An interesting feature of ribbon mics - because the ribbon is open at the front and the back, they reject sound from the side (and top/bottom) almost perfectly.

An interesting feature of ribbon mics - because the ribbon is open at the front and the back, they reject sound from the side (and top/bottom) almost perfectly. You can arrange these cleverly in live or studio settings to amplify one thing while rejecting another completely. A typical usecase for this is a singer with an acoustic guitar - one mic can pick up the guitar and almost fully reject the vocals, and vice-versa. Pretty cool.