I bought a lot of fifty SM 57s, 545/PE54s, and 548s from the Record Plant NYC auction in the 1980s. Because they has so many of these The Record Plant engineers numbered them so they would be able to use the same microphone if redoing a track or just to know which ones they liked (all the ones I have were numbered). This Shure 548 sounds absolutely as good (or better) as any SM7 or SM 57 of any age that I've used. The 548 I believe was the hans held version of the SM 7 I seems to use the same capsule as the SM7 but with a different output transformer that gives it more gain. I still have a few of these and have been listing them as I pull them from storage and the ones I'm selling now are the best sounding ones that I kept. The RP 3 is stenciled on then sprayed over with clear (which has yellowed) to keep the stencil from rubbing off. The RP 3 is a bit fuzzy on this particular microphone as some of them were, I think this happened when the clear was sprayed on before the RP 3 was completely dry. This is a early 70s microphone in good condition and it sounds really great, amazing for vocals, guitars, and drums. This has fantastic history and were used on some of the most amazing records of all time and on top of that they sound absolutely incredible!
