Had one before and it was pretty good for the price. Edit: it was pretty good, period. It didn't quite have the same tonal clarity as my R122 and Coles 4038 and I ended up selling it (also sold the R122, which I partially regret up to now). Again, for the price you pay (1/4 of what you would pay for a used R122/Coles 4038), it's a great buy. Also, JP provides excellent customer service.

 

Thanks. My main concern is that I've always read that ribbon mics (good ones) aren't cheap, so seeing one with good reviews for $200 has been interesting. Other option I was looking at is the SE Electronics Voodoo ($399)

 

Royer has a newer ribbon mic (R10) for around $500. I use a pair of them for piano and they sound excellent. Have not tried recording sax with them as my piano is at home and I play and record my saxes in my studio a few miles away.

 

Thanks, I have seen the R10 name thrown around but haven't investigated. I will check it out, thanks.

 

Mmichel - these are really good mics. The guy who makes them REALLY knows what he's doing, and they compete with very nice ribbon mics that are much more expensive. I wouldn't hesitate to get one, particularly for the money. He sources a lot of the parts from Asia, I'm pretty sure, but he puts everything together himself in Belgium, and he's the real deal. He consults for companies who make much more expensive mics.

I'm personally more drawn to the more "vintage-sounding" LRM V. It seems modeled generally after the old-school long-ribbon RCA designs, and I love those on saxophone in particular. People who own the LRM-2B seem to generally love them, though, seems to maybe be more "modern."

The Samar Audio company has a really interesting and affordable ribbon, too. A bit more than the NoHype, but Samar typically makes pretty top-shelf stuff. Likewise, Cascade has been putting out good ribbons for not much money for a long time (I've heard people get great results out of the Fathead and Vin-Jet models).

It's a bit of a misconception that ribbons have to be expensive. I do love the AEA mics, which are essentially recreations of the old RCAs, but the technology in a ribbon mic is much less involved than in a good condenser. They can be made very well with less infrastructure.

 

@HeavyWeather77:

Thanks. Could you describe their character compared to other ribbons?

I'm mainly an LDC guy, but I've been thinking about adding a ribbon mic for something different. I'd like something with a smoother/less harsh top end, but some of the popular ribbons, like the Cascade Fathead, sound too muted to me.

One of the things that interested me about the sE VR1 is that it seems to preserve more of the top end compared to traditional ribbons. I think I'd be most interested in something vaguely in that direction, with a sound somewhere between a warm LDC and a traditional ribbon.

 

I am using a RODE NT-2 which is around $350 and its warm and responsive plus you can change the recording positions of the microphone field. If I were to do it again I would go for AKG but this one is very good.

 

Thanks, but as I implied above, I've already got a couple of LDCs I'm happy with. I'm interested in trying a good ribbon mic.

 

@mmichel - I haven't used all the ribbons I'd like to personally, so a lot of my perspective is from hearing shootouts and doing an unnecessarily gratuitous amount of geeky research. If I get my way, I'll be able to shoot out ALL these interesting mics in the reasonably near future (NoHype, AEA, Samar, Cascade, etc). But from what I understand, I think the LRM-V can be considered similar to the RCA 44 (or the modern equivalents like AEA 440 or R84): full-frequency but with a bit of a subdued top-end. The LRM-2B sounds like it's more linear, so a bit more top end without getting harsh, and that might be what you want.

I'm typically an LDC guy too, and I'm well-covered in that department, so I like a "vintagey" ribbon sound along the lines of the RCA 44. But all these long-ribbon mics take EQ extremely well, too, so you should be able to dial in a sound you like on any well-made ribbon mic without too much trouble.

 

Thanks. I was hoping that you (or @buddy lee, or someone else with tonal preferences broadly similar to my own) had tried one.

I think I'll go ahead and order an LRM-2B. They're well-reviewed and, as you said above, seem to be broadly in the direction I'm looking for. They are are also remarkably inexpensive, so it won't be too big of a loss if the experiment doesn't work out.

 

Awesome! I look forward to hearing your results. I think I'm probably gonna own one of each before too long. JP Gerard REALLY knows his stuff, and they're just too damn affordable.

