Getting it out of the box it's a hefty sumbitch. Heavy duty metal housing, sturdy as hell. Comes with a clip for a stand, but they do make a full-blown basket mount for it plus a soundproof surround/shield to go around the back side of it if you're grabbing vocs with it or other "not so loud" things where you don't want reflections and other noises popping through.
So I ran through some mic tests this morning to get a baseline for comparison. The amp was set up to sound acceptable for the 609 so when the x1R comes into play it sounds a little flubby, which is basically what sounds like in the room right now. Excited to reset the amp to the way I actually enjoy it sounding when I'm sitting in front of it and then recording some other things with the new mic.
It's a quiet mic. I can crank gain on the preamp all the way to hell and back and get zero noise out of it. The 609 and 58 both get really hissy with that kind of gain behind them. Surprisingly, after all the warnings about how much gain it needs to pick up sound, I actually had to roll preamp gain back a little from what the 58 needed to get the same level when it was in the same place on the speaker.
Poximity all up in this bisch. It would sound fuckballs amazing on violin or some other naturally thin source as it's really round on the bottom and not even a little top enhanced on its own. BUT, you can push EQ all you want in post and still get no weird noise out of its tracks, which is really gonna be sweet come mix time.
So on with the comparisons. No post EQ used except for a high-pass at 80hz and in the clip specifically marked as EQed, preamp used for gain only and no EQ or compression used on it. The pics are all taken from different angles, but I tried to line the mics up as close as I could to the same place taking into consideration their different sizes and shapes. All of these have the same bass and drums under them, tried to level match as best as I could, two guitars one hard left, one hard right.
Contender #1 - e609
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Contender #2 - SM58
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Contender #3 - X1R on the grill
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Contender #4 - X1R 6" or so back
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And finally that same sample getting pushed with a high-shelf 3dbs from 800hz on up just to see that there's no huge noise introduced pushing high-end.
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In conclusion:
FUCK THE 609. I think this makes it pretty clear it's got a HARD rasp in the high-mids that just makes the guitars sound like a buzzy mess. The 58 is better (woulda been the 57, but I lent that out). The X1R is fairly close to what I have in the room when pulled back a bit not even messing around with impedance or anything. If I were to set the impedance correctly to match the mic it would probably be dead-on accurate, but I was trying to keep things fair for the comparison. According to the manual it's supposed to run 2,000 ohms and I had it set to 600 this morning. That would likely brighten it up quite a bit if past experiments are any indication. It's got some massive proximity effect going on if you've got it tight on the grill (that's the flubs for those that don't know). Supposed to be able to handle 137db so there's no real fear of damage from the levels I usually can push recording. Should be a good mic once I've had some time to really dial it in properly.
Half tempted to break out the old shitty violin with the tinfoil tone and see what it does for that.
The tones with the other mics are perhaps a little dark for the mix, but tweaks in mic placement and maybe a little bit of high shelving will surely brighten them up without sounding like the screechy mess the 609 seems to be.
