I bought one of these microphones to replace an MXL 993 which I use to record snare drum, guitars, and occasionally other things. The mic sounded great for close micing a guitar cabinet to capture a fairly middle of the road (middle of the rode?) guitar sound, not to bright or dark and didn't color the sound as much as the MXL 993 did. I wasn't as happy on snare, because I actually like the way the MXL 993 boosts the high frequencies recording my kit in my room, but the Rode nt55 was certainly usable.

I also have a lot more confidence that the Rode, with it's 10 year manufacturer warranty is a better investment than the MXL 993. Credit where credit's due, MXL was great about repairing (or replacing?) my microphones over the course of the 3-year warranty they offer on their gear. While I actually like the MXL 993 quite a bit, it doesn't hold up so well over time and has been discontinued by MXL.

The nt55 differentiates itself from the nt5 in 2 ways:

1. It comes with an omnidirectional capsule, which I didn't try but might be useful for some people

2. It's got a switch low pass filter and pad, which are useful in principle but not very practical

The problem with the switches is that they are adjustable via a tiny little notch in the slider buried in a tiny recessed cavity. I was able to adjust them with some thumbtacks I happened to have, which were clearly not really the right tool for the job. What you'd probably want is a tiny flat head screwdriver. It's hard to exercise enough fine control to select the middle position on the 3-position pad (0/10/20 db attenuation), with the thumbtacks, I couldn't do it.

The more serious issue with the design is that it's very hard to tell what position the selectors are in. I had to shine a flashlight in at the cavity a bright the thing right up to my face to see what position the selectors were in.

While I was satisfied with the sound of the microphone, it didn't make sense to me to put up with the usability issues of the switching system, so I ended up returning the microphone. I would encourage anyone considering this microphone to buy the simpler, switchless nt5 (which also, according to Rode actually handles higher SPL levels than the nt55 anyway, evidently it can handle up to 146db which really, really loud) instead and either pad the signal at the preamplifier stage, or buy some inline pads. That's going to be easier than dealing with the switches on this thing.

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I was completely blown away by the performance of this microphone. I called Sweetwater and said I need a mic that will pick up a 13 piece big band while still maintaining the live feel of the room with clarity and equal distribution of instrumentation. By using the NT55's omni-directional capsule, I accomplished exactly what I wanted ! (I am very picky) This mic went beyond my expectations. It is a great tool for anyone who films large events where you want to capture live instead of a studio sound.