Shure SM54 (1972)
The SM54 never became a household name, but it did real work. Shure announced it in 1972 as a professional cardioid built on the SM53's performance, with one addition: acoustic filters to kill the popping and breath noise that plague close-miked speech and vocals. Shure's own announcement in Recording Engineer (February 1972, p.29) built the whole product around that fix. It also noted that the SM54 had minimal proximity effect, so you could work it right up against the grille without the bass ballooning.
The rest of the design is early-70s Shure professional. It has a broad, true cardioid pattern with a wide front working angle across the frequency range. It has a built-in shock mount to keep stand, cable, and handling noise out of the signal. Shure claimed you could drop it on its nose without damaging the element or changing its sound. The housing was aluminum with a stainless steel mesh grille, finished in a non-reflective "no-glare" coating so it wouldn't throw light back at a camera. That last detail says where Shure expected the mic to live: on television, in front of a lens, as well as on a stage or in a booth.
The SM54 turns up in some interesting places in the period press. Shure's advertising through the mid-1970s put it in the Rolling Stones' mobile recording studio alongside the SM53, SM58, SM5C, and SM33. That lineup ran in Recording Engineer (August 1975, p.58) and again in Studio Sound (February 1976, p.67). The mic also went to Russia. Opryland took a U.S. State Department-sponsored five-city, 27-performance tour behind the Iron Curtain, and soundman Tom Moores built the entire system from Shure SR components and SM54s. His account, published in the same trade press, describes color-coding the mics with Shure windscreens so performers passing them around could be tracked back to their console inputs. Net price at introduction was $162.00.
The record does not give us a clean production run, a full spec sheet, or much of a collector's market. Beyond the 1972 introduction and the mid-70s advertising and tour documentation, the SM54 is thinly covered.
- Type: Professional cardioid dynamic microphone
- Introduced: 1972 (announced by Shure Brothers, Evanston, IL)
- Original net price: $162.00
- Key feature: Acoustic filter network for pop/breath suppression; minimal proximity effect
- Pattern: Broad, true cardioid with wide front working angle
- Construction: Aluminum body, stainless steel mesh grille, built-in shock mount, non-reflective finish for on-camera use
- Lineage: Shares performance characteristics with the Shure SM53
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