New ribbon mic

[kip4]

Well i finally bit the bullet and ordered an Apex 205 ribbon mic
I've always wanted to try one
should be here in a few day. I'm gonna have a play and see how i like it and on what.
meantime feel free to chime in and tell me your ribbon mic tales.

[kip4]

I did a quick test on vocals and acoustic guitars earlier
the mic sounds generally slightly more honky than i expected. first impression
on vocals its lovely and smooth like a pillow . It responds well to EQ you can slap loads on and really shape the sounds better than with an ldc and it doesnt sound unnatural.
Very nice proximity effect on close up low vocal.
Did a quick test with the back of the mic too and a sideways on approach.
the guitar didnt sound as good. However i was lazy and will be spending some more time perfecting my mic positioning on guitars.
I think i may try a mid side technique with it on acoustic guitars.
Again it responds well to eq
I'm also pleased to say My Alice mic pak preamp did a great job. I was able to crank it over to the 3pm position at which point it really started to pick up alot of room noise.
not much although some noise floor, not too noticable.
you could hear every squeek of the floor board and i the meters were peaking at -6 db in the loudest passages even with the mic set 18inchs from the instrument.
Best i get the sewing machine out tonight and make a protective bag to put over it when its not in the stand.
all in all so far so good. when i've done some more testing i'll post some clips for you guys to comment on.
thanks for reading

[kip4]

I did some spot micing test today with the 12 string and of all the mic positions i tried
1 ribbon over shoulder looking at bridge 2 feet away, sdc 12th fret 12" away. nice if i blend more ribbon than sdc
2 ribbon level with bridge and looking at it. 12"away , sdc 15th fret 8" away. ok but a little woofy on ribbon
3 ribbon level with bridge pointing at bridge 12" away, sdc 6" from 12 fret . i didnt learn my lesson although the sdc was more alive and kicking.
4 ribbon level with bridge 16" away looking at back of guitar body. This is the one i chose to print, (link below)
once i stopped getting the air pushing out of the soundhole into the mic and got a little more room in the sound it opened up quite nicely.
the mp3 here is unprocessed (except for the mp3 conversion)
hope this helps someone and remember these are just my initial tests i hope to improve on them

[kip4]

Has anybody ever tried using a ribbon as a vocalists room mic and just using the wet reverb to add ambiance to a dry vocal track in the mix.

btw test 1 had a lovely wide open sound that when panned, ribbon 50% L , SDC 50% R and the level adjusted. it filled out the sound stage very nicely.

[kip4]

Here's a mid side experiment i did this morning
mid= sdc
side= ribbon
no processing (except mp3 conversion) and obvious m/s decoding

[stainless]

K

I use the ribbon mic on female vocals (well not all... I've got one screamer that I put on a SM57....) as to reverb... that's IMHO a matter of persoanl prefs and somewhat dictated by the song

Is the Alice Pak the only pre amp you have? Do you have a tube pre?   You might experiment with different pre's. I find my ribbon gets a more "even" sound with a tube pre...  (the woofiness could be how the Alice is responding to the frequency response of the mic, coupled with it's own response curve)  I  don't really like the way the ribbon  sounds through my Prism pre,  which is the most $$$ preamp I own

S

[kip4]

i'll give that a shot stainless. i do have a low budget tube pre i can try it with. good call

[kip4]

I tried the tube pre but for some reason (impedance mismatch i suspect) the ribbon did not respond well at all.
so I'm back with Alice for now. I did a quick test recording Ribbon Versus LDC
see what you think.
link below

[kip4]

by the way I'm still waiting for janis to turn up. If she does i'll retire the ribbon and reach for the 57

[stainless]

first sample is phatter,2nd is brighter

how are you doing your test?  one, then the other?

I try to set both mics up "head to to head" meaning top to top, either horizontal or vertical, into  the same pre/different channels, set the same.

then I can switch back and forth between tracks on the same performance.  I prefer this, as I believe, no matter how hard we try, we have difficulty performing something the same exact way twice... which gets compounded when it's more than a single instrument/voice

and as mics sound slightly different, (I believe) we (as performers) respond slightly differently to what we hear in the headphones....  maybe tests such as you did should be done sans headphones!?!  which would make the performer "blind" to "results"

hmmmmmmm

I think tooo much... me thinks

and ...go ask Alice... when she's 10 feet tall...

I'll let you know if there's a Janis sighting 

[kip4]

its a fair point so i redid a quick test again this time with the mic's side by side, no headphones, no processing
stainless dont even get me started on jefferson airplane lol

[kip4]

heres another test (same performance)
i think i might have overdone the reverb on the treated version
(EQ, compressor, limiter, reverb.)
master compression on both