Cascade V57 Bundle

            Recently I was on the market for a pair of some pencil condensers (Small-Diaphragm condenser microphone) to record some of my friend’s acoustic music. So I hit the market in search of a decent pair that wouldn’t break my bank.

Most small-diaphragm condenser microphones can range in price from approximately $80 all the way up to about $1500 each. Upon lots of research I decided to give a company called Cascade Microphones a shot. Cascade Microphones is primarily known for their ribbon microphones particularly the Cascade Fathead, which is a phenomenal microphone, so I decided to give their pack of condenser microphones a try.

Cascade’s microphone pack is called the V57 bundle. This bundle includes the Cascade V57, which is a large-diaphragm cardioid condenser and a stereo pair of the M39 small-diaphragm condenser microphones. These microphones also come with their appropriate shock mounts and come packaged in a very sturdy hard case. I will admit I was not very pleased with the shock mounts for the microphones they were very flimsy and didn’t seem very reliable, however the microphones made up for the poor quality of the shock mounts because once you hold onto either of the two microphones you can tell they are very sturdy microphones that probably wouldn’t even get a dent if they were to be accidentally dropped, especially the M39s. The shock mounts would be my only complaint about any of their construction the case it comes in is very well built and so are the microphones, you can easily find better shock mounts/microphone clips if you really want to.

The M39 can be a very versatile microphone in any studio. They can be used as overhead microphones for drums, a stereo pair for acoustic pianos or even the situation I used them for acoustic guitar! They also have a switch for a high pass filter, which is perfect for drum overheads if you want to mainly capture the cymbals; it also has a 10 dB pad switch. To record my friends acoustic guitar I set up the M39s in an XY configuration at about a 100° angle. The signal that I got from this microphone was amazing, the microphone has a clean output I was not able to hear any noise nor see any in my meters and to make it all better it sounded great. The microphones picked everything I would have wanted it to pick up even down to the guitar strings lightly rattling on the frets of the guitar when it was strummed. I can easily say the microphones had a somewhat warm tone to them where the low end was very present but the detail in the high end was not sacrificed at all by having the warm presence. There was a lot of detail in the high end that my friend added to his guitar track and with these microphones they truly came out beautifully. When the guitar was strummed the low end had a nice warm mellow feel to it and the highs came out so crisp yet delicate that it was the perfect compliment to the warm presence the microphone has. Overall I was thoroughly impressed with the M39s I can’t wait to see what they will sound like on drums.

The V57 microphone was a microphone that to me just came with the small-diaphragm condenser, but I figured I’d give it a shot on my friends vocals just to see what it sounded like on him, instead of going straight to my Blue Baby Bottle. This microphone has a -10 dB pad and High Pass filter as well. I was not expecting much out of this microphone, at least in comparison to most microphones I have used in the past. Sure enough, just as I had found with the M39s the microphone sounds great. Because my friend has somewhat of a baritone/tenor voice this microphone ended up capturing those frequencies very well from about 800Hz up to about 3000Hz. After just tracking his vocal once with the V57 I went back and set up my baby bottle to get another take just in case I did want to use the baby bottle for the rest of the project. Long story short, I ended up using the V57 as the main vocal for his project. His voice sounded very full and thick with the one take I had done. Just like the M39s this had a warm presence but definitely did not lose any detail in the high end capturing all of his higher harmonics with the finest detail. I have never had such great results with just one take of a vocal before.

Overall I was very pleased with the V57 Bundle pack from Cascade Microphones especially at the low price of only $300! They are definitely a company worth checking out, I feel confident in any of the products they have available on their site and I’m looking forward to seeing what great products they will continue to release.