Proaim Blimp?

graywolf

graywolf

Well-known member
I just ordered one off eBay for $99 shipped.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/122164752967?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

Since the competition goes for about $300, I wonder how it is going to work out?

I have a DIY one I made some years back, but it is too small for the AT4073A, fine for my stereo mic which is what I used it for with the Superscope 3-head cassette recorder for nature/white-noise recording. All the so-called reviews I can find on the Proaim seem to actually be promotional stuff.

Has anyone actually used one of these? What did you think of it?


ADDED (Oct 12, 2016):

The Proaim Blimp arrived in todays mail. First report...

It is not junk, but it is also not top drawer. It seems to do the job. It is not as flimsy as some of the reports suggest. How it compares to the more expensive zepp's, I cannot say as I have not used any of them.

Handle and mount are made of what looks like ABS plastic. The basket looks like styrene (the stuff plastic model cars are made of). I can not see where they could have used more sturdy stuff and kept it reasonably light. There are three shock mount rings but it looks like you really only are supposed to use two of them, because if you turn them around to put the handle in the middle the third ring is too far forward to use.

The grip/shock mounts only slide in from one end so your have to turn it end for end to move the grip from the end of the zepp to the center. Caps go on okay if you pay attention, are easy to cross thread if you do not.

It comes with extra mic hangers but they are made for real skinny microphones, no idea what they will fit. It also comes with two additional mic-stand/boom-holder addapters, not quite sure how that third one is supposed to work. Both of those are 5/8" with 3/8" adapters. There is another adapter that looks like it may be to use a painters pole as a boom pole, I will have to go by the building supply store to check.

The fuzzy cover fits rather loosely, and the fuzz is a bit short, but it fluffs up ok when you brush it out. No brush is supplied.

What is missing is an internal mic cable. You really need a short, but not too short, skinny cable to go from the mic to the bottom of the handle.

It comes with no instructions whatsoever.

Conclusion: well worth the $99 I paid for it, but I would not be real happy at $200.
 
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Probably a question best asked before you order ... ;~)

This looks like some cheap ones I saw awhile back on eBay from India. I, like you, built one. Actually I built a series of them. They worked decently, it's not rocket science. The thinks I would worry about would be build quality. Zeppelins take a bit of abuse and you don't want parts cracking etc. The second, possibly fixable, issue is shock mount quality. You may be able to install Rycote suspensions so might be fixable, and depending on you mic it might not even be an issue.

Related to build this one has the cloth on the outside, which is how I did mine. The plus side is that you don't get as much of that whistle of wind sound that comes from air bumping of the grill. The downside is that the most vulnerable part is exposed to wear and abuse. I would keep the dead cat on it most of the time and always when you store it to help prevent that.
 
Noiz, it is that cheap made in India blimp. Only thing is that Proaim seems to make a lot of the equipment use in Bollywood. Need a 20 foot crane? They make one. Need remote control gimbals? They make them. I would think that stuff made for production use would be pretty good. But I do not know that for sure, and like I said, most of their blimp stuff I see on the web seems to be adver-monials. I see the blimp for $99 all the time, but with $25-30 shipping. First time I've seen one with free shipping.

Yep, making small zepp's is easy. The problem I have found is that finding the stuff to make a full sized one is kind of hard. Which is why I decided to give this a try.

In real production filmmaking a blimp is penny ante equipment, but for a pure hobbyist that extra few hundred bucks is a stretch.
 
I had one of these and I am afraid to say it wasn't very good.

The plastic was very thin and cheap so be careful with it, the mount and rail were not very good either but it seemed to function as a basic blimp with the cloth on the outside to reinforce the plastic cage.. The softie cover was very synthetic and shiny so it may be better to save up for at least a Rode one.
 
GaryNattrass said:
I had one of these and I am afraid to say it wasn't very good.

The plastic was very thin and cheap so be careful with it, the mount and rail were not very good either but it seemed to function as a basic blimp with the cloth on the outside to reinforce the plastic cage.. The softie cover was very synthetic and shiny so it may be better to save up for at least a Rode one.
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Better off getting a Rode Blimp 2 then.. I got mine for $197
 
Before the Rode came out I made my own, then bought an Indian one, which has actually been OK , blimps not being rocket science, and I'm still using it, never having stood the pole up against a wall so that it falls down and smashes whatever is on top of it (boom operators know what I mean). The Indian one arguably was in some respects better functioning (but cruder looking) than the original Rode. Even then I would have preferred the Rode, which I understand now has been much improved.
 
Heezzi said:
Better off getting a Rode Blimp 2 then.. I got mine for $197
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I haven't seen the rode but I would think it is far better made than the cheap Indian ones so better value in the longer term.

Have a look at the proaim one and you can see that it is basically just a tube with a cap screwed onto the front and back so you also end up with a lot of plastic at the front end, from what I remember the plastic is really thin so the threads are not that sturdy and the rubber rail that slides into the tube with the mic mount was very weak and floppy so you ended up with quite a lot of mic noise if you used it on a boom and moved it around or you got a lot of handling noise from the cheap grip.

I don't own a blimp now as find that a Rode PG2 grip with a WS6 softie is all I need for most jobs.
 
