AEA R84 Ribbon Mic

Great mics, certainly, universally so for many sources.  What application will you use it on, Double Bass? (judging by the picture)

This is a piece done with the R84 (thru the aea pre) and a Royer 121 (Green River Pre) set up as a Blumlin pair.
Full Moon
I find myself grabbing the 121 more often than the 84 for mono recording.
CRB
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rumleymusic
Great mics, certainly, universally so for many sources.  What application will you use it on, Double Bass? (judging by the picture)

Double bass will certainly be one application. Acoustic instruments and vocals (especially male vocals) are other things I want to record. I'd also like to try mid-sides room recording.

If you're going to run up the credit card anyway, why not go for broke and get the R44? They've got an "economy" version now that's only $2500, not counting the preamp. 

mybad?

First - that's a really lovely recording!! Wow!!

Second, the AEA and Royer microphones are all great. I ended up getting a pair of the R101s because I think they are a little more flexible, where the R84 sounds a LOT like a good old RCA ribbon - which is always a good thing, and sometimes exactly what you want. The Royer microphones, to my ears, are a little more present, some might even say brighter, although I think it is more that they just extend a little further or more smoothly or who the heck tries to describe sound<G>?
 
Oh yeah, they were also more affordable. I use a Millenia Media HV-37 as my main preamplifier, so I can't comment on the AEA, but I can comment on the Great River gear - it is fantastic, a little more colorful than the HV-37, but again, sometimes that is what you want.

And the folks at Royer might complain, but I can't hear the difference between an R-101 and an R-121. Could be my monitors, could be my ears, but I couldn't pick one from the other. I think the R-121 is going to be easier to position, but I'll wrestle a little for the savings<G>!

The combination of the R84 and the R-121 is clearly awesome, so that's another option (for those of us who like to spend other people's money!)
 
Bottom line - I don't think you can make a bad choice...

one person's opinion!!!

I'm not fond of microphones with built in preamplifiers, it limits (at least a little) my choices. Note that a built in preamplifier is not the same as the built in buffer/head amplifier one finds in condenser microphones.

I really like the Royer "Active" ribbon microphones, and I'd probably never feel the need to use a different preamplifer, but on off chance that I might, well, I ended up with the passive version.

I've also never heard an AES microphone I didn't like and I'd expect that the same would be true for their active microphones. But I'd probably still choose a passive ribbon just for the extra flexibility.

One last observation... while ribbon microphones have, generally speaking, a lower output level than their moving magnet cousins, there aren't a lot of occasions when one is going to run into problems. It depends, of course, on what you are recording, but I very seldom use 60 dB of gain with any of my ribbon microphones, so the extra 10 dB that a preamplifier might provide in "ribbon mode" is not always necessary. Disconnecting the phantom power entirely is a very nice feature, but that is an easy modification should you be so inclined.

I went up to Pasadena to visit AEA and talk about mics & preamps. I got a couple of mics to evaluate and I'll report back on that. While I was there, I saw these...