the t.bone RB 500

Bought a pair of these a decade ago and they immediately became my "guinea-pigs" for everything related to Ribbon Microphone mods.

First step was removing all the insane grills and cloths from the inside.
Of course the ribbon becomes more exposed to damage so, don't let wind catch the ribbon element.
The sound became instantly 90% better than what it was from factory.

Second step, bought some ribbon appropriate aluminum foil and started making my own corrugated ribbon elements.
The RB500 original ribbon is much heavier that the one i am using now.
After finishing with the new ribbon, it was definitely a new microphone. The difference was even greater than what i had before, after removing all the trash from inside.

Third step, a Lundahl transformer.
This thing started sounding like a Royer!

Fourth step and probably the most interesting: changing cable for something decent and padding the inside of the bottom cup in the microphone.

I've changed both in this way and i've already used them for main vocals in released albums, for overheads, acoustic guitars and even saxophone.
They excell with wind instruments but beware of the wind hitting the ribbon.
Tilt the microphone!

RB500 are great for learning about ribbon microphones and even with the single "Step One" mod you'll get a very decent microphone.

I mainly use it for acoustic guitar. The strumming parts are very usable, but for picking it's just too noisy. On all the tracks there was a very audible background hiss.

I ordered a Lundahl LL2915 ribbon mic transformer. After a couple hours of soldering and a couple of burnt fingers the noise is gone and it sounds divine. Not sure if it was the tranny or the sloppy soldering. Can't say that my own soldering is top notch either. Pretty sure the warranty is void now :)

BTW the LL2915 was to big to fit inside the original tranny shield. I bet LL2912 would fit though. If a mu metal core is a must I recommend LL2914 or a different shielded tranny.

The tbone RB500 is an excellent introduction to ribbon mics specially considering the price.

I have been using a pair as overhead mics and have also recorded some acoustic and electric guitars. Just plug the mic and the warm vintage sound is right there out of the box.


Downsides: the attached XLR and clamp sometimes make it difficult to tilt the mic at certain angles. Also being a ribbon mic, make sure you have good preamps or else you'll need a crazy amount of gain (and then noise reduction) specially in order to record quieter sources such as acoustic guitars and vocals.

Unbelievable how useful this mic is. I have access to two of them. They make great drum overheads or room mics. I've also experimented with them on vocals, and guitar cab with an sm57. They also make a fantastic kick out mic about two feet from the hole. So subby.

The fact that a 100 euro ribbon mic is this usable is insane. You will definitely find uses for these in your studio. For people running a budget studios that have different projects coming and going, selection is so important. Having one expensive mic isn't much good to you if you need to get different sounds. But having a large diaphram condenser, a budget pair of ribbons, sdc's and some dynamic mics will mean that you can actually choose how you mic things and play with the sound in this way. While I don't use these ribbons all the time, when I want them, they are so valuable to have. And SOOO affordable.