Any thoughts? I know one engineer in particular that swears by them and I believe they've replaced all his close mics on a drumset. He says the PR40 is like a Hi-fi SM7 and the PR30 (I think?) is like a Hi-fi Beyer 201. Whatever that means...

i am really unimpressed with the build quality, though the owner claimed it was a re-20 but $100 less. i put my voice through the model 30 and i though it sounded really honkey, there is a hype, but the build quality i thought was nearly laughable...

i used one about 2 weeks ago. the one that is like an RE-20. it sounded fine on kick drum. kind of like, well, an RE-20. i agree that the build quality seemed a bit crap. i am not rushing out to buy one anytime soon.

-e

elisha wiesner wrote:i used one about 2 weeks ago. the one that is like an RE-20. it sounded fine on kick drum. kind of like, well, an RE-20. i agree that the build quality seemed a bit crap. i am not rushing out to buy one anytime soon.

-e

I'm not sure what is so bad about the construction quality concidering that they are $200 mics. Listening to them, the '40 sounds like it's supposed to be the RE-20 soundalike, and the '30 has the thicker low-mid thing going on. They sound ok to me, but I'm curious about what you find suspect about them. This is coming from someone with a fondness for the octava 219 which doesn't boast the most reassuring quality of construction.

my friend using the mics for live sound reinforcement had his 30 in tact for about 7 days or five shows, bye bye grill. serious deprecation in $$$ vs. time/use. i have 5 219's. they are chinchy. check out www.oktavamod.com same owner of heil 30 uses 219 for stage guitar/bass mics. his have remained intact for over a year. go figure. if you want to spend $200 and have a broken down mic. PM me. i can make that happen!

hiredgeek wrote:my friend using the mics for live sound reinforcement had his 30 in tact for about 7 days or five shows, bye bye grill. serious deprecation in $$$ vs. time/use. i have 5 219's. they are chinchy. check out www.oktavamod.com same owner of heil 30 uses 219 for stage guitar/bass mics. his have remained intact for over a year. go figure. if you want to spend $200 and have a broken down mic. PM me. i can make that happen!

Huh, I've been using them for shows for the last 2 weeks - snare, tom, guitar, and they've been stored more or less loose in a drawer between shows, and no problems yet. Did you have suspicions before the grill fell off? I haven't bought any yet, but unless they crap out in the next week or so I will probably be tempted.

I'm not sure what "chinchy" means, but I am a big fan of the 219's aside from some problem that sounds like a sensitivity to sketchy phantom power, and the case resonance problem. I've been using my on toms for 3 or so years, and they're kind of falling apart. I'm planning on sending them to the oktavamod guy for maintanence/upgrades. Actually Oktavamod mentions the phantom problem......

I'll hold out for a while and see how the heils hold up before I throw my own money at them. I'm not interested in your broken down mic. Thanks for the info though, I'll keep a close eye out for mechanical problems.

All of the Heil mics I've heard have bizarre non-linear high frequency responses. That's not to say that they aren't useful for some applications, but they are definitely "hyped." I can't comment on the build quality.
The RE-20 clone did sound pretty good on the one kick drum I heard it used with, though.

danielruder wrote:All of the Heil mics I've heard have bizarre non-linear high frequency responses. That's not to say that they aren't useful for some applications, but they are definitely "hyped."

I will definitely agree with you on that.......