I would really appreciate your advice/tips on using a ribbon mics (preferably this one).
I had a very quick try with it last night. I'm totally new to using Ribbon mics so am not a good judge. It certainly smoothed out the top end compared to my Rode NT1a and Studio Projects B1 but needed stacks of gain! I tried it with my Tampa with the impedance set on 300.
I used it on a very quiet airy female vocalist and there was a fair bit of hiss due to the high gain (I was probably using around 50dB +). I'm gonna experiment with positioning a bit more to see if I can reduce the hiss. I'm guessing that a ribbon would not be a good choice for this particular style of voice/singing? I will be trying it out on different vocalists soon to see how it fares with these!

Please could you give me some advice/tips on using this mic for vocals.

Thanks

A couple ideas:

I don't know how good T-Bone is at QC. Per Mike Joly at Oktavamod, a lot of volume vendors ship these mics with the ribbon poorly adjusted and sagging. The tension/adjustment might be off, and that can have a major negative impact on volume (which is at least better than no sound). This isn't something to cavalierly undertake to fix yourself, though, as the sensitive ribbon will be flopping around in the middle of a strong magnet assembly. Delicate and careful if you undertake it. Maybe put a soft material between the ribbon and the magnets.

The "windscreen mods" reputedly will add a good volume boost. See here for details on how: http://www.hometracked.com/2007/08/17/ribb...art-1-apex-205/

I believe a transformer upgrade (Lundahl or Cinemag) should also give a bit of a boost, but it's hard to call. Smoother frequency response might result in lower perceived volume.

Bear

Although I've seen my fare share of poorly tensioned ribbons, let's assume that for the most part the microphone is functioning. Although you can rip the microphone to pieces and change this and that, the microphone is not unusable as shipped. Swapping to a different transformer changes the gain slightly, but it's not a huge gain, meaning you will still need a mic pre capable of delivering high gain, with low noise.

Modifiying the grill does nothing to increase gain, it effectively is changing the frequency response of the microphone, the tradeoff is if you leave it "hanging in the wind", you also have a much more delicate microphone, that will tend to break up sooner than with screening in place.

On the ribbon material itself, I haven't seen the inside of the tbone mic in question. Some of the ribbon mics popping up used a thicker ribbon, 6 micron I believe, which could contribute to noise.

So all these technical things aside, how to use the microphone? For a vocalist, typically you will know if the microphone is the right microphone for the singer. If noise is an issue, I would ask what mic pre you are using. Some mic pres get noisier in the top end of their gain stage. You can sometimes chain the mic pre into another stage with makeup gain (a compressor perhaps) if the mic pre is cleaner at lower gain settings.

The other item to be aware of is that the microphone is figure of eight, regarding it's pickup pattern. This means that whatever is on the other side of the microphone will have decent play into the overall sound you are getting. Use reflective/absorbtive surfaces to your advantage. If you need more high end, positioning the mic with the opposite side closer to a wall will give a bit of a boost in the top end. Alternately, putting something that absorbs sound (foam, etc.) on the other side will have the opposite effect.

Hope this helps

Regards

ju