Ribbon mic deal

SonasRec

Se Electronics have announced a price drop on their R1 ribbon mic. £169 down from £499.

Anyone used these mics?

I've just ordered a pair from Digital Village for £299stg. I'll post an opinion when they arrive in a few days.

madtheory

Wow. Big price drop. Speaks volumes.

SonasRec

'Speaks volumes' About the quality of the mics or the state of the industry?

They seem to do that with a lot of their older mic lines. It's also a discontinued Product.

madtheory

Where did you get this info? I can't find anything on their site about it. Seems strange, it was only introduced last year.

iquinn

The price is on DV's site, possibly just a special offer from them.

Seems like a great deal, anyone else used them?...I'm tempted.

fitz

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec07/articles/ribbonmicspt2.htm

Interesting shoot-out including the R1.

I've got a pair of sE Titans arriving today that I got for a criminally low price on DV.
Well regarded mic, but they obviously had a stock of them that they wanted to get rid of as it's discontinued.

PaulBrewer

We used to distribute sE -

Lemon = Pricecut !

fitz

My Titans arrived.
Tried them out on a quick vocal, running through my newly acquired Audient ASP008 into my Apogee Ensemble.
I found the vocal sat very nicely in the mix, had a "finished" kind of sound. Definitely character to the mic's sound. Switching to figure-8 pushed the vocal back a bit more in the mix without loosing detail...less up front sounding, but also gave a really nice result. I'm very pleased with them, and I suspect they'll get more use than my Neumann TLM 103 on my vocals from here on out.

PaulBrewer

fitz wrote: »

My Titans arrived.
Tried them out on a quick vocal, running through my newly acquired Audient ASP008 into my Apogee Ensemble.
I found the vocal sat very nicely in the mix, had a "finished" kind of sound. Definitely character to the mic's sound. Switching to figure-8 pushed the vocal back a bit more in the mix without loosing detail...less up front sounding, but also gave a really nice result. I'm very pleased with them, and I suspect they'll get more use than my Neumann TLM 103 on my vocals from here on out.

The Audient is a superb box for it's price !

fitz

Lovely piece of kit, picked it up on Adverts for a great price.

As regards the price-cuts...if it's end of line stuff, and it's been replaced by a newer model, it's not always going to be a lemon. Tbh, listening to what I got out of the Titan last night, I can't see how it didn't find a market originally...perhaps it was overpriced on first release. It seems like it just never took off from a sales perspective. Straight off the bat though, I can hear this is a cracking mic that I'll get great results with.

As far as the R1 goes, it seems to be regarded as a little character-less.
Kinda defeats the purpose of getting a ribbon if you ask me...

SonasRec

Got my pair of 'lemons' a few days ago. Haven't had much time to try them out but here's my experience so far.

Used the R1 on a guitar cab on it's first real world session today. I put up an sm57, a U87 and the R1. The R1 was the best sounding by far. It sounded smooth. The 57 and 87 sounded edgy in comparison.

Tried it on acoustic guitar and it sounded dull compared to my default guitar mic, a km84. Probably won't use it on acoustic again except I'm looking for a low-fi grungy sound. Was surprised at how much gain it had though. I had expected to have to crank the pre but it seemed pretty good with low self noise.

Tried tambourine and found the result very smooth. Some condensers can sound very peaky in the highs. The R1 seemed to soften the attack transients & sounded like it would sit in a mix very nicely.

Had a quick vocal test but I've not been able to compare it to my usual vocal mics yet. Sounds like it could be nice on spoken word.

Looking forward to trying it on fiddle, the main reason I went looking for ribbons. I've always had trouble getting a good solo fiddle/violin sound with condensers.

So far, I'm very happy with the purchase. I have access to some great condensers, and will continue to use them in most applications. It's great to have a pair of mics that sound completely different though......

PaulBrewer

In fairness I should clarify - they often reduced their prices on 'failed' products i.e. ones that didn't sell well at the original prices.

That, of course, doesn't make it a bad product.

We always sent out new models and decided our buying on the feedback as well as our own tests.

There were a few models we chose not to fill shelves with !