United Studio Technologies - UT Twin 87 Large Diaphragm Condenser Microphone

My first impression? All in all a really nice little mic. It really gets stunningly close to a real 87 in it's sound - especially in the vintage mode - for about 1/6th of the price. I purchased this mic as kind of an impulse buy; half expecting to dump on it and take advantage of the easy returns to send it back. My motivation for choosing it was that I really just needed a utility mic around the studio for the kind of things that would be probably be buried in the back of the mix anyway. Something quick and easy to work with and not too pricey - but hopefully a little musical - as opposed to the sterility you often hear in lower cost mass produced LDC mics. I didn't particularly care if it could impersonate an 87 accurately or not; as long as it sounded ok. Clones can always be a bit of a mixed bag; it's best not to expect too much. It was better than ok, though...a lot better. My first setup I put it on an acoustic guitar and ran it through an AML ez1081 straight through my interface and instantly recognized the sound from countless 1970s recordings. Any notions I had of dumping on this mic went straight out the window.The only real, noticeable difference I hear between the United and a real 87 is maybe just a tiny bit more low freq. proximity effect in the non-cardioid settings on the United - something that the HPF more than adequately compensates for. The HP filter is really user friendly; it seem to clear up the mud in a very natural and musical way. All of the polar patterns sound very smooth, with no weird spikes in the frequency response and a surprisingly sweet high frequency signature that's very reminiscent of older Neumann 87s.My only real gripe with it is that it only comes with a full shock mount, but no smaller swivel mount.So far these are fairly preliminary observations; I have yet to see how a bunch of them will stack up in a mix, but I was satisfied with the sound enough to order a second.

Mic used in a home studio context. I've run some tests, and both the modern and vintage settings are very useful. Heavily built, so I do not anticipate any durability issues. The shape of the integrated windscreen differs from an actual 87 (more cylindrical) and some will complain that it therefore may not have exactly the same sound characteristics as the real thing, but my opinion is that it still sounds excellent.

Great sound quality and well built.