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geoff geoff is offline
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Default Does anybody sell pre-made resistor "gizmos" for sm57/58 mics?

On 16/09/2020 2:35 am, Mike Rivers wrote:
On 9/15/2020 10:12 AM, slinkp wrote:
I'd like to try the shunt resistor trick, as per eg. that old Paul
Stamler article, but i have no idea where my soldering kit has got to,
and exercising my soldering skills (terrible) is no longer on my list
of "fun things to do


So if there's a place or person that sells eg. an XLR barrel with a
suitable resistor already correctly wired into it, I'd happily buy one.


This isn't the sort of thing that becomes a commercial product, though
you might find some on this newsgroup or some other recording-related
forum who will volunteer to make one for you for cost and shipping.

I would, but I won't - because the 600 ohm resistor that Paul came up
with for his article was the best compromise, as evaluated by his
students, for the mic, preamp, and source. Different resistors sounded
different and may sound better than 600 ohms (or no resistor) on a
different source.

The other thing - and maybe now that I think about it, it might not be a
600 ohm resistor after all, but a different value - is that what they
really determined. This is the load on the microphone, which equals the
preamp's input impedance with a resistor in parallel that total 600
ohms. I may not have the number right, but that's the principle.

Paul conducted his experiment using a preamp that he designed and built
himself, so your preamp will be different.

If you want to experiment with varying the load on a microphone, I'd
suggest that you give some consideration to buying a Cloudlifter Z. It's
a pre-preamp with a built-in variable load resistor. Even with the load
resistor switched out, the Cloudlifter will make your SM57 sound better,
and you can fiddle with the variable load to see how (and if) it affects
what you're recording.

https://www.cloudmicrophones.com/cloudlifter-cl-z

Unfortunately it costs about $250 new, but they're available on the used
market.


I used to manufacture' them for sale. I used a 750R resistor, a better
compromise I found. 600R takes the combined load Z too low.

geoff