Rode K2 Review

History: Musician for 43 years (guitar) and a recording engineer since 1988. I write and produce faith based music now. I love jazz, folk/pop and acoustic music of most kinds.

Purchase: Purchased at Sweetwater for $650 as my primary vocal mic for recording

What I Like About This Unit: Built like a Rolls Royce Sweet upper register with no harshness. Great mids and superb low end with great dynamic range. Absolutely noise free with unreal low noise floor. Nearly every mic on the market has a minimum of at least 14db or more of self noise. This one is a mere 10db and you can't hear it unless perhaps you had a very poor preamp. It has nice heft and a great molded carry case with the separate control which allows for all polar patterns via a nice knob. This is seamless as well....not notched. Warm up is quick and you're up and running in minutes. The tube is easily replaceable. Rode hand picks and pre burns in each tube so you can't go wrong. They obviously care about the output of this model.

What I Do NOT Like About The Rode K2: Sometimes I want a little more bite in the mids, but for that I choose one of their other solid state mics.

K2 Quality: Solid as a rock with the finest components used. All quiet surface mount boards with tight fit and no rattles. Excellent damping on the capsule as well. All connections are of course gold plated.

Summary: I don't feel one can get a better mic under $2000. Against some of the venerable Neumann's it holds up just fine. In fact until you really start to get up above the $4000 mark you really can't realize much better than this.

Rating of this product: 5

This Rode Microphones Review Submitted By: Lee Rothman

Date: 2007-03-15