All the shootouts I've heard between his LRM mics and high-end AEAs or RCAs have been very impressive indeed.

 

The AKG is a great mic. Might be more practical as well.

 

Consider these:

ABOUT | Open Plan Recording | Australia

At Open Plan Recording the microphones have been created with the goal of producing the ultimate, affordable, high performance microphones available today. At Open Plan Recording we have struck the balance between high-end and budget, as the most sonically important components remain boutique...

www.openplanrecording.com

His Royer 121 copy (grill u-mod) is excellent, and although I own (and like) an SE VR2 if I had to buy now I'd by an OPR.
I know an engineer who sold his vintage C12 in favour of the OPR copy too. Excellent mics at an excellent price

 

I've been really intrigued by OPR in the past! Looks like they do some great stuff. Australia is really cranking out some interesting mics right now between these guys, Beesneez, 3U, and Rode.

 

Well, I finally got one. It arrived yesterday.

I haven't spent too much time with it yet, but it sounds very good so far. I'll let you know what I think in a detailed review, including some samples and comparisons with my usual preferred condenser mic (an AT 3035) that I'll post within the next week or two in a separate thread. Let me know if there's anything in particular that you'd like to hear or would like me to test (e.g., one of my plans is to measure the frequency/impedance relationship to see whether use of a Fethead is necessary with standard interface preamps).

 

Beautiful! I'd love to hear a shootout between that and the AT. Curious about how gain-hungry it is without the Fethead, too. Nice-looking mic, too.

I'm betting that with some subtle and judicious EQ you'll be able to make the ribbon sound like just about anything you like. But I'm keen to hear it unprocessed, for sure.

 

Beautiful! I'd love to hear a shootout between that and the AT. Curious about how gain-hungry it is without the Fethead, too. Nice-looking mic, too.

Yeah, I was planning to do several simultaneous shootout-style recordings just to have a baseline to compare it to (the AT is very transparent and clean).

Regarding the Fethead: if gain is your only concern then you can almost certainly do without it, unless you're miking something very quiet or from a significant distance. I was miking a clarinet from about 3 feet away last night and was getting clipping (without the Fethead) with the gain knob at 3 o'clock on my MOTU M4 which provides a fairly standard 60 dB of mic preamp gain. So you should definitely have plenty of headroom for recording any saxophones. Personally, I'm more concerned about the potential coloring effects of the relatively low-impedance interface pres.

 

From everything I've heard, it sounds like those MOTU pres are pretty damn good and clean. They seem to have really knocked it out of the park with that M4, looks like crazy good quality for the price.

For color in a gain-booster, the Soyuz Launcher looks pretty cool. Got some gooey transformer goodness that sounds real nice. I'd probably get that one if I were looking for an inline pre, but I like transformers quite a bit!

 

From everything I've heard, it sounds like those MOTU pres are pretty damn good and clean. They seem to have really knocked it out of the park with that M4, looks like crazy good quality for the price.

Yeah. IIRC, Julian Krause measured the equivalent input noise at about -129 dB, which is within 1 dB of the Fethead's noise floor. The frequency response is also extremely flat and doesn't change as a function of the gain setting.

For color in a gain-booster, the Soyuz Launcher looks pretty cool. Got some gooey transformer goodness that sounds real nice. I'd probably get that one if I were looking for an inline pre, but I like transformers quite a bit!

Right. I was looking for transparency, but even if you like color, you don't want it to be unpredictable. Moreover, in the case of ribbon mics, which tend to have a frequency-dependent impedance function that peaks in the lower frequencies, the effect of "coloration" from a low-impedance preamp is actually in the opposite direction of something like the Soyuz (i.e., it acts like a de-warming filter), because it winds up attenuating those lower frequencies.

Again, I don't know whether this is actually a problem for my combination of the LRM-2b and the M4 pres (I haven't done enough testing to hear it and I haven't yet measured the mic's impedance function), but it definitely won't be a problem for the Fethead, whose input impedance (of around 22 kΩ ) is an order of magnitude greater that that of the M4 pres.