Storing ribbon mics

[inverseroom]

Since everyone here will have some new discount ribbon mics in a few months, this may be a good time to ask the ribbon vets how ribbon mics should be stored. Should they be upright, sideways, temperature-stable, what?

[brew]

Ribbons should always be stored in a position to reduce sagging of the ribbon element due to gravity. This is usually upright or upside down.

[fremitus]

because i am a jackass, i emailed the peeps over at royers to clarify. these guys rule... anyways, here's his letter:

Hi Colby,

Thanks for the nice comment about your R-121's. I'm glad you're enjoying them so much.

Most ribbons should be stored vertically, but your Royers can be stored any way you like. We have a unique ribbon corrugation method that makes Royer ribbons tougher than traditionally corrugated ribbons. Most ribbons do sag and stretch during horizontal storage, but Royers won't - you could store your R-121's horizontally for 10 years and the ribbons wouldn't stretch at all.

In case you are interested, ribbons are traditionally corrugated by being placed between thin sheets of glassine paper and then run through meshed gears. This gives the ribbon a soft, wavy corrugation. Royer has developed precision corrugaters that allow the ribbon to be run directly through gears with no glassine paper, so the corrugation points take the shape of the gears and are work hardened, making the ribbon tougher and more flexible at the same time.

Store your Royers horizontally with no fear! Best of luck with your recordings in 2005.

John Jennings
Royer Labs

[Scodiddly]

There was some discussion of this over at some other forum...maybe it was a thread about "did you ever blow out a ribbon?".

Anyway, one person mentioned having blown out a ribbon just by putting it in its box and closing the lid too fast, so he recommended carefully putting on a cloth bag before doing anything else with a ribbon mic.

[ivanovich]

i guess it depends on what type of ribbon. i own a m130 and i think it's similar to a royer: it has a small ribbon. and it's dynamic. pretty tough.
i think the bigger the ribbon, say two inch, you would have to store, or hang it, vertically. bigger ribbon = more sensitive. more sensitive apparently easier to fuck up. aea r-84?

my two centz

ivan'y'vienen.

[soundguy]

it has a small ribbon. and it's dynamic. pretty tough.

fyi, all ribbons are dynamics.

dave

[fremitus]

fyi, all ribbons are dynamics.

at the risk of sounding (insert negative adjective here) i was thinking of clarifying this. please correct me if this is wrong, but my impression is that a dynamic mic is a 'moving coil' design, passive element. a ribbon is in fact not dynamic, but it is it's own beast and can be referred to as a velocity microphone. the difference being that dynamic mic's respond to SPL (sound pressure levels) and velocity (ribbon) mics respond to air passing by/around it. this may be an overly technical reason to differentiate, but it exists. also the royers r-122 is another beast again, accepting phantom power and putting some of that to the element, we have an 'active' ribbon mic. i don't even think that there is a special term for that yet... but there should be, so i'm going to call it...

'action jackson'

but i'm open to other ideas...

[tiger vomitt]

fremitus, what movie is your avatar from?

i think i have to see it.

[inverseroom]

fremitus, what movie is your avatar from?

i think i have to see it.

Though she does look a little bit like her head is about to come, you know, sort of off.

Upright will be no problem for me. In fact if I like it on vocs I'll likely end up staying on the stand most of the time with a drawstring bag over it. Unless someone has an opinion about that, too...

[ubertar]

fyi, all ribbons are dynamics.

at the risk of sounding (insert negative adjective here) i was thinking of clarifying this. please correct me if this is wrong, but my impression is that a dynamic mic is a 'moving coil' design, passive element. a ribbon is in fact not dynamic, but it is it's own beast and can be referred to as a velocity microphone. the difference being that dynamic mic's respond to SPL (sound pressure levels) and velocity (ribbon) mics respond to air passing by/around it. this may be an overly technical reason to differentiate, but it exists. also the royers r-122 is another beast again, accepting phantom power and putting some of that to the element, we have an 'active' ribbon mic. i don't even think that there is a special term for that yet... but there should be, so i'm going to call it...

'action jackson'

but i'm open to other ideas...

Actually, moving coils and ribbons are both considered types of dynamic mics because both have a moving (dynamic) element in a magnetic field. But since moving coils are so much more common, dynamic has come to mean moving coil (who ever says "moving coil"? What's an sm57? A dynamic mic) people rarely refer to ribbons as dynamic mics anymore, to avoid confusion. But technically they're dynamics too. I think the phantom power on the Royer is for a FET circuit that's a built-in preamp-- it's still a ribbon generating the signal.

[soundguy]

the phantom royer is also dymanic, the power is for a fet circuit which simply provides constant impedance. Its active, but its just an impedance converter like a condenser, the element is dynamic unlike a condenser which gets power.

dave