I still use my M179 as room mics, as I like them there. But my Warblers (I and IID) replaced them in most applications (vocals, spoken word, all acoustic instruments, amps) since a couple of years. Side by side M179 sounds smaller and harder.

Hypercardioid for toms is the only advantage the M179 offers over the Warblers for me. And the sonic balance of the patterns are very similar/useful on it.
On 3u capsules (I have not tried the K67 multipatterns yet) - the K47 capsule is less uniform sounding across the different patterns (and therefore fig 8 and omni are less useful for me) whereas the CK12 capsule of my GZ251fet are stable and remarkable great sounding in all three patterns.
(It is the only LDC I know of, where the fig 8 pattern extends flat up to 20kHz, wich is a great thing sometimes!)

@ Warbler ID/GZ67 users: How are the pattern balance on this mics?

Someone around here had a similar issue and it was solved by screwing the bottom tight (probably grounding/shielding issue).

MKID here, and I find the three patterns to be relatively similar. They all sound great. Omni seems to be a tiny bit more "open" sounding, and I tend to alternate between that and cardioid depending on what I'm working on at the moment. (I pretty much never use figure 8, for the time being, and I always leave it on voicing 1.)

Thanks Progger, thats good to know.

Put on a pair of latex gloves and tighten the bottom nut. That's what fixed my issue with it, assuming it's a grounding issue/electrical buzzing.
It's very hard to do by hand without gloves. Any sort of reusable latex gloves for cleaning should do, dunno about disposable ones.

That was Guosheng's recommendation, the nut can be misaligned due to shipping. My guess is the package isn't very well secured in the vehicles.

I actually really like the vintage C414 sound more than the U87 sound, so the Warbler MKIIID and MKIVD are options too, but it seems like the U87 sound is the expected sound.

Yes. Someone had similar issues before in this thread. In one case it did not resolve the issue, but that got solved by taking the casing off and tightening two screws on the side the was probably touching the outer casing.

Just in case the first suggestion does not help.

"Brass" capsule AKG C12/414 fan here too.
Chris

So for now I got a single M179 because it was $40 off on Amazon and the last one in stock. Gonna compare it to my BM-600s (a great buy @$100~ USD), then decide whether I need another (I could just end up buying more BM-600s too).

I will be taking a look at the C12 and 251 Warblers though. In the time I'm off work, assuming I can get the materials delivered, I'm gonna try to build a small booth (MDF, with blankets and rockwool for treatment and insulation, unfortunately I only have the space for 5'x4'7', at least it'll fit in an apartment when I move, though I'd like to have a project studio some day).

I'm almost certain that the Warblers would be better mics for vocals and voiceover, but right now I'm looking for a cheap swiss army mic and the CAD M179 fits that for me. I have no issues ordering from China right now and I'm more worried about buying things from the US as far as Coronavirus paranoia goes, though I'm not actually worried at all.

But now I thought of how great it would be to find used M179s and have one of 3U Audio's capsules put in them. Particularly one of the edge terminated ones. Then it would really become a poor man's C414 (I know Joly briefly did a K47 capsule swap for the M179). I think I like the Warbler MKIVD best between the edge terminated ones (judging by the samples Kidyvibes posted in the demo thread, the IV has the present sound without being sibilant).

Meant to say earlier, Guosheng is also very honest about the fact that his edge terminated capsules aren't manufactured in the proper CK12 style (chambered design that's very expensive to do), and that he has no plans to start manufacturing them. This is a big A+ from me because a lot of clone (using this term loosely here) mic manufacturers don't mention stuff like this, or act like it's an improvement to use the K67 style construction.

I was probably the person who fixed it by tightening the base.

Wow, an M179 for $40? Was that new?

These pages are longer than I realized.

Which makes this all the more remarkable, come to think of it.

Anyway, 200 and counting.

Carry on.

Reading through 199 pages of stuff I remember the things that stood out, like those 2 screws. Great to collect troubleshooting as well.

Thanks for the reply!

So, no to the CM100, what about the Warbler 127? How about 2 Teals instead?

And yes, the MKIII and GZ12 is what I have been eyeing. Do you think they would improve over the C214 for my voice?

$40 off is what it's supposed to say. That's my bad.

If I could even find them for $100 used I'd buy a few. Deals on used gear suck in Canada. A lot of good deals on eBay won't ship outside the US unfortunately. There's the occasional $150 AT4033a and $400 AT4050, but they're few and far between (those are in USD), and I've never seen a sub $500 C414 up here unless it's a very beaten up XLS.

Just searched this mic up on Google out of curiosity and some of the immediate results that came back were from Adorama.com, B&H Photo Video, and CAD's own website. On these sites, at the time of me posting this, this exact microphone is on sale for $229, with a regular price of $329.

