I'm in the process of prototyping a DIY ribbon microphone. Living where I do, getting proper microphone transformers or even buying them overseas is pretty expensive, so I'm thinking of alternatives. From my research, a lot of ribbon microphone transformer have normal mu-metal or nickel alloy cores, similar to power transformers, and something like a 220v to 6v power transformer actually has the same turn ratio as a 1:37 audio transformer (wiring the other way around). The permeability of the core is high enough that I think that the primary inductance will be enough as to have proper low frequency response, altough I have no practical way to measure it at the moment. The transformer I got is almost as small as an audio transformer. The resistance of the coil is about 1 ohm, I am thinking that if I open the transformer up i can count how many turns it has and wire another coil to put in parallel, so I can reduce the resistance. If tests are succesful I am also thinking that I might get away with reducing the turns on the primary, and effectively make the ratio larger (my final goal is to make an active design, relying not on active amplificacion, but only buffering and impeadence matching, so maybe depending on how many turns the transformer already has I can divide it enough to make something like a 6 or 12db boost, or hopefully 18db)
Anyway, I am still waiting on the aluminum foil but wanted to get opinions on this, what do you think will happen? Will I come close to something usable or I am missing an important point?
Anyway, I am still waiting on the aluminum foil but wanted to get opinions on this, what do you think will happen? Will I come close to something usable or I am missing an important point?