In High School, I was in a touring choir on Saturdays, and a touring vocal ensemble on Sundays - most of the school year. Choir was in existence starting in the late 1960's and is still running today - on about the 3rd director over that time.

We used SM 57's exclusively for everything with the exception of the crown PZM we would slap inside the local church's piano if it was in tune, we did have a live band off and on where we used the 57's as instrument mics, but we had 57's that well pre-dated my time (85-90) and my guess are still in use today - beat up by high schoolers and thrown under the bus (literally - we had GMC 4104, 4107 and what ever they are running now) buses where we had the mics in their vinyl zippered cases with clips on them, tossed into suitcases we bought at yard sales and kept in the underside cargo-holds) and they worked for years and years and years.

We used the black foam windscreens if we had them, but they would take on 'character' and we used them without them as well until we had budget to buy another grip of them. You can take out most of the plosive sensitivity with a 57 by just singing across the top instead of directly into the end. Predictable gain before feedback, legendary durability, etc.

Here's the deal, if you ever want to sell the mic, whatever you buy, there's always a long list of folks looking for 57's and 58's.

If you don't have your own sound engineer; showing up at a gig with an SM 57 or 58 will raise no eyebrows and the engineer can probably pre-dial in the gain to within 5 dB of where he/she will leave it for the rest of your gig. Show up with some lesser known mics and that's adding to the engineer's list of things to slightly worry about.

-Scott

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