Product Price
$260

Product Features
•Dual ribbon element

•Sonically pristine output, if a little on the low side

•No need for phantom power

Product Specs
•OPERATING PRINCIPLE: Moving ribbon dynamic

•POLAR PATTERN: Figure-of-eight

•FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 25Hz to 9KHz

•SENSITIVITY: -53dBV (2.2mV) @ 1 Pa

•IMPEDANCE: 940 ohms

First Impressions
You want it? You got it-- reliably clean and meaty sound, in earth-tones, wholesome and organic. I think that's why you're seeing endorsements for this puppy from such a wide swath of pseudo-greats in the industry (ex-Guns & Roses clowns and you name it): it really does deliver fundamentally accurate sound. Uncompressed, hi-fidelity. And it's not a "dark" ribbon by any stretch-- it's ying and yang are in perfect balance. The factory where this comes from must have some awesome feng shui.

I don't think "Trion" is a real word, I think it's something that's supposed to sound futuristic and cool. 7000 is kind of a random number as well. Well, anyway. This mic is small and easy to use. I think it looks like some kind of deluxe children's bubble blower, but I was setting it up on a piano and the tuner guy says, "Hey-- looks like money!" It's not shiny but it does have a sheen. It looks more than anything like a tennis ball made from stainless steel mesh, and it sits in its shockmount like it's sitting in a golf tee, an oversize hurricane-proof golf tee from hell. There is no real body, which means the whole assembly is marvelously compact, even in its generous and very effective shockmount. The mic body-- what there is of it-- is clamped with a groovy bent-wire lever clasp that reminds me of the custom hinges my dad made for the screen doors of a canary's cage once.

In Use
Not one to buck a trend, I used it on a lead guitar cabinet-- which is what, the Mt. Everest of the recording world? And the total beauty was that simply cranked all the way through a Sytek preamp, delivered verbatim without compressor into a track in Digital Performer, and then just sitting there at unity gain, it was delivering the whole torturous tale of the guitar player's shrieking woe-- his mad cries to heaven, his wallowing in delight-- in full color glory. It's like it had brought its own echo along with it. That's why everyone loves good ribbons on guitar cabs. Do it and it's done.

The magical thing that happens is, you listen to the input coming from this mic, and instantly you're enveloped in whatever sound you're hearing. And that's the best mic, right, the mic that isn't even there?

So let's put it through some real paces, like on some random oddball instrument. A harmonium is a cute little hybrid keyboard thing, a cross between a church organ and an accordion. You pump the pedals and it plays a plaintive, bleating, eerie vibrato tone. You could mistake it for a bulky suitcase, only suitcases aren't usually wooden, so that would be stupid. You know how any organ sound hums, and in that humming is some special power, attention-grabbing, maybe a little delirious or something? It's all about that. I put the 7000 tight on the sound hole. This is in the midst of an 80-voice choir blasting out the Rossini "Petite Messe Solennelle" and next to a piano they'd taken the lid off of. [Ever wonder why they call them "hammers"? ]

"Open" is the word we grope for when we want to describe the sensation of the sound coming from the microphone carrying the atmospherics around the sound source. As I brought up this track in the mix, everything seemed to fall into place. The soloists, the chorus, the dense reverb in the huge cathedral. It's like it held the key to the finest gradations of detail of everything in the room. It was at once a spot mic on the harmonium and the ultimate room mic, perfectly situated wherever you put it. And it sounded like a newly-minted Library of Congress sample of a harmonium-- exquisitely detailed and true-to-life. You can forget this is a track in a recording. It delivers the source and the space around it nicely.

The 7000 is magnificent if you've only got say thirty seconds to prop it up next to the open lid of a piano-- it will produce a reliable, even, smooth picture of the thing, whatever the style of playing. Ribbonism at its best: sensitive and true to delicate passages, yet full-bodied and distortion-free when things get slammin'. As per most ribbons, the Trion7000 takes EQ nicely.

PROS
•Warm, sweet, blessedly softened top-end response

•Rugged, durable

•Small, portable and chic

•CAD quality (they seem to deliver consistency, I own lots of them)

CONS
If you set it at any angle other than straight vertical, might distort on a loud source.

Conclusion
The way I look at it, all of life is like a low-cut filter. Sometimes, cutting at the low end of a track is just the perfect thing, opening up everything to its proper breathing. But sometimes-- it's a fatal mistake, and you'd lose the whole oomph for being that is a song's crucial heart. Buy this mic, you won't go wrong if you're looking for a balanced ribbon with smooth response and a spacious sound.

Buy the CAD Trion 7000 Dual Element Ribbon Microphone at Front End Audio