perhaps the very best “wire winder” ever, his dad Ed Reichenbach. Ed owned
and operated Reichenbach Transformer company during the golden age of Los
Angeles studios. He made transformers for all applications, including for the
studios. One of his outside sales guys was Dean Jensen. Dean specialized in
studio customers and audio manufactures and helped design transformers to fit
their demanding needs. Dean was a sales engineer, Ed was the designer and
manufacturer. Later, Jensen formed his own sales company and named these
“Jensen” transformers gaining (at that time) a high reputation for making
perhaps the best sounding transformers of the day. But Dean’s offices were
always located inside Ed’s transformer factory and Ed actually made these
classic Jensen transformers! Unfortunately, when Dean died, his business went
into a bankruptcy proceeding which resulted in the Jensen brand name being
sold to a former employee, and Ed simply retired and sold the Richenbach
factory. Soon after that, Tom started his own transformer business under the
direction of his dad. Frankly spoken, we’ve sampled all the best transformers
at every price point made today, and Tom’s transformers out perform them all
every time... so we stayed with Tom on the VELO-8 project and it really paid
off. Here’s what Tom and GT came up with in this latest collaboration.
The VELO-8 transformer uses pure nickel core laminates with multi-tapped
output windings that allow the level to be switched between 75 Ohms (most
detail) and 300 Ohms (most signal strength). We also added a High Pass filter
for both windings so there are four switched selections located on the lower
rear side of VELO-8’s body. The highest signal level is achieved in the 300
Ohm position. The 75 Ohm position will have less output but also will be
obviously “altered” and so will provide more natural detailed results, but it will
require more preamplification that may not be available on some mixers (but
perfect for ViPRE and SuPRE either way!). Also, the low frequency roll off can
be useful as ribbons really produce a lot of information in this the ultra low
bandwidth area which could make a voice, drum or guitar sound too boomy.
4. The Design:
Actually the size and shape of the ribbon, placement of the
ribbon in the magnetic field, and quality of the coupling transformer which
boosts the impedance of the ribbon’s output are the most influential
components to the end result, but without a coherent design to combine them
all could be lost! Our VELO-8 design is an original (not another “Elvis
impersonator”, please!); it has higher than normal output levels as a result of
the increased magnetic field created by our custom formed dual “roof top”
magnets and special designed Cinemag transformer. It offers a dual contrasting
ribbon placement design that produces different, but desirable, sounds from
both the front and rear of the mic. Now, the engineer has two different
sounding sides to choose from; the back side is less bright than the front side.
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VELO-8 REFERENCE MANUAL
