the t.bone RM 700 Reviews

Lo fi

Handy for some low frequency muck. i do love to slam it now and then, especially after a few drinks. it really takes the tops off, in a kind of a nice smooth curve, with heaps of dirt underneath. I say sound quality is 'poor" but in a cool way.

Sounds very good for the price

I bought two of these for use as overheads, but I have tried it on vocals (both male and female), and with generic and a bit more higher quality mic pre's. The mic pre made a huge difference, but both examples were good. if you a re looking for a vintage vibe that is colored you cant go wrong with these. PS. I just ordered a RM500 to check it out as well..

Great Mic for this price

Really a great and versatile mic for this price. I own 4 of them and use it in the studio on different things like, oh's, close rooms, snare bottom, guitars, and toms and it works really great on everything. The sound is what you expect from a Ribbon mic, specially the low end is very nice and you don't have irritating high's. It can even handle the pressure of a kick drum. So if you want a boomy room sound, fat and low guitars, a fat snare bottom, low toms, or sweet oh's this is your mic. Unbeatable for this money!

Best value mic out there

This little one was a pleasant suprise. It comes in a sturdy aluminum case. Inside is a wooden case with a shockmount, a description and the mic itself. The microphone sounds absolutely great. I prefer this one on my guitar cabs to my Beyer M160 (which is 5-6x the price). Can't recommend this microphone enough!!

Secret weapon on Toms

Try these on toms. You won't believe how good they sound. Just aim the "pancake " parallel to the shell ( or at 90 degrees to the head..) and make sure the "null" or thin part of the pancake looks at the cymbals. You will be amazed at the very low amount of spill for the cymbals, and at the full forced puncyness of the tom sound.

My "go to" mic for trumpet.

I wanted a cheap ribbon mic to see how it works on brass instruments. After using it, it was a "love at first... recording". Got rid of all the harshness you'll get when using a condenser on brass.

Also, it's not that fragile as I thought it would be.

My 2 years old son played with the buttons on my preamp while the mic was on, and he started several times the phantom power O_o

The mic still functions well after that (still, don't do that, it might break the ribbon).

Great microphone at a steal of a price

I was honestly highly skeptical at this price point but on arrival, the flight case, wooden box, and shock mount are of a good quality. Similar to the quality of SE microphones accessories. The microphone itself is reassuringly heavy and has a good overall finish. When plugged in it sounded great, for the price it would be hard to complain. It has so far worked well on acoustic guitar and drums as well as being nice when blended in with an SM7 on male vocals. Id go as far as to say it sounds identical to another similar looking popular ribbon of at least twice the price.

Nice, cheap and good sounding

If u are searching for a ribbon mic which is cheap for give that warm sound to your acoustic instruments, this is what u want to buy...

Surprisingly good value

I'm new to home recording and to ribbon mikes, I'm predominantly a guitar player and have some boutique valve amps capable of great sounds at 'home' volumes and wanted to be able to capture that on my basic DAW. I tried an SM57 and a LDC mic, not bad but not what I was after.so after reading a lot on the Internet I thought I'd try the RM700. I don't know how these are made for the price, packaging is great and the mic itself has a nice weight and feels solid. Sound is great, deep and rich. Ribbons are typically a bit lacking in upper frequencies but I didn't find this to be a negative thing with this mic, also it seemed to have plenty of output, I certainly didn't need to crank the gain too much (using a focusrite saffire6) so noise wasn't a problem either. All in all, I'm delighted with this so far.

Very warm

These mics are very warm. The high end signal could be better, but if you are using them for bright or low instruments they sound great.

The only downfall is that they need to be pre-amplified quite a bit (which causes a little bit of noise)

Great for overhead mics on drums (Blumlein) And MS stereo micing an acoustic guitar.

They are built very well, feel sturdy and the boxes are awesome too!

t.bone RM 700

Used the t.bone RM 700 on vocals, guitars ( acoustic and elec ) and as room mic on drumkits, it works perfectly as a room mic it offers all the dark ambience you expect from a ribbon mic to endure your mix of the drumkit, but its a bit darker than it should, it has an "over the top" boost on low frequencies so it wont make a good choice for overhead micing, also because of that "boost" on the low freqs and the proximity effect its also not a good choice for vocals,

But it makes an exceptional good choise for guitar micing especially for clean electric guitars, it offers an wonderful dark "round shaped" sound.

Overall, its more than a usefull mic to have, it has GREAT metalic construction,very solid, it has all the "good" effects of a norma(expensive) ribbon mic in a very very low price and not so "sensitive" as the other ribbon mics are,

A very nice mic to have in your collection with plenty of uses, professionaly or not.

P.S. used on 4 different pre amps (api, golden age,allen&heath) and the pre amps from a focusrite scarlet 10i20, worked fine on all of them, as a ribbon i expected to be sensitive so i pushed it on the limit and more, but nothing happened the mic had no problem still working fine.

NIce vintage sound on the cheap

For anyone who hasn't tried ribbons before, and want a mic with some weight to the sound, rolled off highs and a nice "in the room" feel to the sound, I recommend these. I use them mostly as drum overhead or drum room, works very well in both applications to give weight to the drums - cymbals sounds very nice too.

In OH applications I use them alongside an SDC (AKG C451, Line Audio CM2 or Audiotechnica ATM-450), works well to balance and not have to EQ so much to get different tones. That said, I find these ribbons take EQ well.

Also used on Saxophone as Room mic and it blended very nicely with a Sennheiser MD-421 on the bell.

