I hear a lot of different things about the MXL 990. I bought one just because is extremely inexpensive and I have heard some decent reviews. It's in the mail and I was just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this mic. EG > How's the sound, construction, Signal to Noise, What it good for, what it sucks at... ya know

Personally never tried one, though would be interested on some feedback also.

Seems a rock bottom price for a mic like this..
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Recording Studio Suntans

Well... the MXL 990 came in the mail yesterday and I fooled around with it a little last night. I must say, for $59, this thing is pretty cool. I just figured I'd be able to use it for something along the line, but I'm gonna be able to use this for lead vocals and pretty much anything else. I think it would sound great with an acoustic guitar. If anyone wants any sound clips, I'd be happy to oblige.

Sounds good.

Let me know about those acoustic guitar sound clips we could add them up here for members to download.
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Recording Studio Suntans

hello my fellow studiomaniacs......
I`m thinking of buying a mxl 990, what do you say. shoud i or not

Regards

Ther SHURESM57 kicks ass!

Anyway, I would love to hear what the MXL sounds like, been waiting to hear it I'm glad I found this post.
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shure sm57 (I love you!)

Hey jbohn

Hows that MXL 990 microphone working out?
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Recording Studio Suntans

I purchased the MXL 990 and 991 set at GC. For the price, I really like the mics.

Here is a sound clip of a nylon acoustic that was done after I purchased them. The only thing modified on the clip is volume (up 6 db).

http://members.cox.net/plane/MXL990.mp3

This is not the best clip, and the conversion to mp3 might have changed it a bit. I do have the original wav if you want to open it in Sound Forge or something.

The recording chain was the mic -> M-Box pre -> single track ...that's it. I only did two tracks, one rhythm and one solo. I think I had the sound hole too close to the mic (5 inches maybe?) because of a heavy bass in the rest of the tune (partly in this clip).

I hear some warble, but then I realized that it was me using vibrato It was not a conscious effort.

Anyways, I also bought a couple of Octava 319s that I am going to try out. For $60 a pop, I couldn't pass up the deal.

Hey top job!

That's a whole lot of mic for not a lot of loot...

Bit of noise there, but could be any number of things I guess.

Hmm might have to grab one of these.
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Recording Studio Suntans

Yep, I am sure the noise is the 3 computers I have running in the background. I really need to work on setting up a proper home studio !!

It might also show how sensitive the condensor is. Maybe if I turn the input down a bit, it might weed out the ambient noise.

Have had one of these mics for some time. For the price pretty decent. I've used this mic for vocals in Cakewalk, used on accoustic guitar and used it live on kick drum in font of drum head also on bass guitar but mostly use it as ambient mic from behind the drum kit. in all the applications this mic really does pretty well. In a church sound recording I used this mic from behind the kit with a different kick mic and was able to EQ 990 to pick up the rest of the drums, sounded like more than two mics were on drums, recording turned out decent. Lots of bang for the buck. If you would like a small sound bite in wav format will send accoustic guitar w/ vocal, vocal recorded with 990. The only thing with this mic is it's very hot and the features of the 993 would be benificial. If anyone has tried the 993 how does it perform.

you get what you pay for. I sell mics for a living. I also record quite a bit. My personal opinion of the 990 is yuk!!!! For 50.00 more dollars you can do yourself a big favor and get one of the new perception mics form AKG. For 300.00 I would suggest the Groove Tubes GT 55. I think going budget on the mics for a home studio is a huge mistake. It is the ears of your system. Skimp out somewhere else and by a quality mic. You won't be sad that you did.

livetoe wrote:

... used it live on kick drum in font of drum head also on bass guitar but mostly use it as ambient mic from behind the drum kit...

I'm sooo agree with that! Even my church enngineer that this mic's performance is 10 times the mic's price. We used this guy for everything - kick, floor tom, classical guitar, SWR Workingman, alto sax, flugel, even upright bass! We did a 1 day session with both 990 and 991; KUDOS for MXL!
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Forward Together: The Next Chapter

From that sound clip above, I'd say that the MXL 990 really is a huge bang for the buck.

There is more to the "ears" of your studio than your mic though. You've also gotta consider your preamps and your cables, for instance, not to mention the acoustic accuracy of your recording room. All of those factors could have made the above sound clip of the MXL 990 sound better or worse than in different applications. My guess is that the room isn't acoustically treated, either way though, from what I heard that sounded pretty good for a mic that that sells for $40 in some places. I don't think I'd get one, cause the low price tag actually scares me anyway, however, it would be interesting to try it out since it's not that expensive I might do it just for the heck of it, eventually. I do know that some inexpensive mics can still sound pretty darn good, such as the Studio Projects C1 or the Shure SM57, for example. The Shure SM57 being a prime example, as top studios will always have some and store them next to their Nuemanns and BLUEs. So ya never know, even if the mic is inexpensive doesn't mean it's not worth checking out I guess.

Allenm541 wrote:

From that sound clip above, I'd say that the MXL 990 really is a huge bang for the buck. There is more to the "ears" of your studio than your mic though. You've also gotta consider your preamps and your cables, for instance, not to mention the acoustic accuracy of your recording room. All of those factors could have made the above sound clip of the MXL 990 sound better or worse than in different applications. My guess is that the room isn't acoustically treated, either way though, from what I heard that sounded pretty good for a mic that that sells for $40 in some places. I don't think I'd get one, cause the low price tag actually scares me anyway, however, it would be interesting to try it out since it's not that expensive I might do it just for the heck of it, eventually. I do know that some inexpensive mics can still sound pretty darn good, such as the Studio Projects C1 or the Shure SM57, for example. The Shure SM57 being a prime example, as top studios will always have some and store them next to their Nuemanns and BLUEs. So ya never know, even if the mic is inexpensive doesn't mean it's not worth checking out I guess.

Don’t waste your time, all marshal mics are junk, and that is not to say all cheep mics are junk, the Behringer B1 is fantastic for many applications. It is always important to see the physical characteristics charts to see what frequency the mic reacts to, and then do some comparison at your local music store. And yes, you cant go wrong with a 57, but the key with all mics is be picky, and trust your ears.