Crazy ribbon mic with FOUR ribbons

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zebra50

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 4, 2004
Messages
2,943
Location
York, UK
Check out this bad boy, on the bench today.
It's very old and should really be in a museum rather than a studio (or my bench!).

shaftesbury_1.jpg


It is a Shaftesbury Velodyne Supreme! Sounds more like a bicycle to me. The plate is stamped "prov pat": I wonder if it was a prototype?

shaftesbury_5.jpg


FOUR ribbons wired in series!!!

shaftesbury_3.jpg


In fact it seems to be one giant ribbon that goes round corners, and each length of ribbon has a 'node' in the middle, so I guess we could call it 8 elements, each at 45 mm x 4 mm. So 360 mm of vibrating ribbon!

And there is no transformer. I guess the designer thought it had enough Z already!

shaftesbury_4.jpg


Where are the ribbon boys? Marik, Roddy?

:eek:
 
a provisional patent was issued, so there was obviously some paperwork that changed hands.  would be interesting to read design notes/justifications if those papers are still managing to collect dust somewhere...
 
Yes, that's it! Provisional Patent! Normally you see "Patent Pending" in these cases.

I'll have a dig over the weekend and see if I can pull up anything from the patent archives.
 
Is this like the American Bruno Labs hi-Z ribbon/condenser mic which is a series of ribbons against a backplate, with a polarizing voltage?  It doesn't look the same (trying to see this from an iPod), but still closer than anything I've seen.  

http://www.coutant.org/webster/index.html
 
That Webster is very interesting too.

But this one looks much more like a conventional ribbon. There is no backplate, and the ribbons hang freely between the magnet poles like usual.

Here's the side and back - a bit blurry but you get the picture.

shaftesbury_2.jpg


shaftesbury_6.jpg

 
Wow, this thing is nuts!  ;D  And the Webster one is even nuttier!!  :eek:

I wonder what those sound like...
 
WOW !!!! what a thing !!! Yes I wonder how it would sound..........could be interesting design for the ribbon DIYers to play with....what a lovely piece of history looking forward to finding out more thanks for posting...
 
grantlack said:
a provisional patent was issued, so there was obviously some paperwork that changed hands.  would be interesting to read design notes/justifications if those papers are still managing to collect dust somewhere...

Here we go....

shaftesbury_pat.jpg


Full patent application is here:
http://www.xaudia.com/omnip/Mics/shaftesbury/GB460775A.pdf

It looks like the idea was to have one giant ribbon with relatively high impedance. Normally that wouldn't give you as high an output as it should, because of 'rippling', or other incoherent vibrational modes. But by fixing the ribbon in multiple places they claim to avoid this problem. I wonder how well it worked?

I'm still struggling whether to try and get this working or not. I suspect it really ought to be left in its historic condition, but I am curious about how it would have sounded.

Edited for pointlessness
 
Why not make your own version of it?  It could stay in it's historic state and also you could have one  ;)

here is the link... corrected... your link was missing a point (.)

http://www.xaudia.com/omnip/Mics/shaftesbury/GB460775A.pdf
 
here is the link... corrected... your link was missing a point (.)

Doh! Thanks for that! Not the first time I have done something pointless  :p

Why not make your own version of it?

I could certainly knock something up to prove the principle.

I have a hunch it might actually be crap!
 

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