MXL ribbon mic fun

[Beyer160]

So my $50 blowout MXL R80 ribbon mics came yesterday. As expected, they both had pretty pronounced ribbon sag. I was prepared for this, so I opened them up to re-tension the ribbons. What I was NOT prepared for was this-

That's a loose metal nut, stuck in the magnetic field of the ribbon gap. Nice QC, MXL. I couldn't find a nutless bolt in the mic, so it must have been dropped during assembly in the PRC.

Once I got that sucker out of there, it was time to examine the ribbon-

Sag city. These were actually pretty easy to work on once I got the hang of it- the first one took me about an hour all told to fix, the second one took 15 minutes.

I yanked all the thick foam out of the headbasket, but I'm leaving the metal mesh in to protect the ribbon. Maybe I'll replace it with something more acoustically transparent later. My band's on a short hiatus while I travel for work and the drummer gets married, but once we re-convene I'll see how these fare as guitar cab and drum OH mics.

 

[Mark Wein]

Wow. Thats pretty horrific. I wouldn't have opened them up (not being experienced with these mics) and just thought they sounded like shit and returned them.

 

[Stratguy]

About a year ago, I bought an R-40 ribbon mic on a SDOTD. It is an amazing mic, even though I knew I was taking a chance, because of the ribbon sag problem. With these MXL ribbon mics, it's a bit of a crap shoot. Sorry yours was so bad, and glad to hear that you knew how to handle it. If mine had been bad, like Mark, I'd have sent it back.

 

[Beyer160]

I actually got pretty lucky- all I had to do was remove the tension plate (the brass plate with two screws on the right of the second pic), then take a q-tip dipped in isopropyl alcohol to slide the ribbon back into position and re-attach the plate. A lot of times the ribbons fuse to the plate, and you have to completely replace the ribbon. This is an instance when poor build quality and bad design worked to my advantage- cheap mics like these use thick ribbon material (about three times as thick as a Royer or Coles) to keep idiots like me from breaking them. It isn't as sensitive as a thinner ribbon, but I was able to re-tension it without breaking it. I'm not hoping for a direct replacement for my namesake, but I'm at least thinking these'll be useful as second guitar cab mics (paired with a 57 or 201) or drum room/OH mics. Fingers crossed.

 

[Stratguy]

Cool. I do know that the R-80 was designed to handle more SPL, so that they could be used with the guitar cabs. I don't know what the difference is between the R-40 and the R-80 such that the R-80 can be used with a higher SPL. I hope that it wasn't the foam that you removed, but then it might just as well have been the errant nut.

 

[Beyer160]

I'm guessing the foam has something to do with it. I think all the Chinese ribbons have the same thick ribbons, regardless what the spec sheets say. I'll put a pop filter in front of it when I use one on guitar cabs or near the kick drum, but there's no reason to use the thick foam that came in the mic. It'd be like bricking over your bedroom window to keep the streetlight out at night, instead of just drawing a shade.

But you know, that nut would have been great for breaking up errant wind blasts...

 

[speakerjones]

Wow. I guess that's what you get for $50. That's pretty much the daily rental price of a good mic. Of course I probably would have bit at that price too, even after owning a couple of useless MXL's. I just recently got into ribbons, and picked up a Blue Woodpecker active ribbon, and a pair of Beyer M500's, which I'm using (along with a cloud lifter) as drum OH currently. I was able to find the M500's for under $500 for the pair in great shape, so considerably less than your namesake, or most other popular ribbons. I love Beyers in general. Along with Blue mics, they're starting to take over my mic locker.

 

[Beyer160]

I was able to find the M500's for under $500 for the pair in great shape, so considerably less than your namesake, or most other popular ribbons.

Holy crap, you got a deal!

A lot of the MXL line is cheap junk, but there are some winners- I have a pair of 603 SDCs that are pretty decent (even more so after I modded them) and a V57 and V67 that have their uses. And I didn't pay over $50 each for any of them.

 

[jp_nyc]

Ouch. I was looking at some MXL mics earlier this week and passed because reviews were polarized between “it’s great” to downright savagery. Now I know why.