[LAU] Cheap ribbon mics

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Fri, 2013-01-25 at 21:16 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Friday 25 January 2013 21:01:37 Bob van der Poel did opine:
> Message additions Copyright Friday 25 January 2013 by Gene Heskett
> 
> > Anyone used one of cheap ribbon mics I see on feabay for well under
> > $100? Yeah, probably get what you pay for ... but I don't have 2 to 4
> > grand just to play with one. I'm doing some in-home recording of a
> > tenor sax and I've heard that ribbons are really good for this.
> > Comments appreciated.
> 
> For a big buck, its worth the experiment Bob.  One huge caveat though.
> 
> Don't ever walk up to a ribbon mic & blow into it to see if its live.

:D

In this price range you should get a capacitor microphone. If you are
rich get a large membrane microphone. I worked for a known company
producing large membrane microphones and could recommend some very good
microphones from business competitions, even if the vendor I worked for
is better, the owner is a [snip], however those microphones are much
more expensive.

Since I don't have knowledge about cheap capacitor microphone, I can
only repeat what somebody  from the list recommended, when I asked for
cheap microphones.

The vendor is Rode, I can't remember the model, but it's around 100,-$/€
and should be better than a AKG 1000. I used the AKG and wasn't
satisfied, since sound coming from an angle did sound like a recording
with a supermarket microphone.

Be careful with ribbon mics in general, but especially with all kinds of
microphones that are much to cheap compared to known professional
microphones of the same kind.

There are a lot of ribbon mics under 100,-$/€. 
http://www.thomann.de/de/search_dir.html?sw=b%E4ndchenmikro&x=0&y=0&gk=&bn=

I don't trust gear that should cost around >= 1000,-, but does cost <=
100,-.

Regards,
Ralf