Shure SM58 vs wireless: which microphone for the speeches
A wired mic and a wireless one solve different problems, and the gap between them is bigger than the price. Handheld, lavalier or the cheap classic — what a villa dinner, a terrace ceremony and a windy headland each actually need.
The sound system gets planned for months. The microphone gets remembered on the drive from the airport.
Which is backwards, because the speaker is the part that mostly works out however you specify it, and the microphone is the part with a hundred ways to go wrong in front of ninety people. Best man reading off a phone with one hand. Officiant on an open headland with the bura coming across. Somebody’s grandmother, who is not going to project.
Four microphones in our catalogue cover the whole range, from €15 a day to €75. Here is which one your evening actually needs.
The table
| Shure SM58 | Sennheiser EW-D handheld | Sennheiser EW-D ME 2 | Rode Wireless GO II | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Per day | €15 | €75 | €75 | €65 |
| Per week | €75 | €370 | €370 | €320 |
| Form | Handheld, wired | Handheld, wireless | Digital wireless lavalier | Clip-on, wireless |
| Capsule | Dynamic cardioid | Cardioid dynamic (MMD 835) | ME 2 omni clip-on | Lavalier |
| Range | XLR cable | ~100m line-of-sight | ~100m line of sight | 200m line-of-sight |
| Battery | None to go flat | 8h (2× AA) or 12h (optional BA 70 Li-ion pack) | 8h (2× AA) or 12h (optional BA 70 Li-ion pack) | 7 hours |
| Receiver | — | Desktop (EW-D EM) | Desktop (EW-D EM) | 2× transmitters + 1× receiver |
| Refundable hold | €50 | €250 | €250 | €150 |
| Right now | on request | in stock | on request | on request |
The decision is the cable, not the microphone
All four of these sound fine. Nobody at your dinner is going to hear a capsule and think less of it. What separates them is a much cruder question: where is the person standing, and can a cable reach them?
The SM58 ships with a 5m XLR lead. Five metres is generous at a table and worthless at a ceremony forty metres from the speaker. That is the entire argument, and once you have answered it the rest follows.
Second question, almost as crude: does the person need both hands? Someone reading a speech from their phone, someone exchanging rings, someone conducting a ceremony from notes — they cannot also be holding a microphone at the right distance from their mouth for eight minutes. Anyone who says they can has not tried it.
Answer those two and the choice is made.
The Shure SM58, at €15/day
Right for: toasts at a table, karaoke, and as the backup to whatever else you rent.
It is Dynamic cardioid with a XLR output and a frequency range of 50Hz - 15kHz, and it has been the default live vocal microphone on earth for about fifty years. Our catalogue lists its build quality as "Indestructible (literally industry-known)", which is glib but not wrong.
Three real advantages, and they are not the price:
Nothing to go flat. No battery, no pairing, no receiver, no radio. It works the instant it is plugged in and it works for as long as the evening lasts.
Cardioid, which matters more outdoors than people expect. It listens to what is in front of it and rejects a good deal of what is beside and behind it. On a terrace with a speaker nearby and forty people talking, that rejection is the difference between a speech and a howl of feedback.
It is the cheap insurance. At €15/day, adding one alongside a wireless mic costs less than the taxi to the venue. More on why that is the single best line on the invoice below.
Skip the SM58 as your only microphone if the speaker moves, the crowd is spread out, or anyone needs both hands free.
The Sennheiser EW-D handheld, at €75/day
Right for: speeches that get passed around, MCing, karaoke, anything at a distance.
~100m line-of-sight of range and 8h (2× AA) or 12h (optional BA 70 Li-ion pack) of battery, on a Cardioid dynamic (MMD 835) capsule with ~1.9ms of latency. Digital, so it does not do the analogue thing of quietly filling with hiss as someone walks away from the receiver — it either has the link or it does not, and within a villa it has it.
The reason this is the one we send most: a handheld gets handed over. A wedding has a best man, a father, a maid of honour, and someone who was not going to speak and then decides to. A microphone that passes down a table handles all of them. A clip-on belongs to exactly one person and re-clipping it between speeches, in front of everyone, is as awkward as it sounds.
It is also the only one of the four currently in stock, which in July and August is not a minor detail.
Skip the handheld if the person speaking needs both hands, or the whole event is one person talking for a long time.
The Sennheiser EW-D ME 2 lavalier, at €75/day
Right for: ceremonies, officiants, anyone who should not be holding anything.
Same price as the handheld, same ~100m line of sight of range, same 8h (2× AA) or 12h (optional BA 70 Li-ion pack), same Desktop (EW-D EM) — the two share a receiver across our EW-D range, so the difference is purely what is on the other end. Here it is a ME 2 omni clip-on capsule that clips to a lapel and gets out of the way.
