I decided to upgrade my recording setup this month. As the investment kept rising I found it easy to justify a boom arm upgrade...I had one of the cheaper boom arms you could buy on Amazon, it came in at a little more than 1/3 the price of this one. And while it did the job, it felt and looked cheap and was extremely stiff. It was also a bit short.This Gator Frameworks 3000 remedies all of that. It looks great, operates almost effortlessly and smoothly. And if you are upgrading to a mic that needs an XLR cable like I did, it includes a nice and long XLR cable, saving you about $20. It's a great value even without the cable, this makes it a no-brainer.The cable runs through the inside of the boom arm. This makes for a nice clean look. But, as far as I can tell, to change out the cable you'd have to run a naked cable through a small hole in the bottom, disassemble the stand to run the cable through (not too difficult) and then solder/crimp/however-you-attach-an-XLR-connector. I show a pic of the only spot I found that would require the connector to be attached after assembling. I suppose you could Dremel the top of that hole off and you'd be able to run your cable with the connectors attached. Maybe. (Hole close up shown in pic.)All this cable talk leads me to the one little gripe I have about this unit. The whole unit is black. So why, oh why, did we have to use a silver XLR connector on this cable? The reason it bothers me is that when on video if I have the mic in real close, that silver connector jumps out and draws attention. Without it the whole unit would just blend in and be much less noticeable. Tiny gripe, I know. I'll be painting the outside of the connector and my trauma will soon be forgotten.*** Note about the desk mount: I'm using the desk mount from my old boom arm, the pins are the same size. The mounts that come with this unit are awesome though! Very robust. It comes with one that can be screwed to the desk top — I might end up using that one. The other one is a really solid desk clamp, it just won't fit where I have my unit located, in a small crack between the desk and a desk extension I have my phone on.