Wednesday, June 6, 2012

The Heil PR-40

I purchased a used Heil PR-40 from an eBay seller to try it out and consider whether I wanted to get a couple of them in my home studio. It's a nicely-designed mic; the sound seems quite impressive; I'll test it out on a podcast. But to set it up properly, I'll need a boom, a shock mount, and a pop filter. The problem with all that is that it's approximately a $300 mic. But the shock mount costs another $100, the boom costs $120, a base for the boom costs $30, and a pop filter that mounts on the shock mount costs about $60. So there you have it -- a $300 microphone where setting it up costs as much or more than the microphone. If it works out well for podcasts, I'm considering a whole second mic and boom so I can do live broadcast-style conversations easier... but at $600 for the setup I may want to wait on that. I should clarify -- I don't believe the prices for these parts are actually that far out of line. It isn't like Neuman's $80 plastic thread adapter. But it's still a little daunting.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you want to buy new the best deal I've seen for boom/mic/shockmount is from BSW. The "Heil Sound PR40-PKG" is $325, essentially the cost of the mic. And you can save $20 by using NewMediaGear's promo-code. Just click the BSW banner on the NewMediaGear site and it will take you to the offer page.

Now, that's for new equipment. Buying used you could in all likelihood pay far less and I would encourage looking into this route before deciding to buy new.

Paul R. Potts said...

Thanks for the suggestion. For the first mic I bought a black SM-2 shock mount, and it is very nice, and a Popless VAC-PR40, which seems to work pretty well so far although I am not quite happy about the plastic construction of some parts. I have not decided if I want to try out the boom (I'm not sure I have a good place to mount it in my studio) but for that combo deal, it definitely might be worth it, especially if I could get the SM-2 in black.