Shure SM56

A dynamic cardioid that engineers reached for when they wanted the toms and the snare under a thumb, not a spotlight.

Overview

The SM56 is a Shure dynamic that never got the SM58's fame. It shows up in photographs of arena stages and in the input lists of records people still argue about, usually next to the SM57 - the two microphones are close enough in application that engineers treated them as interchangeable on some sources and not on others. According to the engineers who used it, the SM56's selling point is a narrow pattern that lets it close-mic a drum kit without the kit falling apart in the console. In a Herbie Hancock session documented in Modern Recording (July 1980, p.54), the SM56 was the close mic on solo synthesizer, with a U-87 handling the room. That puts it on a lead instrument, not just a drum kit.

Larry Emerine, interviewed in Recording Engineer, said he almost always used dynamic mics on tom toms, and the SM56 was his pick. He'd tried other microphones on toms and couldn't get what he wanted, so the 56s went on toms and sometimes on snare. His reason was control. The mic had a fairly narrow pattern, which let him keep the toms separated and level-managed instead of bleeding the whole kit into every channel. That's a working engineer's reason, not a marketing one.

The SM56 also turns up in a two-mic drum technique that pairs it with something brighter. In one engineer's account of miking a kit from the top vents, he used two different microphones on purpose - a Shure SM56 or 57 alongside an AKG C451 or C452 with a 10-dB pad - because the different capsules gave different coloration and sonic quality. A U47 or RE-20 went underneath, panned into both channels. The SM56 wasn't the star of that setup. It was one half of a deliberate tonal contrast.

The microphone's reputation wasn't uniform, and the record includes a real criticism. In a comparative distortion study published in Recording Engineer, the SM56 was tested with its internal transformer removed. The researchers found the transformer was introducing distortion at low frequencies, and pulling it dropped output by roughly 12 dB, which put the voice coil's voltage output at about 7 millivolts at 120 dB SPL. The same study noted the SM56 showed worse off-axis response than an Electro-Voice RE16 when the mic was oriented 30 degrees off the sound source, with some other cardioids showing no change on- or off-axis. That matters if you're miking a snare with a hi-hat bleeding in from the side.

Shure's own advertising put the SM56 in famous company. A period spot for the company's mobile studio - the one Mick Jagger kept on the road - listed the SM56 alongside the SM7, SM58, SM82, and SM53 as the microphones the Stones relied on for consistent quality and natural sound (Studio Sound, September 1978, p.65). That's advertising copy, not an independent verdict. It does place the SM56 in the working inventory of a band that could have used anything, which says something about the mic's standing in the mid-1970s even if it isn't a review.

By the late 1970s the SM56 was still showing up on session charts. A Modern Recording piece from July 1980 documenting a Herbie Hancock session lists the SM56 as the close mic on solo synthesizer, with a U-87 handling the room. So it wasn't only a drum mic in that room. It was the close mic on a lead instrument, which suggests engineers trusted its off-axis behavior and its tone on something more exposed than a tom.

The available documentation gives no published frequency response, sensitivity figure, or impedance spec that this archive can verify. The manual excerpts and period reviews that survive describe how engineers used it and how it behaved under test, but they don't include a spec sheet. Anyone chasing exact numbers should treat the missing figures as missing rather than assume they match the SM57.

The SM56 and SM57 are often mentioned together and overlap in application, but the archive has no verified data confirming shared internals or identical response. What's documented is the use case: narrow pattern, close-mic duty, tom and snare work, occasional lead-instrument duty, and a known low-frequency distortion issue tied to the internal transformer in at least one tested sample. The transformer removal is a modification, not a factory spec, and the source describes it as something done to a specific mic for testing - not a recommended service procedure.

Collectors and working engineers tend to find the SM56 the same way: through somebody's drum mic locker, or a session chart from a record they love. The people who want it usually want it for a specific job - toms, snare, a close-miked synth. The documentation that survives is thin on numbers and heavy on usage.