[mmichel]

Sounds great!

The "hum" you hear is probably a bit of self-noise from the ribbon mic as a result of it requiring much more gain than the Neumann.

The self-noise on these should be pretty negligible. I can't hear any noise on my NoHype at any level at which it would be practical to record a saxophone. However, I always use a Fethead with mine.

If you're using a longish cable run, that may be the source of the noise. The relatively high output impedances of these microphones make them more susceptible to EM and RF interference in the cable. One advantage of using something like a Fethead is that you can place it at the mic end of the cable (rather than at the preamp/interface end), which:

1. Reduces the effective output impedance of the mic+Fethead system, decreasing its susceptibility to interference.
2. Amplifies the signal at a point in the signal chain that comes before the cable EM/RF interference, so that the cable noise is not amplified along with the mic signal.