I'm using ribbons a lot actually. I have Royer R-121's and Beyer M160's. I find that the DA7 has plenty of gain for them. I mostly use my Royer's with a Vintech 1272 preamp. It's a very smooth yet warm sound. It has less than 60 dB of gain and seems to do okay in most applications. Where I need extra gain I just use the "soft-gain"
feature on the DA7.

I've found my Royers to excel at guitar amps, front of kick drum (my favorite!), acoustic guitars (nice!), drum overheards, drum room, horns, percussion, you name it. It is probably my favorite mic since it is extremely versatile. Pick up the Royer Demo CD to hear examples of what people have recorded with Royer ribbons. The R-121 is my go-to mic for most applications actually.

Brad