Rode NT2 condensor microphone

This is an excellent affordable professional recording microphone.

I have used an NT2 along with other models from the Rode range since 2000 and can only say good things about them all. The NT2 features a nice rounded sound, which is low in sibilance, but has plenty of top end sizzle. Self noise has never been an issue, and i have achieved good results on everything from 4 speaker guitar stacks to drum overheads, recorders, clarinets, saxophones, congas, tambourines and vocals.

Although not as capable/ subjectively nice/ quiet as the Blue Bottle mic i also have in the studio, the Rode performs an excellent job, despite not having figure of 8 pick up settings, i would recommend this mic for people looking to buy their first "proper" condensor, and would also recommend buying a decent looking second hand one (for the following reason) and saving up some money for a dedicated mic pre to compliment it (such as a basic Focusrite model).

It has been dropped a couple of times whilst being manoeuvred by drummers and shows no signs of damage (and the sound has remained very faithful to when it was new), and the overall build quality is excellent. The shockmount shipped with the mic is perfect and works a treat, and the aluminium case is airline baggage handling proof (just in case you ever wanted to test that out....!).

A word of advice for prospective purchasers would be that buying a mid to high end microphone such as this one and then plugging it into a cheap preamp will probably not produce the results you are looking for, and the difference between the sound my Rode makes when used with my old Yamaha 01V (now replaced) and even the new 01v96 is very much noticeable, and the performance goes relatively through the roof when plugged in to my two analog dedicated preamps (a TLAudio ivory series 5052 -preamp compressor eq limiter- and the best preamp i have ever used, the Avalon vt737sp -preamp compressor and eq).