with respect; please learn to use the return key.

Ty Ford




On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 07:15:14 -0500, spud wrote
(in article ):

Ok, if you're wondering what to do with your war profits you should
march right out right now and buy a really honkin' preamp 'cause you
will definitely need it with this mic.
First impressions: This is one big bastaad, pally. Rolling it
sensually in your hand, feeling it's heft and weight you immediately
think, "crime novel".
"Gustav sat, and peering through the screen could not help seeing the
odious Mr. Schneglin's contemptuous sneer as he counted the day's
profits. His filthy, grizzled hands fingered the widow Blechlin's own
wedding broach, taken to pawn for a farthing for food and some small
portion of fuel, she had wept as she left and caused him to snicker
and scratch himself. A farmers rusted castrating tools- no doubt
stolen. Great plates of silver lay near a scale, a drunken louts
forgotten fortune, he hadn't even taken the ticket. "How can such a
man exist", thought Gustav, "how can such evil be permitted- he and
his kind, sucking the blood of human misery,.. it is odious, odious!",
and there, there before him, as if by holy miracle, on a bent stand
was the mighty Nady RSM-2 figure of 8 ribbon microphone,.. taking it's
sturdy construction his both his trembling hands he raised it high
over his head and advanced, eyes glittering as he wheezed through his
greasy beard and then,.. and then,.."
Ok, back to our movie. This is my first ribbon mic and my first figure
8, which I was pretty excited about. I guess this thing is for
recording really loud instruments. Drums, big amps, marching bands? It
doesn't have much signal, which I gather is typical of ribbons.
I plugged it in to a Mackie 1202VLZ. Trim and channel pot both at
about 3:00. This was the only way to get any signal at all. You could
hear a lot of hiss, from the mic, preamp and channel, I don't know but
it didn't seem usable for most things. I didn't track anything.
Tried the Speck Pre5. Mo' better but still had to be jacked almost all
the way up. Noticeable hiss to get signal from an acoustic guitar or
mumbly singer. Kind of like an analog tape machine noise in the
background. Not thrilling.
Tried the BAE 312 clone. Less hiss than the Mackie, more than the
Pre5. All these feed a Lucid 9624 at 24 bit with the input at 3:00.
All produced between -20 and -8 levels.
The sound: I'm probably deaf. The Nellie Mckay cd's the only recent
thing that doesn't hurt my ears anymore. This mic doesn't sound
ribbony to me. The result sounded like a guitar only boomier than
normal. Maybe you only notice the silky smooth aspect on mandolins or
violin or saxophones or screechy things. In order to get a usable
signal it was about 3 or 4 inches away from the neck/body joint of a
Taylor big baby acoustic; an instrument with a very small voice. Same
deal singing. I can't sing very loud, which is probably for the best.
Humongous proximity/bass problems at this distance. Cutting the bass
with software just made everything worse, the sound sucked. I could
have tried the Speck EQ on the way in and got some more signal too but
I haven't gotten that far yet.
Tried using it with a small diaphragm condenser in the typical "solo
guitar/singer at the same time" setup. I was hoping for some kind of
isolation miracle using the figure 8 on vocal with the guitar in the
null but this was disappointing too. The cardioid condenser pointed
down at a 45 degree angle very close to the neck joint rejected the
vocal many times more effectively and still gave acceptable sound. The
vocal was too boomy to be useful and had plenty of guitar in the
track. The phase problems were nothing like as bad as you would get
with two cardioid mics, however.
Set it up in kind of a mid/side arrangement without the matrixing part
of the equation. (never quite grasped this). I just played into the
null with an Elation 201 facing me over the top of the Nady so the
figure 8 picks up the room sides and the 201 picks up the guitar. This
sounded great but I don't know why. If I soloed the figure 8 it
sounded tiny and just like the echo, flutter and pong of a ****ty room
(which it is) but when I brought it up with the condenser the bass
totally tightened up and sounded natural (better than the guitar
really sounds actually) focused, cooler, punchy etc. more like a
record. If I soloed the Elation track after that it sounded weaker and
less musical by itself. I think this could be the set up for more or
less natural sound, assuming a good room, instrument and player.
Guess that's it for first impressions, plenty to learn from so far.
If anyone has any suggestions on how to get more out of this thing,
especially the isolation part I'd appreciate it. Well, the spell check
is complete, I had 40 mistakes,..





-- Ty Ford's equipment reviews, audio samples, rates and other audiocentric
stuff are at www.tyford.com