Shortly after it was released, it became the go-to mic for bass, guitars, vocals, horns, drums, and. The Shur SM57 is one of the most popular microphones around and it has been a best-selling mic ever since it was first released in 1965. The mic’s hypercardioid pickup pattern reduces off-axis noise. They also tend to be the most expensive mics available.
It is only a little bit smaller than a Shure SM 58 and in principle actually robust enough to be used as a microphone for singing on stage or in the studio. In spite of this, it is even slightly louder - presumably as the M 260 is somewhat larger overall. It has hypercardioid polar pattern but unlike the M 130 it is equipped with a single ribbon. Due to the fixed low cut filter the M 260 is designed for close miking. Unusually for a ribbon microphone, the M 260 has slight presence accentuation in the upper mid-range, which makes it sound lighter and more assertive than the M 130 and M 160.
It is designed to reduce the natural proximity effect of the ribbon transducer to improve its utility for close-miking applications.
The current production version, called the “M 260.80,” has a reduced low-end frequency response the “.80” suffix denotes a fixed high-pass filter at 80Hz, implemented within the mic’s output transformer. The M 260 is a hypercardioid ribbon microphone.
