Recommended for acoustic guitar, piano, woodwinds, and drums
AKG’s P170 is a small-diaphragm microphone that does an incredible job of picking up detailed high-frequency content.
It’s not great for really bass-heavy stuff like kick drums or men’s vocals. But if you’re recording something high pitched, the P170 preserves a lot of life from the sound.
This makes the P170 perfect for woodwinds, violin, acoustic guitar, and piano. Some of my favorite acoustic guitar and piano recordings of all time came from putting a couple P170s over the strings.
They also work perfectly as drum overheads. They pick up plenty of body from the cymbals without sounding too harsh.
Just make sure to turn on the pad if you’re using P170s for drums! These mics come with pads in case you’re recording something really loud.