Dark and vibey

For not much money you get a really dark mic (not much treble) and characterful mic. I use a second mic for distorted guitar recordings. It gives fat sound to add to a sm57's fizzy vibe.

The 2 sides sound a little different to each other so don't forget to check both sides.

Not recommended for people looking for hi-fi clarity. It's a great "vibe" mic.

I recently recorded a pro trumpet player with it and he couldn't believe how good the sound was. Dark, murky ribbons are the way to go when recording brass.

Wonderful mics!

These are some of the best mics out there, regardless of the price, and they are completely consistent - I have 7 of them, and they are a go-to for guitars whenever I am in the studio. Some of the best Ribbons I have ever used, awesome (and quiet!)

Great first ribbon mic

I bought this to experiment with until I can afford a pair of coles 4038s, but I'm pretty happy with it and I would consider getting another one.

With a good preamp the noise isn't a problem, the transformer gives a higher output than I was expecting.

The sound is warm but natural, and in my first test recording (guitar cab) the track sat well in the mix without any eq. I'm interested to see how it fares with drums and vocals.

I tried a mid/side of the guitar and that sounded great too, I've heard a few reviewers say that because the back of the mic is brighter, it isn't good at m/s... But I'd file that advice in the same place as "don't buy two mics, buy a matched pair"... In the bin.

soft sound ribbon mic, with nice real hardwood cace and low cost

Well, there is ribbon microphones and there is royer. This is t.bone, witch give you budget cost, warm soft sound to your instrument. And mic can handle quite big mount of sound pressure, without broke sound. But hey, It's ribbon microphone.

T Bone RM700 Ribbon mic - relatively average budget mic with one special trick up it's sleeve!

This is an interesting mic. My understanding is that they're made in China and branded with the T-Bone name for sale in the EU, and also sold in America under a different brand name.

It's a budget ribbon mic, most likely aimed at people who might have a low end condenser, a couple of '57s, and are curious about the "third kind of mic". It's very well built; despite its lollipop construction it's all metal, feels sturdy and comes with a good shock mount, wooden carry case AND a padded aluminium flight case!

As with most Ribbons, the RM700 has a figure of 8 pickup pattern which makes application and placement quite critical - it hears equally well in both directions, so the room sound is as important as the direct sound. Ribbons tend to exhibit strong proximity effect - a low end build up as you move it closer to the sound source - so care must be taken to utilise this effect well. While most ribbons have low output, the RM700 seems relatively powerful thanks to its onboard transformer, however this is at the expense of some sound quality - while most Ribbons are quite dark sounding, the RM700 is even more mellow than most, and it lacks some of the snappy low and midrange detail that more expensive Ribbons such as the Coles 4038 and Royer 121 possess. HOWEVER - given the price points, it would be churlish to compare them too much.

Ribbons tend to be very sensitive to wind blasts from vocals, kick drum holes, bass ports etc. The RM700 seems to be more rugged than most though, and is rated to withstand high SPL levels. I found that the treble can be improved by opening the mic up and removing some extra pop shields that are taped in place. However as this makes the ribbon less protected and voids the warranty I'd not recommend it unless you're feeling particularly brave!

The mic has one strength that I think makes it very worth the money: The low-mid range. While on its own it can be quite dull, I absolutely love it when paired with another mic on guitar cabs. Alongside an SM57 on a guitar speaker, the RM700 brings out a really thick but rich lower midrange that adds depth and power to clean and distorted tones. It's my go to setup for recording my Vox AC30, and has also worked wonders on higher gained rigs too.

For that reason alone I think this mic justifies its existence in my collection, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a second mic for guitar amp duty.

Good starting point

Bought this as my first ribbon mic, I had used Cascade Fatheads before so am familiar with what this type of ribbon mic can potentially be. Don't expect high frequencies from this thing, the design dictates that frequency response rolls off from just under 10kHz.

It is a very simple mic, I've had very good results using it on arco double bass where the smoothness really shines, and close in on a guitar cab which gave a lovely creamy sound.

You need a good preamp to drive it with a lot of clean gain, even then there is a fair bit of noise, I think this could be remedied by swapping the transformer for a better, shielded version. You can also mod these quite easily (I removed the inner screens) and there are quite a few places out there that will upgrade the ribbon and transformer for a reasonable fee (check out Xaudia for example).

Given the price, it's good value, you get a nice flight case and wooden box, the provided shock mount feels a little flimsy but does the job.

Great mic for the price!

The T. bone RM 700 is shipped in rather cheap-looking aluminium case which in spite of its cheapness does the job just fine, maybe not road-worthly but gives some protection. Inside the aluminium case there is the shock mount and a wooden box that stores the ribbon mic itself. The shock mount is very low quality and hard to set up but it is still usable even tough it is not very reliable.

The ribbon mic itself feels very solid and is finished nicely. The sound of the mic is just what one would expect from a ribbon mic, very warm and round sounding, maybe a bit too dark. The 8 figure picks up a lot of room sound which is a good or a bad thing depending on the source being miked and most importantly on what the room sounds like. Works also great on different stereo miking techniques such as blumlein and mid/side. The mic has a lot of proximity effect and is almost unusable in close-miking guitar amps but gives great results when backing the mic up about a half meter. Other great uses for the RM700 are drum overheads and all kinds of room miking.

Ribbon Mic - great low end response!

I love using this microphone for electric guitars - it gives a really nice 'chug' and and has a great low end response. It looks great too, and the cradle/spider mount it comes with is fantastic. For the price, this really is excellent!