03Mar Nady SGM-12 the lowest price boom Mic on the market.
It seems like people are always looking for the lowest price. So here today for your consideration is the Nady SGM-12 boom microphone. As far as I know, this is the lowest price boom mic on the market. At between $22 and $30 the Nady SGM-12 performance isn’t amazing, but it’s probably good enough for many applications.
The Nady SGM-12 runs on a single AA battery and provides a switch that is supposed to change its pickup pattern from Cardioid and Super Cardioid. I’ve recorded a few samples of the Nady SGM-12 in both Cardioid and Super Cardioid along with the on board mic’s from the Zoom h4n so that you can get an idea of its performance. You can download the Nady SGM-12 test sample here .
I won’t tell you that the Nady SGM-12 is an amazing microphone, but listen to the sample and you shouldn’t have any trouble deciding if its worth the $20 to $30 price tag.
March 4th, 2011 at 7:12 pm
My computer speakers are just the stock iMac speakers, but I gotta say there was not a whole lot of difference that I could tell between all three examples. That, and the fact that the mic can be battery powered (as opposed to requiring phantom power at the pre-amp) may make this mic worth a serious look. Thanks for the review!
March 4th, 2011 at 7:50 pm
I can hear the difference on my nice studio monitors, but I don’t think it is extrema. The microphone also puts out a very strong signal so there is plenty of volume to work with. It’s also dirt cheap so if you’re not happy with it, you aren’t out much.
August 9th, 2012 at 4:51 am
The question I have on the audio signal is if the record volume was adjusted bewteen the 3 samples and was any noise reduction or post work done on the sample? Not really a comment is it.
August 9th, 2012 at 6:14 am
No volume adjustments were made and no noise reduction was used in post. Audio is off the memory card and into the timeline. Other then cutting the samples together into a single track no other adjustments were made.
February 5th, 2014 at 6:28 pm
Is the signal hot enough to go directly into a DSLR like a t3i and not have to move the DSLR’s crappy gain up much?
February 5th, 2014 at 7:08 pm
It’s an xlr device, so you’d probably want to feed it into the camera through something like the irig pre. It’s not really designed to connected directly to your camera with an xlr to 1/8 inch adapter. In this video I used a Beachtek DXA-SLR to connect it to the camera.