from acoustic guitar, april 1999 re Gillian Welch & David Rawlings

"Welch and Rawlings switched their stage amplification rig in 1996 from pickups and DIs to external microphones. Rawlings explains that the change has made setting up for shows easier, although they do need to be a bit more hands-on during setup than they used to be. "We carry Shure SM-58s and SM-57s," Welch says. "Fancy microphones can be very difficult. The one thing that’s nice about the Shures is that their quality control is low enough that they are all different. They’re like snowflakes. If we carry a complement of eight microphones, we can go into a hall and find the right one for the room and the system. We play the microphone game; we swap them out." "And it’s easy to control volume by changing the proximity to the mics," Rawlings adds."

'they're like snowflakes'

all i can say is...incredible

I saw the DVD and was also stunned by them silly shure's pointing at their faces and guitars.
Especially since the studio footage on the dvd shows them recording with some nice microphones (as i recall a c37 was one of them)
Does she mean: the lower the quality, the more control?
Makes no sense to me.

cheers,

cstof