Ha! Great minds, eh? We're off to MCR to buy an SM57 today - which is not so much a microphone as an icon of everything that's good & proper about life. In the past I've used them live & in the studio for drums, banjo, vocals, gongs, jew's harps, fiddle, kemence, guitar, flutes, whistles, hurdy gurdy, bagpipes - and I once was honoured to use one either side of Peter Bellamy's anglo. Like Stu saysm the SM 57 is a workhorse - and a design classic to boot; own one of them and it's a little piece of musical history right there in your kit.

One thought though - might the M3 prove a tad lively on stage being a studio condenser? In my experience condensers are great for studio use (for cheap studio condensers look no further than the Behringer B1 - we've got 4) but require a lot of palaver when there's live amplification & PAs involved, even small diaphragm ones.