[tubedude]

(Please dont reply until I've finished loading up samples, please, there will be 4 I think and I'll post when I'm done)

Shinybox 46MX with stock tranny. $250 new with hardmount, spider shockmount, pretty cool looking padded box, and a padded mic zipper bag.

Let me start with a disclaimer. Don't let any of my initial comments or samples sway you too hard either way about this mic. I didnt muss with placement much because I couldnt do it very well alone and I couldnt get my pinknoise generator to work as I intended, so I basically placed the mic about 1 foot from the cab, slightly angled forward, straight into the center of the cone. The cabinet was pretty much surrounded by traps about 2 feet to the sides and about 4 feet in front of it to kill the room from coming back in behind the mic. I'm more worried about making a possible good mic look bad with bad placement. So take it all carefully, this is all rough initial passes. Treat them that way.
I ended up making a quick drum beat with a Roland Groove Synth and looped it, tossed in a few cymbals and played the ride directly off the trigger through one pass. I thought the mix was missing some bottom, and I left my bass at home, so I used a Roland sampled bass synth to kind of fill up the bottom but I left it pretty low since I'm trying to hear the guitar sound more than anything, but yet I want to hear it in somewhat of a perspective at least. Make sense? Like I said, dont be too judgemental yet. This was roughly done start to finish, I even wrote the guitar riff and changes (what there are of them) right on the spot AFTER I made a drum loop.

Onwards...

This is my first hands-on in the ribbon world but I have several top notch dynamics (441, 421, Sm7, etc) and when I first put this up I was stunned at how much roll off ribbons really have. My other mics sound different but not in a huge way. Mostly subtle. This mic is in a different world. Let me say that it DOES sound really smooth. On my Mesa Recto it really kills that fizz that so haunts other mics on that amp. My ititial thoughts after I got the amp set up was that it made the Mesa sound more like a Marshall. Yeah, weird. It seems to help the high end out some, but does something to soften the transients up too. That could be bad with heavy heavy rock, but good for other styles. That could all change with some placement though, who knows. Again, take these opinions lightly they could and probably will change to some extent tomorrow.
I initially thought as I adjusted the amp that it was too dead through the monitors so I cranked the amp treble and presence up. After I doubled it, it became razor-like so I backed back off and tried to get a normal setting for it, though I didnt go out into the room to check. It was pretty loud in the room.
The chain here is Mesa dual Rec, into Mesa 2x12 cab with Vintage 30's, into the Shinybox to a BAE 312A and on to conversion.

Sample 1 is the guitars straight out of the amp.
Sampe 2 is with some Voxego HarmoniEQ on it (left my notes on the settings sitting on the amp.. damnit)
Sample 3 is some top rolled in with Waves Linear Broadband
Sample 4 has Voxengos Mixsaturator on the guitars.

Guitars are doubled left and right, panned at 70%.