Hi !
I've - quite heavily - modded my cheap T.Bone Ribbon Mics and thought I'd share the story and results.
Story in short:
My ribbon mic started to sound strange so I opened it up and found that the nickel plating had got loose from
the magnet an stretched the ribbon. Thomann wanted 75 Euros for a new motor, hm... a new mic costs 99 Euros
so decided to fix it myself. I'd already swapped the transformer so no warranty.... I also wanted a stereo pair
reasonably matched soundwise so I bought another one.
Original mic: T.Bone RB-500
New transformer: Lundahl
New magnets: http://www.kjmagnetics.com/
New 2,5 u ribbon material: http://www.lkmusic.co.nz/ribbonfix.htm
New magnets mounted. White Hammerite to fixate them.
New magnet Vs old - new to the left. Double size. Much stronger.
Corrugation rig - from an old CD-drive
Corrugating. Broke a couple of ribbons, too heavy handed. Nice and easy does it
Ribbon mounted. Not as neat as I'd hoped, but I'll do for now.
Also I think the ribbon is a wee bit too tight. It goes kinda boinnng when I tap on the mic... (only on one of them)
Motor shoved inside the mic. Extra windshield omitted.
XY setup for the soundsamples
And here's how it sounds:
Mics straight into the a Presonus Studio Project, gain cranked to the max. No EQ - Lowcut is needed, but I didn't wanna mess with the sound.
You can do that yourself. Sound is normalised, though.
Some Piano- Clarinet-Harmonica-Acoustic Guitar....
Mics at some distance from the piano a bit above my head. Yamaha piano placed against the wall in my living room. No acoustic treatment. Wife's junk (vases, candles...) : stil left on top of it.
WARNING ! sh*tty random playing. I'm sorry :-[ but I hope you'll get the picture.
http://www.bitterend.se/Ribbon - PresonusMic - Norm.wav
And the same setup but through the G9. Gained one step from max - outputlevel - max into Presonus line - level in the middle somewhere.
http://www.bitterend.se/Ribbon - G9 - PresonusLine-Norm.wav
How do I post pictures so they don't get so F#**# big ? Edit: seems ok now...
I've - quite heavily - modded my cheap T.Bone Ribbon Mics and thought I'd share the story and results.
Story in short:
My ribbon mic started to sound strange so I opened it up and found that the nickel plating had got loose from
the magnet an stretched the ribbon. Thomann wanted 75 Euros for a new motor, hm... a new mic costs 99 Euros
so decided to fix it myself. I'd already swapped the transformer so no warranty.... I also wanted a stereo pair
reasonably matched soundwise so I bought another one.
Original mic: T.Bone RB-500
New transformer: Lundahl
New magnets: http://www.kjmagnetics.com/
New 2,5 u ribbon material: http://www.lkmusic.co.nz/ribbonfix.htm
New magnets mounted. White Hammerite to fixate them.
New magnet Vs old - new to the left. Double size. Much stronger.
Corrugation rig - from an old CD-drive
Corrugating. Broke a couple of ribbons, too heavy handed. Nice and easy does it
Ribbon mounted. Not as neat as I'd hoped, but I'll do for now.
Also I think the ribbon is a wee bit too tight. It goes kinda boinnng when I tap on the mic... (only on one of them)
Motor shoved inside the mic. Extra windshield omitted.
XY setup for the soundsamples
And here's how it sounds:
Mics straight into the a Presonus Studio Project, gain cranked to the max. No EQ - Lowcut is needed, but I didn't wanna mess with the sound.
You can do that yourself. Sound is normalised, though.
Some Piano- Clarinet-Harmonica-Acoustic Guitar....
Mics at some distance from the piano a bit above my head. Yamaha piano placed against the wall in my living room. No acoustic treatment. Wife's junk (vases, candles...) : stil left on top of it.
WARNING ! sh*tty random playing. I'm sorry :-[ but I hope you'll get the picture.
http://www.bitterend.se/Ribbon - PresonusMic - Norm.wav
And the same setup but through the G9. Gained one step from max - outputlevel - max into Presonus line - level in the middle somewhere.
http://www.bitterend.se/Ribbon - G9 - PresonusLine-Norm.wav