Review – Pyle Pro PDMIC78 Microphone

Having a good microphone around is essential to a performer. While microphones like the AKG Pro Audio C414, and the Sennheiser MD 421 are my main “go to” microphones, one of the most compact and versatile microphones ever made is the Shure SM57. At $100, it is a great microphone to just have in your bag “just in case”. Still, the SM57 isn’t exactly cheap. And if say you have a band or some situation where you need to microphone up stuff, using the venerable SM57 can get quite expensive.

Enter the Pyle-Pro PDMIC78 Microphone. This microphone is basically a Shure SM57 clone. Except they wired it strangely (or wrongly). Basically, you need to re-solder two connections and then you have a mic that sounds like a SM57….for $20 rather than $100. In fact, there is slightly more gain and it sounds a little more “crisp” than my SM57. Actually, it sort of sounds almost like a BETA 57. I have all these microphones and will link to a sound shoot out of them.

In all, a great deal if you can handle doing the small bit of soldering required. Amazon sells these guys for $20, though the author in the video below got a bunch of them for something like $10 each.

I have modded 4 of these now. You basically need to take the red (hot) from the capsule to pin 3, take pin 1 to ground, break the bridge they have from pin 1 to 3 to ground (so they have 2 pins going to ground) and run the other wire from the capsule to pin 2. You then get a balanced mic that sounds like a SM57 for 1/4th the price.