sE Electronics - sE4400

I don’t know if I think of them as especially cheap, but the VR1 and pair of SE4400as I have are certainly cheaper than I’d expect for the sound and quality. Great mics

Good pick with the SE 4400 — that’s probably the most balanced and versatile mic in your list. It’s detailed without being harsh, handles warmth well, and the multiple polar patterns give you flexibility for tone and room rejection. Plosives are manageable with a decent pop filter. The Z5600a II and LA-320 will give you that tube warmth you liked, but yeah, they’re more sensitive to room reflections — if your space isn’t treated, you’ll be fighting that. The Sontronics STC-3X is a solid all-rounder but not as refined as the SEs, and the Roswells are nice but lean brighter/cleaner rather than warm and weighty. So in practice: 4400 = safest, most flexible choice; tube mics = warmer but room-dependent; Roswell = more modern/bright flavor.

sE4400 is a high quality microphone with only a slight high end lift in cardioid setting: https://preview.redd.it/oruzcr6ovx9g1.png?width=479&format=png&auto=webp&s=79c8034c3131fc3ba899ec04e00191381c77e7ed

And if you set it to hypercardioid, you get rid of almost all of the lift: https://preview.redd.it/ip949fatvx9g1.png?width=475&format=png&auto=webp&s=da848cd91773974a36962317c42fa29c8d8e5a5a

Everyone complaining about cupping the mic - yeah that shit's hard to deal with but whatever. Some days you have easy shows and some days you work for that money. Pull up a hypercardioid condenser mic - beta87A, e865, OM7, V7, etc pick your poison - to cut back on some of the proximity effect and know that you're gonna be getting more honk and less clarity so test the mic that way during soundcheck. Doubly important if your artist isn't showing up for soundcheck - a lot of times it's their "guy" showing up because "aura" or some shit like that. Maybe they're busy setting off the venue fire alarm by smoking in the green room under the "no smoking" sign and the chemical sensors so they send someone with limited live sound knowledge and working vocabulary - a DJ, a fader jockey, their studio guy, something like that. Not that I'm speaking from experience there or anything. Definitely didn't have to evacuate an entire casino for no fucking reason once, no sir. Have someone from your team cup that mic with both hands around the grill and scream into it like it owes them money. Ring it out in the wedges and the mains - there's only so much you can do because we're limited by physics at the very bleeding edge of processing and performance. If you're lucky enough to have plugin processing, this is where that can really shine - C6 type compressors were designed for this exact use case. The more work you do on it ahead of time the less work you have to do during the show.