All this talk about Trion 7000 made me very curious,so I dissembled one of my Trion7000s.
Please look at the pic, I don't know much about mics, but that doesn't look right IMO

Wow, that mic has contracted the dreaded "double S ribbon sag". Both ribbons should be retensioned - the manufacturer should take care of this.

btw - 50% of the two hundred and fifty plus Chinese ribbon mics sent to me for modification have had either "footbridge sag" or the "S" sag you're showing. (The exception being Cascade mics which are inspected in their lab). This probably accounts for the wildly varying impressions of these mics posted on the forums.

A discussion about DIY ribbon sag repair can be found here

Thanks a lot, Michael.

Apparently CAD couldn't care less, I couldn't get any response from them so far & it's been a while.

Now I'll have to dissemble the second CAD I guess.

Where can I see a pic of a mic with right ribbon tension?

I've just retensioned one of them.

Does it look about right? Should it be tighter, more loose?

From what I can tell by your pic that looks about right. The ribbon should be pulled just taught enough to eliminate sag.

If you tap the ribbon motor with a finger you should be able to see some vertical oscillation of the ribbon. Our eyes can resolve mechanical oscillation up to about 45Hz or so.

If you can see the vertical oscillation in the ribbon when the motor is tapped your resonant frequency is under 45Hz which is good. Ideally, the resonant frequency should be in 20Hz range but this requires spectral analysis or impedance measurment equipment.

What does that mean? Does it mean I won't get any information under 45hz?
If I make it tight will it act like HP filter?

Just did the second one & changed the first a little bit. I don't see any oscillation, looks like I went too tight

OK, I had to loosen it a little, now I can see the oscillation you've mentioned.

I think it's time to put it back together & test.

Unbelievable!!

It's like a totally different microphone now, higher output, weird sound pressure handling has disappeared! Still tons of bass, but tighter, not on the level of 121, but WOW ... all I can say. The other one wasn't as bad as the one in the pic, but still loose. I have some serious doubts about QC of CAD now.

Check your mics, fellas!

Thanks you very much for helping me with this, Michael!

quote:

weird sound pressure handling has disappeared!

That was the clue to me that something wasn't right with your mics.
Did you buy them new?
I've bought six of them and they were all good.

jmp

quote:

Did you buy them new?

Yep. It was just hard to believe that both were fucked up.

So CAD won't service their ribbon mics? Yikes!

quote:

Originally posted by dirtyragamuffin:
So CAD won't service their ribbon mics? Yikes!

I don't think I'll buy another product from CAD just because of that. That's a shame.

This was actually the third Trion 7000, because the second one they shipped wasn't working, so I had to ship it back & get a replacement later. 3 in a row, maybe I'm just extremely unlucky or something.

Ah, you're killin' me man! Just when I think everything is taken care of and I have equipment I can rely on, you throw this wrench in the works. Everything I've recorded with the Trion sounded good to me, but now I'm wondering, "what if the ribbon is loose and it could be even better?!"

Anyway, how hard was it to dismantle?

Now, granted, ribbons are very fragile buggers and surely YMMV but I have to say I always avoided CAD products out of a presumption that the ownership experience would be like you just described!

All I can say is I've used Royer 121 and AEA R84 on cabinets and percussion and they always sounded great, never missed a beat.

WalkerGibson,
It was pretty simple, just make sure you are in a good mood when you decide to do this
5 screws total to disassemble it the way you can see in the pic. Re-tensioning the ribbons was a bit tricky, but again simple, you just need to be careful.


dirtyragamuffin,
I have a feeling that these were shipped like this from their factory. I could be wrong, but it's hard to believe that ribbon could go from normal tension to what you see in the pic.

I've posted a head to head comparison of 121 & Trion here
http://studioforums.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/1526095781/m...581012403#9581012403

121 is just unbelievable, I feel like I'm sitting in front of my amp when I'm actually listening through my monitors! It's like a miracle .... for me. If you have 121 you don't need the CAD, 121 has a great & smooth extended top end, just the right amount of low end & great handling of sound screaming into it, great detail.
CAD - too much lows, no top, SP handling not as good as 121. Is 121 worth the price tag? I say, yes, for me it is.
However if you need multiple 121s for some kind of close miking application CAD can replace it pretty damn good.

quote:

Originally posted by nbarts:

CAD (Trion)- too much lows, no top,...

The issue here is the dual-ribbon design - this mic type has very restricted top end (roll off begins at 5kHz). A dual lateral ribbon mic has a very long front-to-back path length around the ribbons. High frequency extension and smoothness in a ribbon mic is related to the acoustic path length around the ribbon: shorter path length = more extended top end.

Considering only Chinese ribbon mics for a moment, the order of descending HF response extension looks like this:

* "Long, single ribbon" - Apex 205, Cascade Vin-Jet, Nady RSM-2

* "Short, single ribbon" mics - Cascade Fat Head, Nady RSM-2

* "Short, dual ribbon" mics - CAD Trion, Avant CR-14

In addition to the limited HF response delivered by the dual lateral ribbon design, these mics suffer from off-axis frequency response irregularities due to the arrival time differences of sound waves reaching the ribbons.

To be fair someone from CAD got back to me a couple of days after I opened this thread with RA number to ship the mic back so they can send a new one. They told me that my last email was the only one they have received, the rest were probably blocked by their spam filter. It could be true, but I'm still curious what was happening to my phone calls, spam filter for my voice maybe

I've got a pair of Trion7000 mics and after inspecting one it's sagging similar to yours. I've re-tensioned it.

Maybe a comparison between the re-tensioned against other original mic is in order.

Also, I almost broke the ribbon because the brass holddown was stuck to the ribbon. A bit of tapping freed it up.

kp-

I checked my Trion 7000 and the ribbons are sagging so much that they are resting on the mesh windscreen. I emailed CAD service and await their response.

I'm not sure how you tightened yours, but mine was impossible as there was no excess foil above the clamp to grip in order to pull taut. I've never even used the mic...it came the day before I left town on a 5 month hiatus.

Yup, I opened mine up today and it's Sagsville USA. Man, what's up with the quality control at CAD? Is there any reason they might ship the mics like this on purpose?

I'm going to record a before and after clip sometime tomorrow to compare the loose vs. tightened sound.

On a side note, when I opened up the mic I initially unscrewed the wrong screws. I fixed it, but I have this short little metal tube that's now detached from the mic. Where's it supposed to go?