You guys know the type - it's the one he modified into a gun at one point - the ball of the mic sits on a silver crown. Is that Sennheiser? Neuman?

I want to know what kind of mic this is. I've never seen it in any store.

THAT is the kind I'm asking about. 80s model sold for around $250 back then, but I forgot the name of it.

Unsure about the actual microphone adapted for the gun, but I know for Kiss he used a Senn 441, as per David Z (an old staffer at Paisly Park there for the recoring of Kiss

According to Z, Prince's preference for that particular mic stems from a conversation he had with singer Stevie Nicks, who had suggested it to him. “There's a roll-off on that microphone that actually ends up boosting the high end, spiking it around 3 kHz,” Z explains. “It also has good directionality; Prince liked to sing in the control room, so he would set it up on a stand right by the console. When he wanted to sing, he would just put on headphones. He also liked doing his own punches, too.”

When I saw the ONA tour, during the soundcheck P asked the crowd to sing a James Taylor song as he planned to bring up a NPGMC member on stage to sing with him. I said...'I'm only going to sing if I have the gun mike" The cutie laughed and smiled...I made him smile.

Red said:

Red - that's a recording mic - I did a search on ebay and the pictures of that mic are not like the one above. Thanks for the info tho.

Ooops, you did say 'live'.

I bet it's a Shure, maybe a U2/Beta model.

Prince uses AKG mikes exclusively. Check out http://www.akg.com

otan said:

The mic is a Sennheiser 431 and he's used them for years. Its a very present microphone in that it has a lot of high end.