ShureBeta 98AMP/C
microphone
New retail price (MSRP)
$309
Used market: $240*
Specifications
2 of 9 values have a recorded source- Connectors
- XLR 3-Pin Male·
- Built-in converter
- no·
- Self-noise
- 31✓
- Transducer
- Condenser Electret·
- Sensitivity
- -50.5·
- Output impedance
- 150·
- Phantom power required
- yes·
- Connection
- XLR-Only·
- Indexable Locales
- ·
Expert Audio Engineering Commentary
Tonal profile
A clip-on cardioid electret for toms and snare: the capsule sits on a gooseneck, the preamp lives in the drum-rim clamp, and the whole thing draws 5.5 mA of phantom. Self-noise of 31 dB SPL-A is high by condenser standards and irrelevant here - at a hand's distance from a tom head the source is 120 dB and the noise floor never appears.
Gain staging
Shure prints '-50.5 dBV/Pa (2.5 mV)' on one line, and the two halves do not agree: 2.5 mV is -52.0 dBV, and -50.5 dBV is 2.98 mV. The gap is 1.5 dB. Set gain from the louder reading and you have 1.5 dB of headroom you did not plan for; set it from the quieter one and you are 1.5 dB closer to clipping than the sheet suggests.
What the datasheet actually says
Quoted verbatim from the manufacturer’s own page, with the date we checked it. We state what is printed, not what anyone intended by it.
«–50.5 dBV/Pa[1] (2.5 mV)»
The two figures on this one line are not the same quantity expressed twice. 2.5 mV/Pa converts to -52.0 dBV/Pa; -50.5 dBV/Pa converts to 2.98 mV/Pa. The footnote fixes the reference (1 Pa = 94 dB SPL), so this is arithmetic, not a scale question. Shure's product page repeats the same pair, '-50.50 dBV/Pa - 2.50 mV/Pa', so the mismatch is carried by both documents.
checked 8/6/2026* Estimated with the depreciation fallback (~78% retained value).