I finally ordered a condenser mic and am excited. The nady spc25. I've read it outperforms the sm58 from reviews as far as tone and clarity. It's a handheld mic. I have a pre-amp I dug out of my PA that has 2.5K or 10K inputs, so no worries there. It goes up to 18Khz, so my demos will actually sound far better with the fast transient response and an added 6Khz of bandwidth at the top end so that I can actually hear the ringing of an on key note properly. I guess I'm gonna have to wait until christmas to get a cheap mixer so that I can hear myself without latency. Singing while hearing yourself through the headphones 1/5th of a second late is a huge hindrance I can't wait to get rid of. The only thing that concerns me is if this mic is wired properly as so many are not where the ground down the negative pole instead of wiring it to the cold pole of the XLR plug.
Now I am gonna be bored since I can't record anything for a week knowing no matter what it will sound like shit once the new mic arrives.
A cheap mic sound good until you layer three or four tracks on top of each other... then it sounds like a mess and all the glaring problems become obvious.
As much as I liked the behringer xm8500, it is far too muddy to add overdubs to.