Shure VP64
An eighty-nine-dollar workhorse omni that news crews bought by the boxload — and that broadcasters still defend.
Overview
The VP64 is the kind of microphone that never got a magazine cover story, yet ended up in more ENG kits than almost anything else Shure sold in the early 1990s. It is a handheld omnidirectional dynamic built for field interviews, and the pitch from Shure's own dealer literature was refreshingly blunt: a neodymium magnet element that delivered up to 6 dB more output than competing omnis, an internal shock mount to tame handling noise, and a long handle that gave an interviewer better reach toward the subject. The styling was deliberately non-reflective so it wouldn't flare under camera lights, and the black polyurethane finish was described as impervious to scratching and chipping. It shipped with a foam windscreen and a stand adapter. Street price in the dealer catalogs of the period was $89.00.
The frequency response is quoted at 50 Hz to 12 kHz. That's a narrower band than a studio condenser, and it's the right call for the job — the VP64 was voiced to sound bright and articulate without turning harsh or hissy, which is exactly what you want when you're sticking a mic in front of someone's face at a noisy press conference or a windblown curb. Shure's own copy claimed the omni pattern gave "extra clarity in noisy environments," and the physics backs that up: an omni has no proximity effect and is far less sensitive to plosives and wind than a cardioid, so you can work it close without the low-end bloom that plagues directional mics up close. Mix (April 1991, p.108) flagged the VP64 in its new-products column that spring, and by the mid-'90s the mic had become a standard-issue choice for field work — Mix (December 1994, p.58) reported that one broadcast operation, evaluating handhelds for field interviews, went with the Shure VP64, a standard handheld mic, after finding it met all their performance criteria.
What made the VP64 stick, though, was the price-to-abuse ratio. Bradley Broadcast, a Washington-area dealer, built entire "Get The Story" bundles around it — a Marantz mono portable tape deck, the VP64, and a coiled ENG cable — and sold them as complete newsgathering outfits. The 1990s packages ran from $322 up to $449 depending on which PMD recorder you chose, and the dealer copy called the VP64 simply "indestructible." That's marketing, not a lab result, but it tracks with the design: a dynamic element in a polyurethane-skinned body with an internal shock mount is about as field-proof as a microphone gets. One package even bundled the VP64 with a cellular phone adapter for remote feeds, which tells you everything about who was buying it and what they were doing with it.
The trade-off is that the VP64 is not a studio mic and doesn't pretend to be. The 50 Hz – 12 kHz response rolls off the top end well before the air band, and the omni pattern means it picks up the room along with the voice — fine up close, less fine if you're trying to isolate a source at distance. It's a tool with a narrow, well-defined purpose, and it does that purpose without fuss.
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