.

Mike - please enlighten me on the specs which might make me want to edit my post.  

I have not said above that a preamp which is not marketed toward ribbons or ones which do not provide 80dB of gain will not work on modern ribbons. 

you seem to delight in taking my words and trying to make me look stupid (I'm not the only one you do that to) and I really dislike that about you.

I came in here trying to help the OP and made a simple statement which could have been worded a little better and you've taken the discussion into a completely different direction. 

I stand by my statement that if you want to use a ribbon mic, use a dedicated preamp, not one on the mackie.  there are many reasons why this would be a good idea and you've already stated most of them including phantom power which is not as clean as it would be in a dedicated preamp.  (so why continue arguing about it?)

I personally don't care about active ribbon mics myself and I don't own any.  Again, I don't really even see how this point is relevent to the issue except as a tangent to the original question.

You can look up your mics current specifications and quickly learn that the Mackie may only have sufficient power to power 2, 3 maybe 4 contemporary servo balanced transformer less phantom powered mics.

That info can be useful if you find your self looking at all 16 microphone inputs and wondering how many of them can provide quality phantom power to your mics.

This is another good reason why the idea of a rechargeable NiMH battery (a.k.a Capacitor) on the mic seems like an interesting idea.

how is that relevant?  what does the total power available for the phantom power have to do with whether or not he can chage the e100 with the mackie with main power off? 

or even with main power on what does it have to do with anything?  again - he's not talking about USING the mic if he wants the main power of the mackie OFF, so he shouldn't have a bunch of mics connected - just the e100 since he's not USING the mackie's pres.  personally I don't leave my mics connected when I'm not using them - they get put away.  but that's just me.

.

thank you for the psych eval, but I didn't ask for it.

LOL  You guys are way beyond me. 

 Im just one of those plug and play kind of guys. Im a really simple kinda person  

 Not sure about all the specs and makings of it and as far as mics Im LOST.  

I was hoping to be able to help seeing I had a Mackie 1604 if needed.

No prob, hope I didnt come across wrong  

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the info!

Sorry to see this thread got a bit sidelined.   

Anyway, it makes sense that the main power has to be on in order for the phantom power to work.  This was my guess too, so I left my mixer on all night with phantom power on to recharge the bat in the E100.  I haven't used this mic in a looooong time and wanted to give it a boost before using it over the weekend.

Gonna experiment using the E100 in m/s configuration with a Shure KSM44.  Seems like they should compliment each other pretty well.

For m/s recording, does it matter much if both mics are going through similar or same preamps?

My options are:

Mackie 1604 pres
Golden Age Pre73 (Single Channel)
Grace 101 (Single Channel)

Thanks.

.

Hi Dave, you could say it does and explain how the M get's mixed with the +S or -S to make a L or R. Or, you could say it doesn't and explain how the M get's mixed with the +S or -S to make a L or R. I generally just use two matching preamp channels but if I was to purposefully use different preamps I might try to use the pre with with a nice high frequency response for the sides and the pre amp with the nicest sounding bass emphasis on the mid and see how that works out as that is the same type of approach I apply to the microphone selection. best regards, mike

 
That all makes a lot of sense.
 
Thanks!

The Grace is probably the most transparent of your three preamp choices (I have two of the M101 500 series) and this is from a SOS review on the Golden Age Pre73:

“and the aim of presenting a warm, vintage sound that’s musically attractive has been met extremely well. Indeed, it’s difficult to recommend anything else in this price range when it comes to ‘mic amps of character’ —“

I like the CAD E100 (I bought mine in the 90’s when they were first introduced) but it is in my opinion very slightly harsh sounding … (I don’t own a KSM44 so I can’t compare the two directly).  That said, I would try the more colored pre on the CAD.

So, maybe try the Golden Age Pre73 on the mid-mic (your CAD) and the Grace on the side-mic (your Shure).