Today in the interest of science I destroyed a ribbon!

  • Thread starter Thread starter mshilarious
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That man's NUTS!!!!!!!!!!

Grab 'im!!!!


:D






The joke's funnier when you say it out loud...
 
mshilarious said:
In case you needed to know, 9VAC @ 20Hz did just the trick! :eek: However your results may vary :o
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Actually I sincerely believe that if I did the same the results woudl be identical. But out of curiosity, exactly what dumb thing did you do to have that happen?
 
Innovations said:
Actually I sincerely believe that if I did the same the results woudl be identical. But out of curiosity, exactly what dumb thing did you do to have that happen?
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I created a 20Hz stereo sine wave, then I reversed polarity on the right channel. That was so when I plugged the mic into a headphone amp via a TRS-XLRF cable, the stereo output would appear as a reverse balanced signal to the mic.

Then I turned up the gain until the ribbon broke, and measured the voltage :)

And I would expect that less voltage might be required to destroy other ribbons, since I used 0.6 micron foil. Thicker foil could be destroyed at maybe 2VAC.
 
So, uh, are you saying you had the mic, for this experiment, hooked up as a speaker?

So how did it sound???? :-)
 
mdarnton said:
So, uh, are you saying you had the mic, for this experiment, hooked up as a speaker?

So how did it sound???? :-)
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At 20Hz, not too good. However at frequencies above 1kHz, it works fine although a bit quiet compared to a ribbon tweeter. That was with voltages down in the 0.2VAC range. It would have survived a higher voltage than 9VAC at a higher frequency than 20Hz, but I wasn't interested in that.

This was part of an experiment designed to see if a limiter circuit could protect a ribbon mic against severe reverse voltages. In fact, with the limiter in place, it took up to 28VAC @ 20Hz without hurting the ribbon :)

I still have more tests to do, I'll have more details later.
 
I hope that was a NADY ribbon mic!
Please don't say it was a ROYER! :eek:
 
Gnash5150 said:
I hope that was a NADY ribbon mic!
Please don't say it was a ROYER! :eek:
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Nah, an old Shure. And I can reribbon it myself. I will probably purposely toast it a couple more times before I am through :cool:
 
Highly technical, yet destructive. I like it.

You are an evil genius. :D
 
This thread is a great example of why mshilarious is one of the greatest members of this board.
 
Well, shit. :mad:

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to mshilarious again.
 
Purge said:
This thread is a great example of why mshilarious is one of the greatest members of this board.
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He's a smart fucker, just not smart enough to get far, far away from here. :p
 
mshilarious said:
At 20Hz, not too good. However at frequencies above 1kHz, it works fine although a bit quiet compared to a ribbon tweeter. That was with voltages down in the 0.2VAC range. It would have survived a higher voltage than 9VAC at a higher frequency than 20Hz, but I wasn't interested in that.

This was part of an experiment designed to see if a limiter circuit could protect a ribbon mic against severe reverse voltages. In fact, with the limiter in place, it took up to 28VAC @ 20Hz without hurting the ribbon :)

I still have more tests to do, I'll have more details later.
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So this really was a deliberate act to discover something. I presumed that you had done something by accident
 
ez_willis said:
He's a smart fucker, just not smart enough to get far, far away from here. :p
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How could I ever leave this board and miss the wit of ez_willis and beez? Or the classic Rumble solos of Purge? Sorry boys, y'all are stuck with me for life :p
 
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mshilarious said:
Nah, an old Shure. And I can reribbon it myself. I will probably purposely toast it a couple more times before I am through :cool:
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Outta curiousity, was it a 300 or 315 mic?
 
on a different, yet similar note, i blew up my (new to me) minime by hooking it up to a battery......and apparently having reversed the polarity somewhere in the cable on its way to the minime. and unlike mshilarious, i did NOT do that on purpose.

man i hate that smell. my basement still has the lingering odor of "component that took one for the team".

thankfully the guy at apogee said that it happens all the time and that it's an easy repair. i'll just be without it for a couple weeks and likely a couple hundred extra dollars, since i bought it used (and it's therefore out of warranty). so while i feel like a dumbass, i'm at least one of many dumbasses whose managed to do this to their minime.

and there went my plan to tape Willie Nelson and Southern Culture on the Skids this weekend. :(


cheers,
wade
 
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