No Hype really means NO Hype i've learned - JP must be the master of understatement... so please forgive me for expressing my impressions as enthusiasticallly as i feel them.
My fave short ribbon:
RCA 77 โ deep sea diver with flashlight revealing glimpses of magic
My fave long ribbons:
AEA44 โ a wonderful whale on its slow majestic trajectory... biggest creaminess
and now also
LRM V โ a Zeppelin (same size as the whale) floating in mid-sky, looking nearly transparent yet well-defined with its inner luminosity and sunsparks bouncing off the surface... biggest euphonicness.
It may be best to mentally add a zero to the price when contemplating this mic.
After an afternoon and morning with the LRM V, it feels like a celestial sister to the AEA44, rivaling or equaling it in bandwidth and s/n ratio, and sonically complementing it like yang to yin.
If i wouldn't know the 44, just the huge sound alone would have blown me away - it's quite unlike any other ribbon i've heard.
Two other aspects that i've also not heard in a ribbon are this huge euphonic openness that is VERY alive to every detail, feels complex and refined, bringing out the good gloriously... and the bad in stark realism,
plus a kind of spark or sizzle that i've been racking my brain if i ever heard such in a ribbon and the only one maybe was an ultrarare one built by Jacob Boli during the war years... but one of them was a ribbon-tube combo if i'm not totally wrong... on that note the only other comparison i can come up with is a tube mic sound, not as coarse as old Neumann bottle, not as pointy as K56.... mmh.. U67? Yeah a sizzle but smoooth...
Kind of like M49 openness but if you move from 30cms on inward with U67 creaminess adding in along with a whole lotta VOG... all with ribbonesque natural ease... only 2999 bucks you say?
O and a third aspect i never noticed so distinctly is how you can EQ while moving off centre. Of course there's sound change with other ribbons too but the feeling of less-direct made me hardly do it, while with the LRM V it feels distinctively less-size, less bottom, less top as i move but still feels direct.
So far this has been my favorite eq experiment with reducing the huge mids and bass, which many of us i fear will have to tame in our less than large and wonderful rooms. With Siemens pre the bandwidth is close to scary if there are outside noises, plane subsonics etc, not to mention bad stuff building up inside untreated rooms.
Plus this supersensitivity... wanted just to doodle a bit on the 12-string and ended up tuning...tuning.
The perfect showcase for this mic as i hear it would be renting Grand Ole Opry, inviting Alison Krauss and band.. Al Schmitt doing the mix by placing everybody at the perfect distance and angle around a lone LRM V, and ask her/them to sing 'Happiness'... then Paul Robeson would kind of timezoom in and join (from like 4 meters from the mic) for 'Jesus Saviour'... all into a 80 dB preamp and straight to 2 track - and after resuming to breathe we'd all have to get religion... or at least a bunch of THAT mic ha ha!
If that was too flowery... it's simply a glorious HI END mic with superb specs and performance that in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing and especially in front of good musicians will be a most welcome color in their palette of iconic Ela Ms and...
btw can't prove it but have a feeling this will do superb on complex sources, string ensembles, choirs...
Maybe it's that open-laying ribbon and fine inner headbasket mesh combo that create that alive euphonic sound with those sparks.
JP alone knows - what a genius stroke! I probably should mention at this point i've never spoken to the man and have emailed him for the first time after coming across this thread.
Ribbon mics i own: 44, 77 as mentioned, RCA Varacoustic, Altec 639, Philips rare old, modded Apex. Owned: 2 Oktava ML19, Beyer M160/320, AEA 84, N22, Reslo, probably one or two i forgot. Tried: Altec Birdcage, Jacob Boli (very special), then some of the lo-budget ones (all more 'expensive' than LRM V).
Keyword re the loveless careless budget ribbons: dull n dead
Keyword LRM V: alive and happening... but again, comparing within similar price category won't work!
Finally for now, thank you JP not only for this magic tool but also for the 1A customer service, swift and pro from A to Z. Forms so clear it passed customs in absolute record time. Triple packed - soft but firm pouch, in foam in box, surrounded by marshmallowy bits in the actual parcel. Comes with a sheet of clear and detailed instructions including a 2 year warranty (!) except for shipping damage.
Expecting a modified Apex seeing that fat round mama was already a pleasant surprise. The screws, mounting etc all much more sturdy and workable than the ususal budget suspects. Looking in sideways i see that serious-looking motor and the corrugated ribbon...
again, incredible job JP! Oh happy poor singer-songwriter! ... (and pleasantly baffled hi end studio recordist).
Better/more pics would be great...and i did use a popfilter