Welcome, this page was created as a visual guide to assist those of you who want to mod your Apex 210 ribbon microphone with a new transformer. Please note that I am not a professional in the electronics industry but merely a music producer who wanted to help out others with these mods. Do this mod at your own risk and only if you have experience in basic electronics and soldering!
Our subject, an Apex 210 microphone
While not necessary it'll be easier to take the mic's mount off to get it off the way. Simply unscrew the thumb screws and pull the mount off.
There are three screws around the mic. Unscrew them to remove the blue base of the mic.
Gently pull the base off the mic's pop screen.
The transformer is mounted behind a pcb board in a metal cylinder. To access this cylinder you have to uncrew it from the board. It's attached with two screws.
Pulling off the cylinder from the pcb board reveals two screws holding the top of the cylinder which contains the transformer.
When you take the top of the cylinder off you will see the transformer. It's attached within the cylinder with double sided tape.
Cut the wires off the transformer as close to the transformer as possible to give yourself as much wire to play with as possible. This is the point of no return so again I remind you you do this at your own risk!
Below is the Cinemag CM 9888 transformer with the wires stripped. Cut all the wires down a bit. Cut the white wire so it is considerably longer then the others.
Strip the wires from the mic and tin them with your soldering iron.
The colour coding for the connections is as follows (this worked for my mic, if for some reason it doesn't for yours I'm not responsible!):
Red Red
White Brown
Green Yellow
Black Orange
White will be soldered to the copper ground wire that is attached on the other side of the pcb board.
This is what David Geren from Cinemag has to say about the length of wire going to the transformer:
"Keep the wires from primary to the ribbon itself as short as possible. Even shortening it a couple of inches can make a big difference. Keep in mind that the ribbon motor itself typically has a d.c.r. of less than one (1) Ohm. Saving even 1/10 Ohm becomes an important factor in the performance of the microphone."
Based on this we could have probably made the lengths of our wires shorter. Just so you know!
Thread the white wire through the top of the cylinder and around the pcb board.
Solder the white wire to the copper ground wire.
Put the cinemag transfer into the cylinder.
The cinemag transformer is already in it's own casing that prevents it from fitting properly in the Apex cylinder. For lack of a better mounting option use tape (I used electrical tape) to seal the cylinder top around the cylinder.
Screw the cylinder back onto the pcb board.
Run some tape from the mic to the cylinder to keep it firmly in place so it doesn't rattle with loud noises.
Now that you're done you can close the mic back up and start recording. Goodluck!
If you don't feel comfortable doing the mod yourself contact me @ ashton@morphproductions.com and we can make arrangements for me to do it for a small fee.
Cinemag- Makers of great transformers. The Apex 210 uses the CM-9888 output transformer.
Morph Productions- My music production/recording studio website (How I make a living).
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