A fixable oops of sorts
 

I had recently bought a ribbon mic, a Sterling ST-170. I wanted a warmer mic to use at the fret side of the guitar and I got that from it. I also got a self noise of 22db to go with it. :eek:

Fortunately I also have RX 7 Elements and the de-noise feature allows me to get rid of most of it and not affect the other mic's track while de-noising it.

When I was shopping for it, I had compared it to my MXL 990 which is 20db so thought it would be fine. If I had thought to compare it to my AT 2035 with a self noise of 12db I probably never would have bought it.

When I loaded my first recording using this pair into my Rx 7 (with more spectral displaying than wave) comparing the two tracks visually was like walking from the outdoors into a smoke filled room. The good side to this is that I learned a bit more about my editing tools, :)

The self-noise should not be an issue unless you are cranking up your preamp too much when recording. For recording finger-played guitar in a typical home studio, 22 dB should be un-noticeable.

You would thinks so, but I can't get the mic any closer to my guitar and dropping the recording gain down would just force more gain post recording which will boost the self noise too. I'll post a picture of the tracks tonight for illustration. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

You need a mic activator. They use phantom power to boost the signal from your ribbon or dynamic mic. Then you won't have to crank the mic pre and you'll get less noise. I like the McBoost but there are less expensive options and I know Royer just came out with one as well.

I use the Cloudlifter on mine...

My Zoom has a 20db gain booster too which I can apply to just one mic I believe. I'll check this out, thanks.

I've not heard a Zoom unit but I've plenty of gain boosts on pres add quite a bit of noise.

I'm far from an expert, but I was not able to get anything close to noise free from my ribbon mic until I put the Cloudlifter in the chain. And some of that time was with my Zoom H5.

Ok thanks. I look into this. Thanks for the info.

I ordered one from Sweetwater, thanks.

Where I got mine as well. I think you will be very pleased. You will need an additional cord as the Cloudlifter sits in line between your mic and the Zoom. You will apply phantom power to it.

Thanks Mike. I have a few short cords.