Shure SM58 Dynamic Microphone
For many years the SM58 has been the recognised industry standard as one of the best vocal microphones in terms of affordability, sound, volume levels and ruggedness. It has been used by some of the world’s best musicians and vocalists and is widely acclaimed by sound engineers everywhere.
In fact during my early twenties and due to the immediate absence of gigs and therefore gig money, I took a job one weekend as a PA rigger with a friend of mine who was a front of house engineer at a prestigious open-air festival in Denmark.
One of my duties was to help the other 7 or 8 guys to build the scaffolding for the very expensive Turbo-sound PA system, at one point I was stuck 30 feet up in the air trying to attach a piece of scaffolding to help create a walk way for the placement of the speaker bins. I was struggling to get a particular latch to close thereby locking in a pin that would secure the said scaffolding in place. I shouted down to one of the other guys that I was having trouble getting it to lock in position, he shouted back that it was a common problem and that I just needed to give it a solid blow to close it shut …
“Here, use this …” he said and threw me an SM58 microphone …”give it a good bash …!” I looked at the mike and then looked back down at him “Go on … don’t worry it will be fine …” he insisted. So I did as I was told and clouted the latch with the SM58 mike and it snapped shut, however I was sure that this had rendered the microphone useless.
How wrong I was when the very next day during the sound check the same guy strolled up to the microphone and gave a resounding “…..TEST, TEST, ONE TWO CHECK …” and to my utter delight the SM 58 rang out sweet and clear. A real life example of how much abuse the SM58 can stand and then still deliver the deep, rich and resonant vocal tone that it has become famous for.