"Logan Shaw"

Someone will, I hope, correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't you just
lift the ground and go with a floating ground? The potential is between
pin 1 (the ground) and pin 2 and between pin 1 (the ground) and pin 3.
There is no potential between pins 2 and 3 because there are equal
value resistors between them and the +48V of the phantom power.

When this is actually the case, there's no problem at all using phantom
power with a ribbon. The reason it can be a problem (aside from mikes
with center ground taps on the transformer secondary) is that sometimes
those resistors are not very equal values. I'm not going to mention any
particular brand of mixers, but suffice it to say that some of the cheaper
ones out there don't match the supply resistors very well. This also badly
degrades common mode rejection as well as making for an issue with dynamic
mikes.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."