Anyone do that Warm Audio Mystery Box sale?

[DrewPeterson7]

Snagged one as an impulse buy, that just shipped today. Basically, for $250, they'll send you one of their mics, which most likely will be one of their $299 Jr series mics (which are still fairly well regarded, as good-for-the-money takes on classic mic designs), but there's an outside chance it'll be one or a matched pair of one of their more expensive mics (with the most expensive eligible mic being their WA-8000 at $1300), and one buyer will receive a full 13 mic collection of every eligible mic they're including in the mystery box offer.

I'm pretty well set for the instruments I usually record (acoustic and electric guitar, mostly - bass I go direct, and I sequence drums), but it never hurts to have a few more usable mics lying around, so I impulse ordered one. Worst case, I spent $250 on a mic probably worth around that, and it'll be one option to pull out every now and then. Best case, I spent $250 on something a fair bit nicer, and maybe it'll be a viable alternative to one of my usual go-to's.

Kind of a fun offer, anyway. As far as the "knockoffs of top dollar classic gear" go, Warm Audio is fairly well regarded, so whatever I get, well, I only hope it's not their take on an AKG C414, since I've already got a pair of SE Electroncs SE4400a's, which is their (excellent) take on that design.

 

[Serendipity Records]

I know they’re sold off of Reverb but I cannot seem to find an actual link for the sale?

 

[TalismanRich]

I saw that a few days ago, but I really don't have a need for another mic. Some people have bought mics, and immediately posted them for sale on Reverb. If they were lucky enough to get an expensive mic, they price it a hundred less than retail. I guess it's an easy way to make some extra spending money.

The promotion appears to be over. You can expect the market to be flooded with "Used - MINT WA-47jr" mics.

I saw several FenTone Ribbons and an 87R2 listed already.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

It looks like the promotion IS, indeed, over. But, as Rich pointed out, the sale of mics people didn't actually want should just be getting started, the secondary market should be cheap for a while.

Busy week and I dind't know it had already drawn to an end, otherwise I'd have posted before now. A buddy texted me a link while I was apple picking with my wife and daughter, and I basically gave it one look, decided $250 was "F it!" money for a mic, and ordered one. Even a Jr series will probably occasionally get some use.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

So, good news, bad news.

The good news - I got my mystery box today, and it was NOT a Jr. series mic. Rather, it was a WA-14, their take on an AKG C-414, which is an excellent mic for a lot of things, but not the least of which acoustic guitars, which I record a fair amount of.

The bad news - it's such an obvious pick for acoustics, in fact, that I already own a matched pair of SE Electronics SE4400a's, a C-414 clone, so this was the one mic in the giveaway that, while I didn't really need any of them, I REALLY didn't need this one.

Still, I got a $400 mic for $250, and it really IS a nice sounding mic - this is just a few moments of farting around on a quickly positioned mic facing towards the neck joint fret on my Martin, maybe a foot back, into a CAPI V28 and with no other processing save for a volume boost into a light limiter (that only touched a few of the very peaks) just to get this up to a "sharable" volume.

A bit sloppy, but this was a couple minutes between calls:

(also, especially listening back on my laptop now, there's some noise in here, and that was a combo of me shifting position before the first chord and my headphone cable hitting my arm a few times while playing, the actual self-noise of the mic felt pretty normal to me, even into a fairly hot preamp)

Probably not the right position for the faster flatpicking bits, but the softly strummed chords at the end, in particular, I think sound great.

Now to try to decide if there's any actual reason for me to NEED three C-414 style mics, or if I should just give this one to my dad.

 

[TalismanRich]

Before you give it to your dad, or post it on Reverb or Craigslist, it might be nice to do a good comparison of the SE to the WA. For someone looking for a 414 style mic, they could decide if it was worth the extra $100 to get the SE or worth saving $100 to go with the Warm.

I think that type of info can be invaluable, especially if a WA14 pops up on the Used-Mint marketplace for $350 or less.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

Before you give it to your dad, or post it on Reverb or Craigslist, it might be nice to do a good comparison of the SE to the WA. For someone looking for a 414 style mic, they could decide if it was worth the extra $100 to get the SE or worth saving $100 to go with the Warm.

I think that type of info can be invaluable, especially if a WA14 pops up on the Used-Mint marketplace for $350 or less.

Yeah, you're absolutely right - it's really hard to do a good apples-to-apples comparison of something as position-sensitive as a cardioid condenser mic, but I suppose the best way to go at it would be to put them capsule to capsule, one upside down and the other right side up, and record the same performance into one... My wife is on call this weekend so maybe I can do something during my daughter's nap time. Then, video it and post it on Youtube, I guess, since that's the social media platform I have easily the largest reach on.

If you were looking at something like this, would some strummy chords, isolated and then maybe over bass and drums and identical double tracked performances, be enough? Or what would you want to hear? I'm not a good fingerstyle player so it would mostly be whether you'd find chords or single note stuff the most useful, and if you;d want it solo'd, double-tracked (I prefer double-tracking strummed acoustic parts to stereo micing, when I want "space"), or in a mix...

 

[TalismanRich]

I think some basic acoustic strumming, and picking is a good start. Piano is also a good one as it has a wider frequency range.

When I get a new mic, I'll set up one of my current mics (usually the NT1 for LDC or AKG P170 for SDC) and the new mic and do a bit of guitar and some vocals. I also will shake a tambourine to hear how the top end varies. It's amazing how much a simple tambourine can reveal. I also try to set the preamp to give essentially equal recording levels, and then get silence to gauge self noise. A phone with a 1kHz tone is great for setting level.

I really should set up a white or pink noise track that I can play. Then I could compare my "ear" evaluation to a spectral plot. But I haven't bought a new mic in a few years, so there hasn't been a need.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

I don't have access to a piano, alas... but I'll see what I can do.

I'd hope that the two mics are consistent enough that they should be at least very close to equal volume, but I'll volume match in my DAW before doing anything with them.

Normally I do singlecoil pickup comparisons, so I'll go at it sort of how I'd approach that...

 

[TalismanRich]

A clean sound that is reasonably well known (like a strat into a deluxe reverb) could be useful, but I can change the sound with a few turns of the knobs. It's hard to say if the mic conveys what the original sound is like.

I've seen comparisons where they basically just dial up a metal guitar sound. I just pass them by. Massive distortion can mask so much, and then just picking which one you "like" is meaningless. If your amp is massively shrill and you put a mic on it with no top end, it might make it sound ok in that particular application, but for 99% of the other uses, it would be meaningless.

That's one reason I like using acoustic instruments, but even those can vary.