COLES 4038: a legendary ribbon microphone

Today we want to introduce the Coles4038 microphones from Coles Electroacoustics.

As always, we begin by introducing the product in question, specifically,+ the Coles 4038 microphones with their main features.

The unique shape of the COLES 4038 ribbon microphone.

The Coles 4038 is a legendary ribbon microphone designed in 1953 by the BBC, then widely used for radio and broadcasting situations, now widely used for recording drums, guitars and other instruments.

It is a microphone that stands out from the crowd mainly because of its differentshape, also called "Waffle Iron" at the time, but its shape has a reason.

First of all, being a ribbon microphone it has a bi-directionaltype polar figure or also called "figure of 8" and, a key feature of the Coles 4038, is the fact that it has a rather linear frequency response from 30 to 15 thousand Hz.

This results in a very natural sound without overemphasizing transients and high frequencies, resulting in a smooth, natural and round sound.

Returning to the "shape" discussion, the Coles 4038 has a natural and Flatfrequency response in both horizontal and vertical space precisely because of its shape, which is specially designed to have the widest and most natural response and range possible.

Accessories and purchase bundle

The microphone is shipped together with its hard plastic case, where its mini cable is housed for adaptation to normal use with XLR cable.

Separately, its specially designed stand for stereo use can be purchased . We used this boom to test the microphones by recording the drum room with both Mid/Side and Spaced Pair techniques; we used the same Spaced Pair technique to go stereo miking of the double bass.

Evaluations after testing on drums, electric guitar, acoustic guitar and double bass

We personally tested how the Coles 4038 performs on the Over and Room of drums, on electric guitar, acoustic guitar and on double bass.

The Flat response of the ribbon ensures that the Coles 4038 can be used on virtually any sound source and is guaranteed to produce a natural recording. Obviously, being a ribbon microphone, beware of applications where there is air displacement so don't go placing it too close to the bass drum pit for example.

Fantastic on drums, they allow for body and roundness on both over and room; excellent response on electric guitars in combination perhaps with other clearer mics.

Also, they really surprised us on double bass, so on all those orchestral acoustic instruments, we should be able to get very natural sounds. The low frequencies of the double bass can be heard well, they are not flattened or compressed: nice smoothness! The Coles 4038 can really pick up the scratchy characteristic of the bow very well.