AEA R92 Ribbon Mic

I've never owned a ribbon mic. I've borrowed them. I've been able to use some from well-stocked mic cabinets in nice studios. And I've used the Coles 4038s, Royer 121s and 122s, some old RCA mics, Beyer M160s - you know, the usual suspects. I had never tried any of the AEA ribbon-mic series so I was excited when I got a hold of the new Tylenol capsule shaped R92. It's 7 inches long and 2.5 inches in diameter and surprisingly only weighs 2 pounds - pretty light for a ribbon mic with the large ribbon geometry. An RCA 77 is about the same size and weighs easily twice as much. The "C"-like integral shockmount suspends the mic from rubber-coated elastic bands and the mic stand attachment, though plastic, is sturdy enough, making the whole shebang very easy to maneuver into position on a mic stand.

I also had a perfect session to try this new mic out on. Singer/ songwriter Peggy Honeywell (Galaxia) writes quiet, old-style folk music that would be at home at the Grand Ol' Opry circa 1948. She plays a steel string acoustic guitar and a banjo and prefers to record herself singing and playing and not to overdub. I thought the smoothness of a ribbon just might work. The AEA R92 needs a lot of gain. The manual says it needs "60-65dB clean gain" to get good levels on anything with a low level source. Peggy sings and plays very delicately and quietly so I reached around for a good preamp. I had been using the John Hardy M2 solid-state pres a lot then so I put the mic in and routed the output to a Summit DCL 200 tube compressor for an additional gain stage and maybe a little peak taming and into Pro Tools. While the John Hardy was quiet enough, it didn't have enough gain - I found myself making it up too much at the compressor and adding a...