Quick Review of a Few Ribbon Microphones

First off, there aren't a lot of things out there which get my attention more than new technologies and microphones (there's a reason for the name of the blog... you'll find all three in the studio).  So when I stumble across an article reviewing a few microphones, you have my attention.  Ribbon mics?  Oh hell yes!!!

So it was great aplomb that I stumbled across this article from Sonic Scoop.  It's a bit of an engineer's guide to their favorite ribbon mics.  It doesn't take the point of view from a VO side, but it doesn't take much to figure out how an enterprising voice talent can put one of these to use in their own work (the Coles has been a mainstay of British VO for decades).

Overall, it's about as good an into into modern ribbons that you'll find in about one page of text, but in reality it's rather limited (seriously, how much info can you relate about microphones in a single page?), and some of the choices aren't even produced any more (though the SF-1 is still readily available).  Of course, no discussion of ribbon microphones would be complete without mentioning Wes Dooley and his work at AEA.

But if you've been thinking about using a ribbon mic, this article is a good place to start.

PS: IMO, any list fails without mention of this little beauty below (or the original microphone that it's based upon).