA to pick up a set of mics for me. I zeroed on the MXL 990 - 991 combo. It costed me $69 on amazon.com. I actually wanted a the shockmount too for it, but it was not available in this combo. I had to purchase just the 990 for it. I assumed 2 is better than 1 and hence went ahead with this. I later realized I made a good decision.
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| MXL 990 - 991 and the case it arrived in. |
It took me some time to test it out as I didnt have a phantom powered source at home. So I took it to the place I mix a live band every weekend. Plugged the 990 into the brand new Yamaha MG3214 mixer and fired it up. Hit the phantom switch and strapped on my headphones.
Hmmmm...Nice clean and crisp sound. Definitely not for a live venue, coz it started picking up noise from the street 5 floors below too! Nonetheless, I felt it was definitely worth the money. This is my first personal condenser mic and I love it. I got my vocalist to sing a few lines and recorded it to get a closer look at the finer details.
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| A closer look at the 990 |
The 991, on the other hand serves a more specific purpose for me. I immediately set it up to work for the overhead mic on the drumkit. I set it up at a higher point, covering most of the snare, hat and ride area. The sound of this mic very well suited this setup. I already had a mic dedicated to the snare and this mic was picking up the higher frequencies very well. I turned off other drum mics to listen to this carefully and it was picking up the snare, hats and ride on a good note. Will use it at this place every week from now on.
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| A heart shaped indicating its a Cadiod mic. |
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| The MXL 991 |
So to sum it up... what I can say is, you get what you pay for. So the MXL is a good deal at the quoted price. I'll soon upload some recordings that I'm making with this mic, may be a youtube video.
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| Side by side |
Don't consider this as a professional review. This blog will mostly contain my experience with a certain device or an experiment at my workplace. Enjoy.
T
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