However, Drop (formerly known as Massdrop) is selling this for only $100. This microphone is a large diaphragm condenser that has a multi-pattern design: can record in cardioid, omnidirectional, and figure-8 patterns. So it's pretty versatile for the price. Definite bang for your buck!

https://drop.com/buy/cad-gxl3000ssp-...ack-mic-bundle

The GXL3000 is a cheap rebrand of a generic Chinese (ShuaiYin, apex, nady etc) microphone that can be consistently found online well below the $100 price point, in fact the Black Pearl anniversary edition (black chrome) is available right now for $99 new. From my understanding the 179 has adjustable polar patterns, the equitek e-300 capsule and is a far higher quality piece of kit. As for Bang for your buck, I'd argue that spot is held by the crazy deal that sold 2001 manufactured Superlux CM-H8C mics NOS for $31 recently (picked up 4)

Sloth

Damn wish I would've known about that. I've been wanting to try it out but haven't because it's probably the same usual AKG P420 or similar sounding U87 knockoff.

It'd probably take a K47 style capsule to make it sound good, or maybe one of the edge terminated "CK12" copies. Either way, it'll be about $100 for the capsule too. So you're going to spending at least $200 to get optimal results. So you'd have to spend what an M179 costs.

You might be seeing MSRP vs street price. I haven't seen a single place where the GXL3000 goes for $329.

I can't comment on the AKG P series but the H8C is a very natural sounding multipattern mic and after looking at a circuit for the Superlux and 420 they are nothing alike, there are a metric buttonne more components on the superlux than the 420 and since I'm not an electrical engineer I don't know any more than that. I use the H8C as a sort of workhorse mic, for stereo recordings they're great and honestly I've not been disappointed by it except when I put it directly against my GT67 tube mic on vocals.

I have an AKG 200 LDC (cardiod version). Nice VO mic. Too much of a bright/"breathy" response, for my (bright voiced) singing.
Chris

Disappointed how compared to the GT67?

It misses the warmth/depth/tubeyness or whatever you want to call it that the GT67 has . By that I mean to say that it's not a 'character' mic, it's very natural sounding (to me anyway) and I just feel like I have to do less to the 67 to turn it into a great (read as 'half decent') vocal track. Honestly, considering I paid almost 10x more for the GT67 I can't complain at all, the H8C still sounds damn nice but it's kinda like the ISK Starlight, entirely inoffensive, good, natural sound which makes it great for tweaking into the sound you want but doesn't have that magic thing about it that makes you want to go and pick it up to try on a vocalist. I'm sorry, I'm really bad at explaining stuff like this, it's hard to translate difference in tonal quality into words. Then again that's also just on my voice and to my (not great) ears so take it with as small a pinch of salt as you'd like.

Because Amazon's gonna take forever on the M179, I've cancelled it. I'm either ordering one from a music store, or thinking about a Warbler MKVID. I actually really want to try the MKIVD as well.

Well, I'd certainly encourage you to explore the 3U option. I honestly love my Warbler more every time I use it, it does damn near everything I need a good studio microphone to do. Here's a clip I did yesterday, a couple choruses on a challenging Herbie Hancock tune. (Warbler MKID, voicing 1, cardioid)

Sounds great!
Chris

Our favourite mic and energy drink "reviewer" has set his sights on trash talking the Warblers. And no, he hasn't used them, like most stuff he reviews. Watch for a good laugh. Oh and take a shot every time he describes something as lumpy sounding.



I'm still not quite sure which one I want. It's probably between the MKVID and the MKIVD.

The MKVID would definitely get that Neumann-esque sound, but I really like the sound of the ELA M 251 and brass CK12s so the MKIVD might be a good choice for me, especially since voicing 2 cuts it to being near "flat". Seems like it might have more versatility.

The M179 is still a serious contender though, because I can get a pair for about $100 more than what one multipattern Warbler will cost.

Just my personal take but MKIVD is going to have a lot more depth, and you seem like you gravitate towards that side-terminated kind of sound. I would go for the warbler. It's more bucks but it brings disproportionately more bang, as well IMHO. It's like leveraging your money. To me having one mike that I like a lot is better than having two that are "pretty good."

Wow. Does that YouTube "reviewer" actually just look at web pages and talk? I hope nobody takes him seriously.

The only thing he'll accomplish is that he himself will get reviewed.

By a large audience.

Rarely have I seen someone disqualifying himself like this guy.

Or was this released on the 1st of April?

Just my subjective take but I've had a pair of m179s for years and I do not think they hang with the 3U stuff. By comparison, the m179s sound smaller and more brittle. The Warblers sound bigger, smoother, more real.

I like the m179s for toms and they are certainly a cool little mic for very little money. But sonically, I do not find them to be in the same league as the Warbler series. Or CM-1 for that matter.

I like CAD generally speaking. I have an old Equitek E-200 which is a very cool mic.

Edit: I just checked the current pricing on the m179. I thought they were like $149 or something. I think I got my pair in a deal from Zen Pro and they were really cheap. That makes my feelings even stronger (that the Warblers are a much better choice). When I first got the m179s, I compared them to my trusty 414b_ULS wondering if they could knock those off their pedestal as go-to utility LDC pair. That was not even close, the 414s were still king. Then the pair of MKIDs dethroned the 414b-ULSs and I sold them.

If anyone has experience with both the Warbler series and Advanced Audio Neumann reproductions, how would you compare the two?
They seem to be competing in similar price brackets and I want to make sure I don't blindly follow 3U because I like the CM1s so much

Sloth