For a ceremony this is simply correct. Nobody wants a microphone in the frame of the photographs, and nobody exchanging vows has a spare hand.
One honest warning, and it is a Croatian one. That capsule is omnidirectional — it takes sound from every direction equally, which is what lets it work clipped to a lapel rather than aimed at a mouth. The cost is that it also takes the wind. On an exposed headland above Cavtat, or a Hvar terrace at four in the afternoon, an omni lavalier can pick up a great deal of moving air. If your ceremony is somewhere genuinely windy, the cardioid handheld held close is the more reliable rent even though it is the less elegant one. Tell us the venue and we will say which way we would go.
Skip the lavalier if the microphone has to be shared, or the setting is windy and exposed.
The Rode Wireless GO II is not a speech microphone
It is a very good microphone and it is the wrong tool here, so it is worth being clear about why.
The Rode is built to feed a camera. It has 2× transmitters + 1× receiver, so two people can be miked at once, 200m line-of-sight of range, and the feature that makes it special: Onboard recording (~24h compressed / 7h uncompressed per TX). The audio is captured on the transmitter itself, so even if the radio link drops the recording survives.
For filming a ceremony properly, or a content trip on a charter, that is exactly right. For putting a voice through a PA, book a Sennheiser — its desktop receiver is designed to hand an XLR output to a speaker, which is the job. Its battery is also 8h (2× AA) or 12h (optional BA 70 Li-ion pack) against 7 hours on the Rode, and AAs can be replaced at any petrol station on the coast at nine in the evening.
Plenty of weddings sensibly rent both: the Sennheiser for the guests to hear, the Rode for the film.
Check the speaker before you book the microphone
A microphone is only half a decision. The receiver has to plug into something with the right input, and not every speaker has one.
- Bose S1 Pro+, €85/day — 2x combo XLR/TRS, Bluetooth, 3.5mm and 11h of battery at 7.2kg. The usual answer for a ceremony on a lawn or a terrace with no power near it.
- JBL PartyBox 710, €110/day — 2× mic, guitar, Bluetooth 5.1, USB, RCA. Two microphone channels, so it covers the speeches and then carries the party afterwards.
- Mackie Thump 215 pair on stands, €175/day — 2-ch (XLR/TRS) per top. For a larger ceremony where guests are spread out and one box will not reach the back row.
The trap is the battery speakers with no combo input at all. A Soundboks Go lists 1/4" + 3.5mm + Bluetooth 5 — excellent for music, nowhere to put a microphone. If the speeches and the party are coming out of one box, check that box takes XLR before you commit to it. The full PA and audio range sizes the rest of it, and the wedding sound page splits ceremony, speeches and reception properly.
Rent the cheap one as well. Always.
The best €15 on any wedding invoice is a second microphone you hope not to use.
Wireless is a chain — transmitter, battery, radio link, receiver, cable — and a wired microphone is a cable. Spare AAs ship with every wireless mic we send, and the batteries are the likeliest thing to need attention on a long evening. But if anything further up the chain misbehaves at the moment the father of the bride stands up, what saves the speech is an SM58 already plugged into the second channel of the same speaker, sitting on the table.
Being straight with you about the limits of that: we are dry hire and we drive out of Split. The gear arrives cabled, tested and working, and we show whoever is responsible how to run it — but there is no engineer of ours standing at the back of your ceremony, and we do not promise a same-hour replacement to an island or a headland if something fails mid-event. Ferries and distance make that a promise we could not keep. The redundancy that actually protects your evening is the one physically present in the room, and at €15/day there is no argument against it.
Money and lead times
Weekly rates run well under seven day-rates: the SM58 is €75 for a week against €105 daily, the EW-D handheld €370 against €525.
For most weddings the sane order is a handheld plus an SM58 backup — €90/day for both — and a lavalier added for the ceremony itself if the setting is sheltered.
Refundable damage holds are small on microphones: €50 on the SM58, €250 on the wireless handheld. Charged with the rental, returned when the gear comes back working, actual repair cost only — how it works has the rest.
Three of these four are on request rather than on the shelf, which means they get ordered in and they need notice. For a wedding date that has been fixed for a year, ask early rather than in the week of.
The short version
- Table of twenty, speeches sitting down — an SM58 and nothing else.
- Wedding speeches passed between people — the EW-D handheld, with an SM58 as backup.
- Ceremony, sheltered, one officiant — the EW-D ME 2 lavalier.
- Ceremony, exposed and windy — the handheld, and accept that it is in the photographs.
- Someone is filming it properly — add the Rode Wireless GO II for the camera, and keep a Sennheiser for the PA.
Tell us the venue, the date and roughly how many people at /reserve/, and we will come back with a quote — including which speaker the receiver is going into, because that is the half of this people forget.
— Party Rental Croatia
