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Sound kit hire in London: why the same mic costs £19 or £38
Unlike a light, a doubled price on the same microphone is mostly kit contents — and the missing dead cat is what ruins an exterior.
By Picturental · · 6 min read
A Sennheiser MKH 416 is £19 a day at one London rental house and £38 at another. Same microphone, exactly double.
With a light, a price gap like that is mostly markup — an ARRI SkyPanel S60-C is an ARRI SkyPanel S60-C wherever you collect it, which is why the 50% spread on lighting is worth ringing round for. Sound does not work that way. Almost all of this gap is what comes in the bag with the microphone, and if you book on price alone you can lose a day's recording to it.
The same mic, two very different kits
Both of these are current London rates, checked on 3 October 2026.
| Shoot Blue | Wex Rental | |
|---|---|---|
| Day rate | £19 ex VAT | £38 ex VAT |
| Blimp / basket | Yes | Rycote basket |
| Windshield | Yes | Foam, plus MZH 20-1 dead cat |
| Pistol grip | Yes | MZS 20-01 suspension with grip |
| XLR cable | 1m | 5m |
| Case | — | Peli 1500 |
Wex's figure also excludes a damage waiver, 10% added in the basket unless you can show proof of your own insurance. Build both up for a renter who holds no policy and cannot reclaim VAT and it is £22.80 against £50.16.
So the headline gap is double and the all-in gap is more than double. But look at what the extra buys: a dead cat, a longer cable and a hard case.
Why that matters more than it sounds
The dead cat is the one to notice. A foam windshield handles a room and a still day outdoors. It does not handle wind. If you book the cheaper kit for an exterior in October and the weather turns, you are recording wind noise over every take, and no amount of post will take it out cleanly.
The 5m XLR against 1m is the second one. A metre of cable gets a mic onto a camera. It does not get a boom operator anywhere useful relative to a sound recordist.
Neither house is doing anything wrong here. They are renting different things, both labelled "MKH 416", and the renter is the only person in the transaction who can tell whether the difference matters on the day. Which is the practical rule for hiring sound: ask what is in the bag before you compare the numbers, because the mic is rarely the part that decides whether the day works.
The recorder, and what a day of sound costs
The other half of a sound package has a narrower spread, because recorders ship as one object.
A Zoom H6 is £20 a day at Wex Rental, £80 a week. A Sound Devices 633, which is a professional field mixer-recorder rather than a handheld, is £45 ex VAT at Media Dog Hire, or £54 with VAT.
Put the full kit together at one house and a day of competent single-boom sound is £38 plus £20, which with the waiver and VAT is £76.56. Set that against the London shoot day we costed, where the camera department came to £426.72 and two lights to £382.80, and sound is the cheapest department on the call sheet by a wide margin.
It is also the one audiences notice first when it is wrong. People forgive a soft image. They switch off bad audio.
What this looks like from the other side
A Sennheiser MKH 416-P48 costs £729 at Wex Photo Video today, down from an RRP of £839, and it is in stock rather than discontinued.
Divide that by what it hires for and the microphone covers its own price in 20 rental days at £38, 30 at a middling £25, and 39 at £19. Call it somewhere between a month and two months of occasional weekend work.
That is slower than lighting, where an Aputure LS 600x Pro clears in 16 to 24 days, and roughly level with a Sony FX3 at 25. But a 416 has something no camera body has: it does not go out of date. The model has been in production since the 1980s and the one you buy today will hire for much the same money in a decade, while a sensor is on a two-year cycle. Run that through the payback calculator with your own numbers if you own one.
Sound is also the category where the kit around the thing matters, which cuts both ways for an owner. A bare 416 competes on price with every other bare 416. A 416 with a Rycote basket, a dead cat, a decent suspension and a 5m cable is a different product, and the table at the top of this piece is what that difference is worth per day.
The gap on this platform, stated plainly
Picturental's catalogue is cameras and glass. Of everything published in London, the audio section is a single listing, and it is a RØDECaster podcast kit rather than anything you would take to a location.
So there is no peer-to-peer sound package on here to compare the figures above against. Every number in this piece comes from a rental house, for the same reason the lighting piece did a month's worth of arguing before anyone listed a lamp — and within hours of publishing that one, somebody did.
Sound is the next most obvious hole. It is cheap to buy into relative to camera and lighting, it holds its value better than either, and right now anyone listing a proper boom kit would be the only one on the platform doing it.
If you have a 416 and a recorder in a cupboard, listing takes about two minutes. Bring the blimp.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to hire a Sennheiser MKH 416 in London?
Between £19 and £38 a day before VAT, depending on the house and what the kit includes. Shoot Blue lists £19 for a kit with blimp, windshield, pistol grip and a 1m XLR. Wex Rental lists £38 for a kit that adds a Rycote basket, a dead cat windshield, a suspension mount, a 5m cable and a Peli case, and adds a 10% damage waiver unless you show your own insurance.
Why do sound hire prices vary so much for the same microphone?
Mostly because "an MKH 416" can mean a bare microphone or a complete boom kit. The extras — blimp, dead cat, suspension, long cable, hard case — are what separates a £19 day from a £38 one, so comparing the two rates without comparing the kit lists tells you very little.
What does a day of location sound cost to hire?
About £76.56 all in for a shotgun kit and a recorder from a single rental house, taking Wex Rental's £38 microphone kit and £20 Zoom H6 with the damage waiver and VAT added. A professional field mixer-recorder such as a Sound Devices 633 is dearer, at £45 before VAT at Media Dog Hire.
Is a shotgun microphone worth buying to rent out?
On payback, it is comparable to a camera and slower than a light. A Sennheiser MKH 416-P48 at £729 covers its cost in 20 rental days at £38 a day, 30 at £25 and 39 at £19. Its advantage is longevity: the model has been made since the 1980s and holds its hire rate, where a camera body follows a release cycle.
Can I hire sound equipment on Picturental?
Barely. The audio category currently holds a single published listing, a RØDECaster podcast kit, so a location sound package is not something you can source here yet. It is the thinnest category on the platform after lighting, and the one with the least competition for anyone thinking of listing.