Sterling Audio ST31 Small Diaphragm FET Condenser Mic

We were having a hard time getting a good sound using the trusty SM57 on my guitarist's Orange 2x12. We swapped the mic with our ST31 and immediately got the tone we were wanting. Sounds just like how the guitar sounds live. We have the mic 2" away from the speakercloth, pointed off-axis at about a 20 degree angle.

My snare of choice is a PorkPie Cherry/Bubinga. I've tried sm57, i5, sm7b, and an EV n/d408b for years. The st31 is the only one of all these I've used that can truly handle the spl without coloring the tone, or at least without excluding most of the rest of the tone besides the thwack. I can use it at multiple distances and angles for an array of usable tones. Even with blaring cymbals and hats, my current sweet spot is one inch directly over the rim aimed across to almost the center. Which brings up my only negative point about this microphone: how can this mic be marketed as a hypercardiod with so much off-axis bleed? The diaphragm is totally exposed. BUT... because its a pencil mic, I easily wrapped some one inch thick acoustic foam around the outside windscreen with a strip of Velcro. I'll try to upload a pic of it. Now, I have even less hihat and cymbal bleed than ever. PLUS... the original bleed actually made my hihat sound slightly better than both pairs of OHs I already have, too bad about the unmanageable levels. Which led me to consider buying a couple more as overheads. Which I did. And WOW... for that price, you WON'T find better overhead mics. Overall I'm very happy with my 3 st31s and I'm even more happy that I can finally stop looking for "the right" mics.

If you've never used a medium to high-end small diaphragm condenser, you can't accurately rate this mic. Unfortunately what everyone refers to as "crisp" and "detailed" is just a mic with EXTREMELY hyped high frequencies. Just about any track recorded with this mic is too brittle and thin to hold up in a mix, yet somehow maintains a horrible harshness that can't be eq'd or compressed out. I think too many people are rating this mic with NO EXPERIENCE mixing with nicer small diaphragm condensers. I too thought I loved my pair when I got them 2 years ago. Then I realized no matter what I did, cymbals were too harsh from the overheads, electric guitar had a horrible nasal mid-scoop, and acoustic guitar was thin brittle and lifeless.

I use this in the worst audio conditions, in a close space with lots of echo, traying to mic a piano or guitar I found it really hard to equalize to avoid the most problematic frequencies and feedback, I used to mic with pg81 with no problems and excelent results, I?m not telling this is a bad mic, but doesn?t work for mi needs, I will use it on my studio, then I post a new review.

This is no KM85, but if you're on any sort of budget, I would strongly recommend this mic. It sounds good on acoustic instruments, putting out a bright, but not too much so, tone on anything that would normally take a small cap condenser. But allow me to tell you a story... I recently mixed a 7-piece band on a board with 10 mic inputs. Needless to say, I was very crunched for space. So for the drums, I put an Audix D6 on kick, SM57 on snare, and a Sterling ST31 as an overhead. I wound up not even using the snare channel; the ST31 worked amazingly as an overhead mic, picking up everything beautifully (the channel was compressed to hell, which helped). The snare actually sounded better in the context of the show through the overhead ST31 than with the 57. The drummer was fairly aggressive, and even with the channel gain set to minimal, I was still clipping on snare hits. That said, I never heard any distortion whatsoever. My one complaint about this mic is definitely its low SPL limit. However, the upgraded version, the ST33, has a built-in pad, and I'm definitely looking forward to trying that one out.

This mic gets an awesome sound when miking my classical guitar. Hook this mic up to a good acoustic amp and you one great sound!!