Ribbon mics.. why?

R

Rick Charming

New member
Hiya,

I've never had the opportunity to play with ribbon mics of any variety. Is there anything I need to know about them? How do you use them? What situations would you use them in?

Thanks guys!
 
The three main thing to remember is that they require a lot of clean gain because their signal strenghth is low, they are nearly always a figure-8 pattern, and must be protected against gusts of wind and rough handling.

Apart from that their main characteristic is a very smooth and mellow response, very good for taking the edge of of brass for example.
 
No shit! I'm a sax player by trade and arrange for and record horn sections all the time. Maybe that's something I should be looking into in the near future..
 
Sax mics that have worked well for me include:

RE-20 (not a ribbon, but a really good and useful dynamic mic)
AEA R84 ribbon mic
Beyer M160 ribbon mic

I'm interested to see how some of the Group Buy ribbons work on sax.
 
Another thing to remember about ribbons is that they don't need phantom power (many of them don't, at least)--in fact, it can ruin them in a flash. :eek:
 
Myriad_Rocker said:
Take a look at the Cascade FatHead II and the Cascade X-15.

Cascade has some sound clips available for the X-15 on brass instruments. Sounds amazing.
Click to expand...

But the Apex 210 is a better buy overall, same sound but better package and much better price (from fullcompass.com).

My Fathead arrived with a tiny screw tumbling around inside the metal screen! An obvious manufacturing flaw. Oddly it had a nasty hum. They replaced it at no extra charge with the Fathead II, but then that one arrived in a wood box that was splintered because it didnt' fit the mic. They sent me a new box, but the damage to their rep was, imo, already done.

The Apex is distributed by Yorkville, padded aluminum flight case and velour bag, much better build. I use the Fathead on my guitar cab, but I use the Apex for vocs.
 
Another characteristic of ribbons is that the response curve tends to be relatively smooth (the effect of the body/grille notwithstanding), so they tend to take EQ easily without sounding harsh, unlike many condensers (and even some moving coil dynamics...).

Basically, I would describe it as having many the advantages of a small diaphragm condenser (good transient response, good high frequency pickup) with many the advantages of a dynamic (takes EQ well, not harsh sounding, etc.).

Of course, it also has disadvantages. They are somewhat more fragile---you don't want to use them in areas of lots of air motion (outdoors, near the blow zone of any medium to large drum, etc.). They may be susceptible to damage in the presence of phantom power (depending on how they are wired). With some output transformers, the high frequency response may be rolled off somewhat---good or bad, depending on your intent. If the high frequencies are not rolled off, they sound a lot like condensers in terms of "picking up everything"---again, good or bad, depending on the situation.
 
Hi Rick,

Just a note :)

I own a CAD Trion 7000. I bought it at Christian Music Summit last year because I heard how it sounded, was able to compare it to other mics, including several hi-end condensers, and recognized its silky-smooth response and breathiness, just with my voice. It's a new design, but still a classic figure-eight dual-element ribbon. Phantom power will destroy it.

I can't emphasize how important it is to actually _hear_ a mic, provided you have a good understanding of the gear it's plugged into, settings, and monitors. Everything should be a flat response for judging how a mic itself sounds.

The reason I got it was mainly for wind instrument close-ensemble work, i.e., where musicians play in a semi-circle so they can hear each other for extremely tight timing and intonation without the encumbrance of headsets.

I've used it on stage, but haven't had a chance to make any actual recordings yet ... my new studio won't open until Saturday, and even then, only unofficially.

The plan is to use it together with a cardioid condenser and two room ambience mics in a Mid-Side stereo combination (if you need more on MS stereo coding, let me know). I expect to use an outboard pre with plenty of gain and impedence-matching and with no phantom power on the ribbon, and let the board pres push in the condensers, with a wee bit of stereo compression plus some narrow band graphic EQ -driven sidechain compression just in case I have to gate noise I don't like. I expect to be mastering this stuff someday, so I don't want to get in the habit of leaving myself a bunch of extra downsteam work.

HTH,
Ken N.
 
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