Shure PGA48 Review: Louder Than the SM58, and Shorter at the Bottom

The Shure PGA48 listed at $54 with a cable in the box, and it puts out 2.5 dB more signal than the SM58 at twice the money. Sensitivity reads −53.5 dBV/Pa, which is 2.10 mV/Pa, while the two famous handhelds in the same catalogue both read −56 dBV/Pa, or 1.59. But the trade is at the bottom. The PGA48 publishes 70 Hz as its low limit, and of the 27 published ranges collected here, none starts later.

One thing outranks both figures. The microphone is out of production and out of stock. Shure marks the model discontinued and the dealer marks the listing no longer available, so everything below describes a specification rather than a purchase.

2.10 mV/Pa, above the median and above the SM58

Louder than the two microphones everyone names

Shure prints −53.5 dBV/Pa at 1 kHz, open circuit, with the conversion in brackets as 2.10 mV. Run the same arithmetic on the SM58 and its instrument twin, both at −56 dBV/Pa, and 1.59 mV comes out. The gap is 2.5 dB in favour of the cheapest microphone of the three.

Nothing mysterious is going on. Output level is set by the magnet, the coil and the diaphragm, but none of those is expensive. What costs money on a handheld is the consistency of the pattern, the shock mount, the grille and the way it survives being dropped. A budget capsule can be loud and still be the cheaper microphone in every way that matters on stage.

What the extra 2.5 dB buys in practice is gain that the desk doesn't have to supply. On a small mixer with noisy preamps, that's worth having. But on an interface with 60 dB of clean gain, it changes nothing.

70 Hz, the highest floor in the set

Twenty-seven dynamics here publish a low limit. The SM48 starts at 55 Hz, the SM58 and SM7B at 50, the SM57 and KSM8 at 40, and one RODE reaches 20. The PGA48 starts at 70, which is the latest start of all of them.

Seventy hertz is roughly the second E on a bass guitar. A vocal microphone that begins there has given up the region where floor rumble, air handling and stage vibration live, and has also given up the bottom of a male voice's fundamental range. For a vocal into a PA that's a defensible trade. For a kick drum or a bass cabinet it's disqualifying, and the specification says so without needing an opinion.

The range arrives without a tolerance, so the pair won't sit beside another maker's numbers. And Shure doesn't state a measurement level at either end.

600 ohms, the highest impedance of the six

Output impedance is 600 Ω by Shure's own sheet. Across the Shure dynamics covered here that's the top of the range. The SM57 reads 310 Ω, the KSM8 300, the Beta 57A 290, the SM48 270 actual, the SM81 85. And impedance decides how much a long cable costs in high-frequency loss and how much noise the run picks up. At 600 Ω a fifty-metre snake run behaves worse than it would with a 150 Ω source, while at the four and a half metres of the cable in the box, nothing measurable happens. So the figure describes a microphone built for the distance it ships with.

XLR, QTR or LC: the same microphone three ways

Shure sells this model in three packages and documents all of them in one PG Alta guide, which lists no difference in the capsule:

The QTR version exists because a jack plug fits a guitar amplifier, a keyboard amp and most karaoke machines, which is where a $54 microphone often ends up. It's the same capsule with a different plug on the far end of the wire, though the card that our figures come from is the XLR one.

And the cable matters to the price comparison more than it looks. A 4.5 m XLR cable is a real cost, though the SM58 at $109 arrives without one.

An On/Off switch, which four of 28 have

Ten dynamics in this set of 28 publish any control at all, but only four of those ten have nothing but an On/Off switch, namely this microphone, the PGA58, a Samson and the 55SH.

So a switch on a vocal microphone is a venue feature rather than a studio one. It lets a presenter mute between announcements without walking to the desk, and it's the part a sound engineer usually wishes weren't there, because a microphone switched off at the wrong moment looks like a fault.

Discontinued on both sides

Shure's product page carries one word above the name, discontinued, with no price and no purchase control, only a link to comparable products. And the dealer's page reads no longer available and no store display. Its structured markup still carries $54.00, and the availability field beside that price reads discontinued too. That's the detail worth naming, because a price without a purchase is what feeds a comparison table. A machine reading the dealer's markup finds a number, a currency and a product, and files this microphone into a price ranking alongside things that can be bought. But the word that would stop it sits in a different field.

So everything below reads as a record rather than a recommendation. The figures were published, they were checked against the manufacturer, and they describe a microphone that's now bought second-hand or not at all.

Eleven ratings at $54

Nine fives, two fours, an average of 4.8 from eleven ratings. Eleven is a small count, though one disappointed owner would take the average to 4.5. An empty bottom row on a $54 dynamic isn't far from the expected result. There's no battery, no circuit board, no firmware and no app. The only parts that can fail are the capsule, the switch and the supplied cable, and the cable is the cheapest thing in the box to replace.

What the sheet settles

Does the PGA48 need phantom power?

No. It's a moving-coil dynamic with no electronics inside, so there's no phantom power, no battery and nothing to switch on beyond the mute.

What is the difference between the PGA48-XLR and the PGA48-QTR?

The cable. XLR ends in a three-pin plug for a mixer, QTR in a 6.3 mm jack for an amplifier or karaoke input. The microphone is the same and Shure documents both in one guide.

What is the PGA48's frequency response?

70 Hz to 15 kHz, with no measurement level stated for either end. The 70 Hz floor is the highest of the 27 dynamics here that publish one.

Is the Shure PGA48 discontinued?

Yes, on both sides. Shure's page carries the discontinued label and no price, and the dealer's page reads no longer available. The $54.00 that survives in the listing's markup is the last price rather than a current one.

What did a Shure PGA48 cost?

$54.00 with the XLR cable included, which was the second-lowest price among the 28 dynamics collected here, above a $19.90 Behringer whose own sheet prints a sensitivity with no reference unit and below the $69 SM48. Neither the manufacturer nor the dealer sells it now.

What $54 answered, while it lasted

A vocal into a small PA is the case these numbers describe. The output is above the median, so the desk works less. The 70 Hz floor removes rumble that a cheap PA would amplify anyway, the switch suits a presenter, and the cable came in the box. Second-hand, that case still holds, though it's the only way the case can now be tested.

Anything with low frequencies in it is where the floor stops the argument. A kick drum, a bass cabinet, a floor tom or a male voice recorded for its weight all live partly below 70 Hz, and this capsule doesn't publish a figure there. The SM57 reaches 40 Hz for $55 more and is the usual answer to that requirement.

Price and specifications

Sources

1. Shure PGA48 Dynamic Vocal Microphone (XLR Cable), product listing at B&H Photo Video: price, rating count and its star distribution.
2. The product markup on that same listing: polar pattern, element type, frequency range, sensitivity, the On/Off switch, the supplied cable length, thread and weight.
3. PGA48 user guide in the PG Alta series at Shure: type, output impedance, sensitivity with its conversion, weight, operating temperature and the sections on proximity effect and the switch.
4. Medians and positions come from listings of 200 audio products collected the same way. How those are converted and compared.

Prices and owner ratings on this page were read at the shop on 20 August 2026.

What we did not do

This microphone has never been in our hands. Every figure above is Shure's or its dealer's, and what we add is the ranking: which of the dynamics here publish the same specification, and where this one falls among them.