The Original Lead Vocal Mic
The WA-44 faithfully recreates the most iconic studio ribbon microphone of all time. Just like the legendary RCA 44BX ribbons of the 1930s loved by crooners, band leaders, drummers, upright bassists, producers and more, the WA-44 delivers powerful bass with a pronounced proximity effect, lush mids, and a tamed top end. The WA-44 excels on loud audio source and delivers the iconic warm, vintage, & sultry tones, which is what made the original the mic of choice for some of the most legendary vocalists including Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald, Jeff Tweedy, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash and many more. With elite build quality and vintage-matched, premium components, the WA-44 faithfully captures the iconic tonal experience at the center of recording and broadcast history.
Vintage-Correct Ribbon & Custom Transformer
With a boutique-quality build and design, the WA-44 is manufactured with exacting quality standards to match the most prized original 1930s-era RCA 44BX vintage mics. The WA-44 ribbon is 99.1% aluminum, true-to-length, 2.5 microns-thick, and custom-crafted in Japan. Paired with the ribbon is a heavy, true-to-size Neodymium magnet designed to create a strong magnetic field capable of delivering nuances and detail in the midrange. The ribbon and magnet are powered by a USA-made CineMag transformer built to reproduce true-to-vintage tone with added modern reliability. Weighing in at over six pounds, the WA-44 revives this classic design with a premium build of intricate and rugged metal work that is ready for every day studio use and abuse. The WA-44 Includes an attached Star-Quad shielded Gotham XLR cable connector, embroidered protective mic sock, and molded case. Add in that all WA-44s are carefully hand-inspected & tested at Warm Audio Headquarters in Austin, Texas and what remains is truly an unprecedented value for a premium ribbon microphone.
Sultry, Rich, And Never-Harsh In The High-End
True to the vintage original, the WA-44 has an instantly recognizable sound profile, capturing powerful bass, rich midrange, and never-harsh highs with enhanced proximity effect. The WA-44 shows off its warm forgiving tone by taming top-end harshness for smooth lead tones on vocals, horns, drums, pianos, strings and more. Like its inspiration, the WA-44 excels when the goal is to capture intricate low and midrange detail on loud audio sources. The tight figure-8 polar pattern creates opportunities in the studio to capture unique tones that work perfectly in the mix by rejecting side-address noise and reproducing reflections from the back of the mic. A great choice for vocal or instrument recordings that benefit from a reduction in high-end frequencies, the WA-44 is ideal for capturing haunting horn sections, resonant acoustic instruments, sultry strings, flat drum sounds, deep piano tones, and much more.
How The Pros Use Vintage-Style Ribbons
Like all vintage 44-style passive ribbon mics, the WA-44 needs a sufficient amount of gain to bring out the full frequency spectrum of tone and sonic characteristics of the mic. While the best choice is to use a premium, discrete all-analog mic preamp like the WA-MPX, WA73 series, or WA12 series of preamps, a great alternative is using Warm Audio’s active inline preamp, the Warm Lifter, to add 26dB of clean analog gain between the mic and any XLR preamp input. Gain on audio interfaces is frequently underpowered. Even when 65+ dB of gain is advertised, the resulting tone often sounds thin and introduces unwanted noise and sonic artifacts. Warm Lifter puts a high-impedance mic pre with pure analog gain, tone filtering, and balanced JFET input at your fingertips at an incredible size and price.
Premium Components - Elite Build Quality - Superior Sound
Custom-Crafted Japanese Ribbon
The WA-44 houses a 99.1% pure aluminum ribbon, custom-made in Japan, reminiscent of vintage RCA 44 mics. Its true-to-length, nearly 60mm length and 2.5-microns thick size distinguishes it, enriching its sound compared to smaller ribbon designs. Ribbon purity is paramount for detail and frequency response; even slight impurities can dampen output and clarity, elevating the noise floor. The WA-44 is encased in an ultra-durable steel body with an intricate headbasket metalwork providing ample space around the ribbon.
Large-Core USA-Made CineMag Transformer
The WA-44 utilizes a custom, American-Made CineMag output transformer. The transformer inside the WA-44 delivers the rich depth and character of the ribbon - including the lush mids and smooth highs. The CineMag inside the WA-44 also helps the mic pair well with modern preamplifiers and studio equipment, even providing some protection against accidental use of 48v phantom power.
Robust Neodymium Magnet
The ribbon inside the WA-44 is suspended between the poles of a premium, heavy Neodymium magnet. While the vintage original RCA 44 ribbon mics used AlNiCo magnets, Neodymium magnets are significantly stronger than AlNiCo magnets, and have become the new standard in premium ribbon microphone manufacturing. This allows for a more efficient conversion of sound energy to electrical signal in the ribbon microphone. Neodymium is also much less susceptible to degradation and will last much longer in regular use.
Gotham AG Premium Cable
Often overlooked, the cable connecting a microphone to its preamp is quite a critical element of the signal chain. The WA-44 uses a Star-Quad shielded “pigtail style” XLR cable from Gotham, Switzerland. The design and build quality of this cable increases top end presence and the overall size of the recorded image in the stereo field by reducing phase shift and the parasitic effect often found in poorly built cables.
