[Scott Dorsey]

Ty Ford wrote:

Yes. The Naked Eye, with the darker front side. They did that thing that
Royer did by having one side brighter than the other. I did flip it once
before recording and didn't hear a major difference. I'm going to listen for
that more closely.

Wes Dooley does this with the R84 also. I think it degrades the null at
high frequencies a little bit, but it seems to be popular with other users.

The Pre was the TRUE P-SOLO Ribbon preamp. TRUE used to be distributed by
Sennheiser.

Is this a super-high-input impedance preap like the AEA?

A little EQ and comp/limiting creates a nice edge that allows the mic to
sound a little brighter. You can hear the difference between the un-messed
with guitar and voice tracks and the stereo mix.

I haven't tried the Naked Eye, but I tried the Studio Vocalist and it was
a little less honky in the upper mids but very crisp on top. I don't know
how they are making their ribbons but they are much lower mass than the
old RCAs.

I thought the match between mic and preamp were very nice. Even my RCA 77DX
perked up. It sounded a bit boxy, but you can tweek the pattern to adjust
the EQ in addition to the music and voice settings. I didn't do a lot of
tweeking on the RCA yet.

I never found anything that sound better on anything but the figure-8 setting
on a 77DX, personally. I thought all the fancy pattern control was kind of
a waste. Maybe that's just me, though. And I'll say I was shocked at how
much the top end perked up on the 77DX with the high-impedance AEA preamp.
Maybe a little too much, in fact, for the things I tend to use the 77DX on.

I bet a nickel the 77DX improves with a modern ribbon transformer, too.
I have put the Lundahl transformers into BK-11 mikes and the improvement
in detail was considerable. I don't know who makes the transformers for
Crowley and Tripp and they won't tell me, but they are pretty impressive.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."