MXL R40 Ribbon Microphone

The MXL R40 is a Ribbon Mic that comes with a shockmount and it is well made. I am not a fan of the color (teal-ish) but it is not that bad once you get it in your studio and set up. This microphone does not require phantom power so you will need to make sure your interface either does not have phantom power or the phantom power is off because there is a huge history of phantom power damaging these microphones.

OVERALL OPINION

The polar pattern is a figure 8 pattern, you will not get a colored sound with this microphone. The recordings will be pretty clean for the most part and you can just about record anything with it. I do prefer it on vocals and not instruments just because some instruments may be a little to harsh and aggressive for this microphone. An acoustic guitar is ok but when using it to record a bass cabinet it really made this microphone sound cheap. Some people have used it with Brass instruments before and said that it sounded great, but I have not tried anything other than vocals and guitar tracks with it.
It will make your low frequencies (voice or acoustic) sound very clean, that is my most memorable experience with this microphone. Many similar microphones that I have used in the past do not do well with low frequencies in the 20 to 40hz range at this price. But the MXL R40 sounds great, it keeps up with its reputation of the MXL line of microphones. I have used many MXL microphones and all of them are really well made and last a very long time without any problems. I am just not sure what they were thinking with this color. I am a fan of this microphone but not the color, they should have at least came out with a black or grey one for those of use that don’t like bright colors in our setups.