The third of our upright piano studio mic tests. This time ribbon pairs, comparing the classic Coles 4038s with the new Extinct Audio BM9s. We also tested them two different centre mics in combination:- Coles 4038 pair- Extinct Audio BM9 pair- AEA A840 ribbon (centre mic)- Neumann U47fet (centre mic)In the past we've used a mismatched pair of one 4038 (on high strings) with the AEA 840 (on low strings) and have been really happy with the results. The Coles warmed up the highs and the AEA gave some clarity to the lows. But we wanted to see how much better a pair would be.The Coles sounded absolutely great in the studio monitors, but when tested on in-ear buds you can hear that there is far too much at around 2-300hz which had to be reduced by around 5db to make it usable. This is the only processing we did on this test. It seems the Coles need a bit more space / bigger room to shine. They are also very heavy so with standard boom stands it's hard to use them in any other position except for vertical.The new Extinct Audio BM9s were a real surprise, they sounded almost identical to the 4038s, but without the issues in the low frequencies. They are also smaller than the 4038s and really light so much easier to position as a pair. When I heard a range of blind samples from an SOS mic test, I picked out the BMs as the best sounding mic and assumed they were Coles.We then tried both pairs with the AEA ribbon and U47fet as centre mics. As expected the ribbon didn't really work as it added too much of the same 'ribbon sound' to the mix. The U47fet really helped to add a bit of punch into the mix.The BM9s were borrowed so we settled on the Coles for the final combination, but since making these videos I've sold one of the Coles (one is still amazing on instruments like trumpet) and bought two BM9s. We record piano more than anything else so I didn't want to have to constantly deal with the heavy low end of the Coles pair, although in bigger rooms and with more substantial counter-weighted stands, they are still one of the best mics around.The next video will look at combinations of SDCs, ribbons and LDCs to get the best sound out of the studio upright.