Remember when…
Remember when… a loud guitar amp was no place for a ribbon mic?
Remember when… a kick drum was no place for a ribbon mic?
Remember when… a live stage was no place for a ribbon mic?

Royers are known around the world for what they bring to studio recordings. Now you can get Royer performance on the live stage!

Our studio ribbons have been on the road with major acts for years:

Aerosmith (guitars)
The Goo Goo Dolls (guitars)
Keith Urban (guitars & drums)
The Rolling Stones (drum overhead for recording)
Harry Conick Jr. (brass section)
Arturo Sandoval (trumpet)
Wayne Shorter (sax & drums)
Herbie Hancock (piano & drums)
George Thoroughgood (guitar),
Barry Manilow (brass section), to name just a few.

Live Series microphones will begin shipping in early January, 2008. Pre orders will be delivered in the order they are received.

Royers are built to be tough and can handle the challenges of life on the road, but they are studio mics that require some TLC to keep from damaging the ribbon elements. With our Live Series ribbon microphones you get twice the durability in the ribbon element, allowing you to put ribbons anywhere on stage you'd like with complete confidence. Tame high-end harshness and bring Royer's legendary smoothness, warmth and power to your live performances.

How
After extensive testing, we found new ribbon thicknesses for the R-121, R-122 and SF-24 microphones that allowed us to significantly increase durability with minimal reduction in gain and transients response. The sonic difference is negligible, and the increased durability lets anyone use Royer ribbons in a live environment.

Our Live Series microphones are identified with a red Royer logo (studio models have green or black logos). Live Series mics can be converted to Studio mics with a simple re-ribbon and logo replacement. There is no cost difference between our standard Studio mics and Live Series mics

Surprisingly, figure-8 ribbon microphones are an excellent solution for bleed. Bleed can be a real problem with many onstage mics - not just the amount of bleed but the quality of the bleed. Here’s how Royers handle the problem.

Rejection
Royer ribbon mics are figure-8, picking up sound from the front and rear of the microphone, and rejecting sounds approaching from a) the left and right sides of the mic, b) the top of the mic, and c) the bottom of the mic. These are extremely effective dead zones that engineers use to isolate instruments by positioning the mics in such a way that the dead zones face, and cancel, offending sound sources. 

Case in point: Aerosmith used R-121’s in the studio to record the electric guitars on their 2002 CD Just Push Play, but didn’t consider them for live use. While rehearsing for their follow-up tour, the bleed in the electric guitar mics was driving the FOH engineer crazy. It was suggested they try using their R-121’s and, after we assured them we’d replace the ribbons if they were damaged onstage, the band set up R-121’s on Joe Perry and Brad Whitford’s guitars. The mics eliminated the bleed problem so effectively (and sounded so good) that R-121’s have been Aerosmith’s live (and studio) electric guitar mics from that day forward. In over five years of extensive use, they’ve only stretched one ribbon. An engineer on the crew told us that their Royers had a better reliability record than any of their other touring mics!

Off-Axis Coloration:
There’s a lot of sound on a live stage and you can’t entirely control for off-axis information getting into microphones, even ribbons. Most microphones color off-axis information in highly unflattering ways, which is why bleed can sound so nasty. Ribbons don’t color off-axis information, so any bleed that manages to get into your onstage Royers will sound natural, not harsh or colored.