Recording - May 2016 - 39

window, then you have to take really fine
sandpaper and get that all smooth, and
then it's ready to be sandblasted...
On the inside, you've got to glue the
magnets, you've got to let the magnets
dry, then you've got to glue the little
clamps that the ribbon clamps onto,
you've got to let that dry, you've got to
corrugate the ribbon, you've got to tension it, you've got to let that sit for a few
days, test it again, see if the tension is
still correct. You've got to assemble the
mic, you've got to run tests on it. So it
does take quite a bit of time for a mic to
go from stage one to being shipped.
And you taught yourself to do all that?
I learn something new every single
day, yeah.
When you were designing the mic, what
was your biggest "aha!" moment?
Haha! Let's see. When I was designing the Model 2, I would say like the
biggest "aha moment" would be when I
got the resonator plate design correct.
When I got those plates to work correctly, I was like, "Yes, this is it, I've got the
mic I've been waiting for!"
How many ribbons did you go through
before you got the whole ribboning
down?

A lot of ribbons, and a whole lot of
money from the foil that went into them!
[laughs]
It's funny that you mention it. You know,
to build a proper corrugation machine,
it's really a piece of art. I've gone through
almost ten different corrugators until I
finally designed it well enough that I
knew every ribbon would be consistent.
What was the biggest challenge in
designing the mic?
I'd say the biggest challenge was the
actual machining of the mic. The microphone is divided into two halves, the
upper grille half and the bottom grille
half. That's all machined. Are you familiar with lathe work and stuff like that?
Yes and no. I've done lathe work with
wood, not metal.
That entire piece is machined in one
operation, so the metal tube goes into the
lathe, it's turned on the outside diameter,
it's turned on the inside diameter. The
holes are drilled and then the windows
are cut out, all in the same operation. It's
a 4-axis CNC machine that does that,
and aluminum is a very soft and gummy
metal. So getting the machine to cut that
properly without deforming the metal,
without bending it, without breaking tools,
it took a lot of hours to dial that machine

in. But once it got dialed in, now it runs
beautifully and it cuts those windows perfectly. That was the biggest challenge.
Very cool. So you mentioned next up
you're going to be working on an
Active version?
Yes. I'm actually machining that now
as we speak. It's going to be released
probably at the end of May, right before
the Summer NAMM show.
Did you design your own circuit for the
active electronics?
Yeah, the active part is just an impedance buffer. All the gain comes from a
really high-ratio step-up transformer that
feeds into the impedance buffer and that's
it. It sounds identical to the Model 2. It just
has around 12-13 dB more gain.
Deni, thanks so much for the inside
look at ribbon building, is there anything else you'd like people to know
about the company?
Well, It's a different-sounding ribbon
mic and I just hope they will try it out
and experience it. I think ribbon microphones are fantastic. We should really
push the technology forward, just like
people are doing on everything else.
Get your hands on them, and try them
on everything!
http://www.CRAS.EDU http://www.audiorecordingschool.com/consumer.html
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