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May 2012

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by Nolan Rossi

One of the newest microphones in the Shure 2011 line up is the Beta 181. When I was at the NAMM show in Anaheim, Calif., early this year I saw the Beta 181 for the first time—and was really excited about the possibilities of the design.

The Beta 181 is a side-addressed small condenser microphone that is designed for discreet placement in live and studio situations. It has removable capsules in cardioid, supercardioid, omnidirectional, and bidirectional patterns. The mic has very intriguing visual design, and I was very curious to hear how it sounded in a real-world environment.

I recently had the opportunity to use the Beta 181 mics over the course of three weeks while running FOH for the Brooke Fraser Flags tour. The venues were a wide variety, ranging from small music clubs to a large outdoor music festival. So I was able to hear how the microphones fared in ideal and less-than-ideal situations. Though I had all four capsules to test, I primarily used the cardioid capsule, as this is most widely used for live sound application.

What have we here?

My first impression out of the box was that this mic was designed with a lot of thought. Efficiency and aesthetics were important in this design. This mic simply looks cool, and some-what retro. This was confirmed at nearly every venue, where the house staff would inevitably ask me what kind of mic it was.

There were many comments on the look of it. Even the case is designed perfectly to fit the mic, clip and capsules without wasting any extra space. Most other microphone cases end up being left in a back room somewhere, and a simple mic bag is used it its place. The design of the Beta 181 case is perfect, though, and made me want to use it over any other option.

In use, I found this mic to live up to all of my hopes. When I’m not touring I’m in the studio, where one of my favorite tom mics is the Josephson 22S. So when I saw the Beta 181 my first thought was “I want to mic some toms with that.” The Beta 181 has a high SPL tolerance, and it allowed me to try it on all aspects of the drum kit without worry of over-loading the mic.

I ended up trying it on toms as well as the snare. It was very easy to position the mic just over the rim on snare and toms without getting in the way of cymbals and drum hardware. As a tom mic I enjoyed the sound of it. It was detailed and quite responsive. With a bit of EQ it fit perfectly into the mix. The top snare position worked well for me, but it did pick up a bit much of the hi-hat. The drummer for this tour played with great control, so it was usable, but I could see that with a more heavy-handed drummer this would be a bit difficult. I like a small condenser on snare bottom because it can provide the needed “snap.” The 181 worked great for this application.

Because of the utility of the design, the obvious small condenser job of drum overheads did not stick out to me at first. It was, in fact, the last source where I tried the 181s. I spaced the pair of mics an equal distance from the snare, and when I brought up the faders I was really impressed. I’m typically not a fan of small condensers on drum over-heads, but these could be my new favorite mics for this application. The Beta 181 has a pretty flat response until you get to about 5 kHz, where it begins its 5 db boost up until about 10 kHz. The end result is a very accurate picture—with just a bit of sparkle.

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Nolan Rossi is a mix engineer and owner of RF Productions. When he’s not touring with artists he is producing records at his studio in East Nashville. He really likes Mexican food. www.nolantherossi.com