Shure SM50

A self-windscreened omnidirectional dynamic built for the field — and for the wash basin.

Overview

Shure's advertising for the SM50 led with an unusual promise: you could rinse it under a running tap. The microphone's built-in five-element windscreen, described in the company's own literature as "unitized" and self-contained, was designed to be flushed clean of dirt, saliva, lipstick, and other screen-clogging matter — or swapped out entirely in seconds. That is not the sort of claim a manufacturer makes about a studio condenser, and it tells you exactly who the SM50 was for: reporters, sports crews, and anyone working a remote where the microphone, not the recording, takes the abuse.

The design centers on that integral windscreen, which Shure claimed made the mic "virtually pop-proof" in close talking and strikingly immune to wind noise and explosive breath sounds. The company pitched it as a dependable workhorse for remote interviews, news, sports pickups, and field and studio applications alike. The self-windscreening was the differentiator — most omnidirectional dynamics of the period expected you to add an external foam or mesh screen, and those accessories got lost, torn, or saturated. The SM50 folded the screen into the body.

Underneath the screen sits a dynamic omnidirectional element. Shure's published data sheet rated the frequency response at 40 to 15,000 cps, with output at 1,000 cps of −58 dB. Selectable output impedances were offered at 30–50 ohms or 150 or 250 ohms — a flexibility that let the same mic drop into a low-impedance broadcast chain or a higher-impedance field rig without a transformer swap. The price at introduction was $125, which places it firmly in the professional tier rather than the consumer market. Each unit shipped with a 20-foot, two-conductor shielded cable terminated in a Canon XLR-3-11C connector, plus a 90° slip-on swivel mount threaded for a ⅝"-27 stand.

Shure's marketing copy made a sound-quality argument alongside the ruggedness pitch, claiming the SM50 was "the cleanest sounding professional microphone at anywhere near its price class," with speech and vocal music described as full-bodied and rich in the critical mid-range. That is advertising, not an independent verdict, and should be read as such. What the literature does establish concretely is the ergonomic and durability story: a detachable cable, a rubber-mounted cartridge to minimize handling noise, and a body the company described as lighter and better balanced for handability than other moderately priced omnidirectionals. Shure also stressed that the mic was "extremely rugged" and would require "little or no down time as the years go by" — the kind of claim that only matters to someone whose microphone lives in a gear bag and gets handed between interviewers.

Contemporaries noticed it. DB (December 1969, p.13) ran Shure advertising in its pages during the period, and the SM50 turns up in the trade press of the era as a field microphone with a data sheet of its own — the sort of listing that signaled a product the manufacturer expected working engineers to spec by name. The Buzzcocks, on tour, were reported to be carrying Shure SM50s alongside SM57s for live work, an unlikely but telling endorsement: a punk band and a network news crew arriving at the same microphone from opposite directions.

What the SM50 is not, at least on the documentary record available here, is a collector's trophy. No production years are confirmed, no current market pricing is documented, and no known failure modes have been catalogued. Owners and archivists looking for one should expect to find it as working inventory rather than as a display piece — a microphone that earned its keep in the field and, if it survived, probably did so because someone actually rinsed it out and kept going. The self-windscreen that seemed like a gimmick in the brochure turns out to be the most practical thing about it.