been messing with my ribbon mic, made 3 or 4 recordings with it, it always sounds different, with different tilts and gains, ill share here some things i learned so far and post more secrets when i learn them.

room echo - bad for other mics - good for ribbon mics, be carefull on your gain though, or it will sound like your recording in a bathroom, you just want the backside of the ribbon to pick up reverb.

if you use a deflectorr you will get a real raunchy ( in a good way ) rolling stones / creedence style retro ringing tone. where if you record in an open room it will be rich and warm, again carefull on the gain, (bathroom effect)

weird weird latency for close micing with deflector, ->
maybe this is something to do with the ribbon vibrating and the time it takes to settle down causes a bit of latency, because it doesnt cause this when your not exciting the ribbon too much. did a google on this and nothing poppped up, so maybe i am wrong, or the first person to notice this ? haha.


cold ribbon low gain - real raunchy sound ( in a good way )


low gain- be louder -get your ribbon dancing and pick up less echo, it still picks up echo but real quiet because the gain is low. i think this can record ghosts so if you want ghosts in your recording try that.

it seems like almost all my mics have a mind of their own, ive heard of mics being hot or cold but didnt understand what it meant untill you record something good, and it turns out really crappy. maybe its the tubes, or cuircits warming up or something . the ribbon has the most mood swings though.

acoustic cancellation- be carefull to change your gain or tilt your mic when stacking overdubs of vocals , because if they are in perfect sync, they can cancel eachother out and change your voice and make you sound like how a deaf person talks, this bugged the shit out of me at first, and then it made sense because of the phenominon acoustic cancellation with inverted waveform. the type of anomoly most everyone wouldnt encounter but is a problem for me.

its really hard to process these ( compression- limit+boost) unless your recording is nearly perfect. well had lots of fun this week playing on my ribbon, and heres a non ribbon secret.



for a real raunchy rolling stones guitar , run an electric guitar straight to tape with +3 db distortion. sounds authentic too.

peace.

.. sock?

I use sport socks on budget condensor mics to remove harsh highs + room echoe - sound is dry(and ready for fx)

Interesting post- thanks!

what model have you been using? I know there are some cheap but good ones out of China- I see them in TapeOp I forget the name. Oh Fat Head from Cascade-
http://www.cascademicrophones.com/menu_ ... hones.html

I have always wanted a Royer R121 after I tried one but not enough to buy one.

Whoa- DIY for around $150 or $200 if you build a pair- interesting.
http://tapeop.com/reviews/gear/63/diy-r ... -tutorial/

@ KRIS WHITE - no need for a sock, the popper almost filters out to much important frequency, going to experiment with a sock for drums though just to see.



it's the apex 210 blue ribbon, has a number 8 on the front.
the mic stand rumble and echo is enough to not want to overuse it.
that and it's super unpredictable, frustrating to process, difficult to capture what you want it to sound like, and it's fragile. so i will pack it away for another musical adventure,

I was looking at mod's and diy's but my electronics is bad.

I was really interested in chinese budget condensors, but i ran into some decent budget brand name condensors. gonna stick to condensors, cant stand dynamic mic's for recording.

another couple tips for the 210. next time i use it, im gonna keep the gain low, it seems after some analasys for mastering I notice even with isolation, medium to high gain isnt good, unless you keep your voice lower, then you get that 50's sound.

keep in mind though normal operation would be a mic pre gain maxed out.

half gain sounds better, but it's almost invisible,

go lower and you can start hollering into it close up. very tricky mic.

The ghost sounds i was refering to are actually a combination of mic stand rumble, room echo and reverb all combining and creating a phantom frequency of sorts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_fundamental

this can happen in tape mixes too, everything gets jumbled up and makes some muddy grime bass rumble.
still need to figure out this latency, but i figure just move on insted of go insane.