We take a closer look at some recreations of legendary microphones, including the new Warm Audio WA-44, WA-19, and the Warm Lifter.
Warm Audio keeps the classic recording icons alive and well, by making iconic recording gear accessible to new generations of musicians at a price they can afford.
Warm Audio WA-44, WA-19, and Warm Lifter
This time, Warm Audio has reimagined the designs of classic ribbon and dynamic mics and created an in-line preamp box to optimize gain when using these mics.
WA-44
The Warm Audio WA-44 is a recreation of the famous RCA-44 ribbon microphone from the 1930s. Designed for music recording and broadcast, the RCA-44 is a bi-directional mic that uses a 2-inch 1.8-micron aluminium ribbon.
As expected, Warm Audio has taken care to recreate every detail of the design with a custom Japanese-manufactured 99.1% aluminium ribbon. Furthermore, the neodymium magnet is true to the original scale, powered by an American CineMag transformer.
Overall, the WA-44 is an exciting addition to your studio. Moreover, it’s perfect for recording vocals, horns, strings, guitar amps, pianos, drums, and more. Priced at $999 MSRP, it’s a competitive recreation of an iconic vintage ribbon mic.
WA-19
With the WA-19, Warm Audio has created a modern iteration of the AKG D19, a utilitarian dynamic mic introduced in the late 1950s with a crisp, warm sound.
Like some of the Electro-Voice mics of that era, the D19 design used ventilated slots along its body to reduce the proximity effect. This allows you to use the WA-19 closer to loud sources like drums and guitar amps without the boominess.
The WA-19 like the D19 on which it’s based is useful in both live and studio environments. Meanwhile, the acoustic high-pass filter ring can cut 50 Hz up to 10 dB, which is perfect for removing low-end rumble.
The Warm Audio WA-19 is a great way to expand your mic locker, and its versatility makes it worthwhile for the $199 MSRP price tag.
Warm Lifter
When you’re using low-output mics like dynamics and ribbons, an inline mic preamp like the new Warm Lifter is the perfect tool to optimize your gain. Simply plug it in and activate the 48V phantom power on your audio interface, and you have 26dB of extra discrete gain.
There are a few useful features that make the Warm Lifter unique. These include a switchable 100 Hz high-pass filter and a 3 kHz high-shelving booster. This helps you cut the lows and accentuate the upper midrange and high frequencies.
The Warm Lifter uses a balanced signal path and is equipped with a JFET input. This means low-noise gain boosting of your favourite mics. What’s more, at $149 MSRP it’s a worthy addition to any home recording setup.
We’ve been working for a while to expand our mic lineup to include an iconic ribbon and dynamic microphone, so this is a very exciting launch for us. The WA-44 has long been a dream of ours to offer but it took time to source the right vintage-correct ribbon and magnet to be able to offer this classic sound at such an affordable price. The WA-19 revives a studio classic that may be lesser known, but brings back a unique tone in the world of dynamic mics. The original was used to capture overheads, drums, and vocals for the Beatles and we’ve been stunned at the rich top-end detail we’ve been able to capture with the WA-19 compared to the standard studio dynamic mics. And, of course, we wanted to ensure that if you didn’t have a high-quality preamp, you could get powerfully clean gain when using a ribbon or low-output dynamic mic, so we developed an inline lifter preamp with added pro features.
Bryce Young, founder and President of Warm Audio
More about the Warm Audio WA-44, WA-19, and Warm Lifter:
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Image Sources:
- WA-44: Warm Audio
- Foam case.: Warm Audio
- Top view.: Warm Audio
- Input.: Warm Audio
- Output.: Warm Audio
