I absolutely love hooking these up to my PA and playing live - since they reject much of the background noise, I can crank my PA up loud and it sounds very clear

I had to run it through Cantabile 3.0 with some free VST plugins (Reaper plugin pack) to add some gain and take away a bit of background noise from the Focusrite, but it sounds absolutely great after some minor processing.

These mics are fantastic for a closed mic sound as they reject a lot of background noise (so they also work great for playing live)

and it sounds spectacular without picking up every single background noise like a Blue Yeti or AT2035.

Firstly, it is a highly directional mic - don't expect to pick up much from the sides or back of it, making it a great, focused instrument mic.

If there's a workaday mic in the world, used by every studio in existence as well as on just about every stage, it's the SM57.