Samson C03

Fantastic budget condenser...

To finish off my budget home studio, a decent condenser was needed. I needed a microphone that gave me *some* options to make it a little future proof. The Samson CO3 suited my needs down the ground. It came at a good price, £50, had some useful features, multi-pattern pick-up options, hi-pass filtering etc. All of which would most likely come in useful in the future, even if they were not immediately useful for what I was recording. I also bought a popshield (PS01) and the spider mount (SP01) that compliments this mic.

Performance wise, this mic will suit the bedroom producer down the ground. I hooked everything up, plugged the mic straight into my Alesis io|2 and I was away recording. We have thrown a few different instruments at it, acoustic guitars, a djembe drum, my voice, and even the outside world using the omni-directional pick-up pattern. In all situations, even in my bedroom without proper padding or *any* acoustic consideration, the mic produced a super crisp and dry sound which was perfect for processing in our DAW package. You can hear some results from this mic on this website:

http://www.eatmacadamia.com/

If you download the "Soundspill" album, and skip to "Hollow Tree" (Track 10), the vocal and its harmony was recorded using the above setup. It was hardly treated, no EQ, just a compressor and some verb, so you can judge for yourself how good it is.

Unfortunately, as a reviewer, my opinion is somewhat naive as I don't have a bunch of other condensers to compare this mic against. However, to my half-decent ear, and from a amateur/budget producers perspective, this mic is a dream come true. Dare I say, the swiss-army knife of budget condensers.