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Well, I will find out, when mine arrives. I can not believe it will not be worth $99 shipped, but maybe I am wrong. Anyway, I will let you guys know what I think of it.
 
GaryNattrass said:
I haven't seen the rode but I would think it is far better made than the cheap Indian ones so better value in the longer term.

Have a look at the proaim one and you can see that it is basically just a tube with a cap screwed onto the front and back so you also end up with a lot of plastic at the front end, from what I remember the plastic is really thin so the threads are not that sturdy and the rubber rail that slides into the tube with the mic mount was very weak and floppy so you ended up with quite a lot of mic noise if you used it on a boom and moved it around or you got a lot of handling noise from the cheap grip.

I don't own a blimp now as find that a Rode PG2 grip with a WS6 softie is all I need for most jobs.
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Rode designed blimp with Rycote shock mount design.. It works good.
 
If you're good with DIY, here's my last attempt.
The LYRE set is one of the best imho, hence the Blimp2 from RØDE is definitively superior to the version 1 (similar suspension to the ProAim).
 
drapeama said:
Would you mind sharing more pictures of it? :)
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I do not seem to have a photo with the fuzzy cover on (Fuzzy fabric came from Walmart however):

ContactSheet-001.jpg

Those baskets are actually gutter downspout guards from the building supply store. Shockmount is a ABS drain pipe coupling Slots cut for the rubbers, and a bolt through the bottom for the coupling. Radiator hose clamps. Air filter foam for the inner cover. As I recall, total cost was about $15, not counting the light stand mount which I already had.
 
graywolf said:
As I recall, total cost was about $15, not counting the light stand mount which I already had.
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As long as it stops the wind when recording outside! Mine as pink, made a lot of people laughing, but the audio was great, and it's also a very good anti-theft protection!
 
If you are using it for a front pointing directional mic, I would worry about having so much material directly in front of of the capsule.

What I had used was the expanded aluminum for plaster repair. The downspout guards are a good idea, though they do have a lot of blockage directly in front.

I put the foam on the inside and stretched double knit fabric over the outside. A bit of hot glue held it together.

If I had not lucked into a pair of zeps my next version was to use plastic mesh (looks like sheet version of the Rycote material) and heat it in the oven and then form it over a wooden "mold".

The aluminum was light but it also was fairly fragile.

Mine looked a touch more "professional" though we both would have been laughed off a paid gig. Of course if you do a decent job on the dead cat and keep it on it's a lot harder to tell it's a DIY.


Of the various ones I made none sounded hugely different from the professional ones. With foam on the inside maybe a slight touch of high roll off, but the heaviest (first) foam one also was totally wind proof. I used it to record a box fan from the front and got zero wind. We used it for some propellors we needed. Also got really clean blade by's from a ceiling fan.

I don't think I still have it, it was heavy and ugly (I used wire cloth & 1/4" tape hubs (if you know what the later are you old...)).

BTW if you can get your hands on a metal mic clip it will let you use mic booms and boom poles.
 
I seem to recall that the whole point of a blimp is to protect a long or short shotgun where the capsule is near the rear of the phase cancellation tube.

It therefore is there to compliment the phase cancellation slots in the shotgun mic so any extra material or plastic will cause potential phase problems.

Placing a cardioid mic in a cage with some covering will do little to help IMO and a good foam wind gag is probably just as effective.

There are rycote type protection devices available and if you look at some archive film set boom work you will see them on older mics and they tend to be ball shaped rather than like a zeppelin.
 
The purpose of a Zepplin is to provide a dead air space for the mic that is transparent to sound.

That is the whole of it. Too much covering and it is not transparent. Not enough and it does not provide the dead air space. Mine works perfectly with the x/y stereo mic, no wind noise with gusts up to 20 mph. Maybe not so well with a shotgun mic, although it would be fairly easy to modify it to do so.
 
graywolf said:
The purpose of a Zepplin is to provide a dead air space for the mic that is transparent to sound.

That is the whole of it. Too much covering and it is not transparent. Not enough and it does not provide the dead air space. Mine works perfectly with the x/y stereo mic, no wind noise with gusts up to 20 mph. Maybe not so well with a shotgun mic, although it would be fairly easy to modify it to do so.
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Exactly. Foam over a mic offers a pretty low level of wind protection. I don't see how a zep. would enhance an interference tube shotgun other than stopping wind noise. Zeppelins are used for non shotgun mics all the time. Pretty much every FX recordist has their mics in zeppelins and we hardly ever are using shot gun microphones.

I missed that you were using a stereo mic in that zeppelin, so the front material shouldn't be a problem and actually because the "end cap" is basically the whole front you probably have a cleaner stereo than with a traditional zep where there would be a connecting ring in the sound field.
 
I've used the ProAim one a lot when I was starting out, and then when looking around to buy my own blimp I got a little put off by many people recommending against the RODE blimp but when I dug into it I realised they're referring to v1 not the newer v2 which is sold now and is greatly improved over the first RODE blimp!

So I went with the current RODE Blimp (i.e. "v2"), and wow.... it certainly is very noticeably an improvement over the ProAim one I used beforehand!
 
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