Sony: ECM-50 mic

This mic is a miniature condenser intended as a lapel mic for broadcasting. When I was a student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, there were a lot of these microphones floating around for use with the video cameras in the film department. All of us music recording kids used to use these too, as they were really tiny, great sounding condenser mics that could handle a lot of SPL. We'd tape them onto acoustic guitars under the bridge when recording acoustics in a loud live setting which gave you a pretty good acoustic sound with decent isolation. I picked up one of these on eBay last year for less than $50 and have since been using it with great results on snare. I use a rubber band to attach it to the main dynamic snare mic, doing my best to align the diaphragms, and often use more of the ECM-50 than the "traditional" snare mic. On one track, I ditched the SM57 completely and went with the ECM-50. These mics are super cheap on eBay (but were originally quite expensive) and are a great alternative to the standard studio mic choices.