Avantone CK-1

I first bought one CK-1 to test. I found the results slightly disappointing until it occurred to me that my home studio acoustical environment might be the cause of the harshness. Although basicly pretty good as normal rooms go I improved it by building a pair of acoustic panels which can be moved around and the height is also adjustable. They are currently carpet clad while I await some acoustic material on it's way from Germany.
The result was an incredible improvement with the panels angled behind the mic to kill any off axis reflections from the rear. The mic sounded transparent and alive, even before any equalization or effects. I did use my UA LA610 Mk II as pre with very mild compression - about 3db.
So I ordered the second mic and it came today. I don't have a second LA610 so I used my simple old ART dual tube MP and the result was beyond incredible!
With input and output pre levels around half and about 1/3 gain on line input of my Focusrite 18i20 one microphone towards 12th fret and one towards the bridge the sound is what I can only describe as holographic and having a natural chorus (or choral) sound when panned as a stereo pair, again without any eq or effects seeming to be needed.
I'll be trying on recording my violin soon which will be a very different test and I'll post the result later. In any case I heartily recommend these mics as great value only do make yourself some acoustic screens as I did and you'll not regret that either!.

I bought two of these to be used as jack-of-all-trades mics on live bands for those times when I'm not sure what to expect, and just need lots of versatile mics for whatever might happen. The mic can handle loud sources, has a high-pass filter, and comes with three different capsules.
The fact that it's dirt cheap made it an easy choice to buy two just to try them out.

I've so far mostly used them on percussion instruments with pleasing results. They've fared well as snare mics, assorted percussion, for spot miking of cymbals, and over/underheads.
I have not needed the omni capsules much yet, so I can't say much about how they sound, but I've used both cardioid and hyper-cardioid to tailor the pickup pattern with good results.

The mic is not the smallest SDC I have, but it's fairly easy to find a spot for it in tight places, and it's not too heavy. The included shock mount, however, is quite bulky and annoying to deal with. I'd be much happier if it came with a "normal" mic clip.

The red colour is a bit cheesy, but it does give the mic a somewhat "expensive" look. I've often gotten comments like "Wow! What mic is that?" from artists, so I guess it looks good.

All in all a good mic. I'm confident it will do it's job of amplifying whatever I point it at, and it's cheap enough to not worry me when I put it close to something drunk people are gonna hit with sticks.