Ribbon Mics

PeteC · Post by **PeteC** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 8:06 pm

Happy New Year everyone...

have decided to build a couple of Ribbon Mics to add to my little home studio set up. ( valves are obviously going to be involved somewhere in the preamp stages !! )

making good progress with the first motor assembly.
It will be interesting to see how these DIY Ribbons sound.

Anyone else into Mic building at all ?

Cheers
Pete
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g159/ ... 0430d1.jpg

steve s · Post by **steve s** » Fri Jan 02, 2015 8:57 am

Not me pete, i have a few vintage types i have been going try out with my daughter, but the sm57 beta works well enough for her, so have not bothered
but i must say the differences in microphones are not subtle, so i would say its a worthy project
All the best...

Paul Barker · Post by **Paul Barker** » Fri Jan 02, 2015 9:05 am

So are you modeling it on the famous Reslo which uses those great microphone transformers, made by Wright and Weaire branded Wearite or Ferrograph?

PeteC · Post by **PeteC** » Fri Jan 02, 2015 9:18 am

Hi Steve - hope life at CCE is going well ! No cost increase negotiations for me to worry about this year !

Hi Paul : this type of design seemed to be the most common when I searched the web for ideas.

I'll look out the Reslo designs as that sounds instructive.

Hardest part is going to be getting the ribbon corrugated and then getting the ribbon tension right for the best freq. response.

I have enough parts for a second mic with a higher quality TX so will be interesting to compare the two. Good Neodymium magnets are quite hard to find in the UK though..

Going to be using these with my clones of the REDD47 preamps - I might need some sort of very clean gain stage to boost the signal maybe.

Cheers
Pete

steve s · Post by **steve s** » Fri Jan 02, 2015 9:43 am

Life at cce is just great.. Another change in direction.. Back to licenced
It goes around in circles... Another couple of years and im out

Reslo's .... thats what i have, a couple of rst/l and an old cadenza ribbon
I understand they are not too good at volume extremes and easily overload
I should try them out...

chris661 · Post by **chris661** » Fri Jan 02, 2015 11:58 am

Closest I've come to building my own mic was getting a kick drum mic up and running again.

The Yamaha Subkick uses a ~4" driver mounted in a drum shell to get the low-frequency whomph that kick drums put out, with a more conventional mic for the click sound of the beater.

I took a 1" wide-range speaker out of an iPod dock, mounted it in the shell of the old kick drum mic, and...

.. actually, it wasn't great.

The rear side of the speaker was open to the air, and there was a bit of a resonance of the cup of the mic body. An old sock in there fixed the resonance, and lots of electrical tape sealed the back of the speaker, giving an essentially omnidirectional mic.

Sounds nicer now, but still a bit peaky in the ~800Hz range.

So, watching with interest here. Will you be measuring the frequency response?

Chris

PeteC · Post by **PeteC** » Fri Jan 02, 2015 7:43 pm

Chris - yes if I can get some help / advice here.
I have a pretty basic sig gen and scope but dont use em much on my guitar amp builds - not a lot of need !

Steve : those old mics look great - you must give them a run...

cheers
Pete

chris661 · Post by **chris661** » Fri Jan 02, 2015 11:49 pm

Tell you what, I've got a measurement mic here that should be dead-flat from 100Hz-10kHz. Past either end could be a bit variable, since its an ECM8000.

At some point, if I brought that round with REW and a soundcard, we'd be able to derive a frequency response using any old speaker and comparing the outputs of the different microphones. Any differences in the measurement is a deviation from the flat response of the measurement mic.

Chris

PeteC · Post by **PeteC** » Sat Jan 03, 2015 10:08 am

Hi Chris

that sounds great.
I have plenty of speakers and mic pres's , together with Macbook and Edirol FA-101 firewire soundcard so should be able to test with your mic ( and your brains ! )

I have been practicing cutting and fitting ribbons last night from Aluminium leaf - its bloody tricky but now getting the hang of it.

The one problem I have to solve is how to corrugate the ribbon well enough as I don't have any suitable plastic or brass toothed cogs lying around to use whatever else I have tried ( bottle tops etc ) has been a bit of a disaster so far. Off to scour ebay and see what I can find.

When I get the mic working I will give you a shout and maybe we can arrange to meet up ? You might be interested in my guitars/amps stuff too.

cheers
Pete

Post by **Nick** » Sat Jan 03, 2015 10:32 am

I don't have any suitable plastic or brass toothed cogs lying around

Sounds like you need to find someone with a 3D printer or use a printing service.

jack · Post by **jack** » Sat Jan 03, 2015 10:41 am

Rapid electronics sell a good range of cogs etc... in plastic and metal...

http://www.rapidonline.com/Design-Techn ... trol/Gears

pre65 · Post by **pre65** » Sat Jan 03, 2015 10:45 am

nickds1 wrote:Rapid electronics sell a good range of cogs etc... in plastic and metal...

Any to fit in my bwain ?

PeteC · Post by **PeteC** » Sat Jan 03, 2015 11:41 am

Thanks all,

the challenge seems to be finding gears that are wider than 6mm which is my optimum ribbon width. There are loads available thinner than that.

I have resorted to ordering multiple gears off ebay and will pair up 4x 5mm wide gears side by side to give me a couple of 10mm wide wheels to feed the ribbon through.

pity its holding up progress for a few days.

cheers
Pete

PeteC · Post by **PeteC** » Sun Jan 04, 2015 5:36 pm

Progress......Decided to practice on a few spare ribbons while the gears arrive for the little corrugating jig. Found some suitable ribbed bottle tops which I used for trial ribbons.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g159/ ... 354a2b.jpg

Managed to get one in on the 3rd attempt ( very delicate operation ) and although its not quite tensioned enough it works very well already - just knocked up a quick test recording in my little studio and will post a link to something more planned later.
Sounds better than some of my commercial mics !

Now to build up the second mic motor assembly and do the ribbons properly when the jig is made. Pity I have to go back to work this week !

Rgds all,
Pete

Paul Barker · Post by **Paul Barker** » Sun Jan 04, 2015 5:49 pm

Sounds like a great little project is working out.

audio-talk

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