Omnidirectional mic for recording a bluegrass singing group

[PaulineC88]

Howdy, I need some advice about choosing an omnidirectional mic to record
with. There are 8 singers in our gospel bluegrass group and we use a tascam dp 01 fx portastudio to record with, we have a radio shack omnidirectional mic that we use now but we do not like it very well. If anyone has a recommendation I will be glad to hear it because I don't know very much about mics.
thanks.

 

[Jarno]

Depends on how much $$$ you are ready to invest. You can get Behringer mics for around $50, but if you are after the highest possible quality, you may have to invest something like $4000 for Earthworks or Schoeps ones. But even Behringers should be better than than Radio Shack ones.

 

[PaulineC88]

I can spend up to $250 for a mic. I'll look up the Behringer mic.
Does anyone have more suggestions/

 

[Rickey Mifflin]

The CAD M179 is a multipattern large diaphragm condenser mic with variable pickup patterns from supercardioid to omni for about $130 at musicians friend or Amazon

 

[nabberigu]

The signal you capture is as good as the sum of the components. The chain of microphone, cable and pre-amp needs to be considered. I doubt that the Tascam dp 01 fx has really high quality pre-amps so it makes no sense to invest in an expensive microphone if the pre-amp cannot reach that quality. Don't put a tractor wheel on a Ferrari.
There are some very descent used omni mics on offer on Ebay. A little bit of research and the prespective of the pre-amp quality should lead to some good recording results.
Omni mic recording of a 8 member group of singers probably means that the mic has some distance to the sources so no close mic situation. This requires higher amplification. Usually when cheaper designs of pre amps are driven hard they tend to distort more so if possible try to stay out of the last bit of the pre-amp range.
In this light is might be advisable to look for a reasonable sensitive mic that corresponds to the pre-amp.