Warm Audio WA-251 Tube Microphone Tested: Powerful

Record with the sound of the legendary 251 at a more user-friendly price. This sound has been a classic on hit recordings over the last 50 years, a characteristic tube flavor that became world-famous in 1960. The WA-251 pays tribute to this vintage classic with lively, organic results, and its price stands out.

A big challenge

Recreating a legendary super-classic is undoubtedly an interesting gamble: truly achieving that warm tone and first-rate components while lowering the final cost to the user. Vintage 251s are truly prohibitive and within reach of very few.

The company says that to create the WA-251 they spent a lot of time listening to different "251" models to determine precisely what people liked about them and why, analyzing the components that undoubtedly affect the mic's final tone. By their account, it was a complex task, since some of the period components were hard to come by.

A professional tool for getting very warm tube tones that recreate the legendary 251 of the '60s and '70s

It is a large-diaphragm, multi-pattern tube condenser mic designed for studio applications (professional or home, for demanding users), although they also claim it works well in live and broadcast settings. It is designed to capture a wide range of sources with that vintage tube flavor: vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, acoustic and electric basses, vintage drum sounds, brass instruments and a long list as varied as your imagination can stretch in that warm, back-to-the-past context so fashionable today.

In 1960 it was very common to see the 251 used as a vocal mic. Today it is considered one of the most powerful condenser mics in history. So much so that it is easy to find in professional studios (with a budget, of course).

Unboxing

This is a very carefully crafted edition, as could only be the case for a reissue of the legendary 251. An elegant wooden case holds this attractive brass-finished mic. Even before you start, you feel as if you have a little collector's gem in your hands.

The included components follow the same line: a well-finished shock mount that holds the mic firmly. Also, as I mentioned above, there is a 7-pin cable from Swiss company Gotham Audio and a US-made power supply with the same finish and sturdy look.

The sound

Testing this gear has been really interesting. You can sense its character from the very first moment. The WA-251 is a very warm microphone that captures acoustic instruments and "wood" in general with a very lively and especially organic tone. We did a large number of tests on vocals and acoustic guitars. With the latter (guitars) we broadened the field of experimentation enormously, both in recordings with different polar patterns and distances between instrument and mic, and in combined stereo takes with other mics, mixing Shure large diaphragms, AKG small diaphragms and WA-251 takes.

There is a very noticeable difference between one mic and another. The wealth of nuance multiplied exponentially when we added the WA-251 to our toolkit of capture tools.

A lively, warm tone. The range of ambiences you can achieve using (only) the WA-251 is very varied, from very dark tones with full lows to bright, more metallic signals. To do so, all we have to do is play with the polar pattern selector and the distance/position of the source relative to the microphone.

A very warm microphone that captures acoustic instruments and "wood" in general with a very lively and especially organic tone

As for preamps, we used some Focusrites to go straight into Pro Tools, where we later corrected and mixed: panning, compression and EQ. The palette of tones we got is very generous, leading us to conclude that it is a very appealing tool for getting natural, vintage mic recordings, all without losing the versatility that makes it a fairly flexible tool in certain contexts.

Later we added the TUBE EQP-WA between the mic and the DAW, although the real meat is in the EQ, whether for mastering or for warm, versatile tonal shaping of a track's signal. The range of possibilities keeps growing, with a very satisfying sense of having powerful tools to successfully overcome many of the challenges we will face in subsequent recording sessions. But we will talk about the EQP-WA Program Equalizer in the next chapter, since it deserves its own space.

How it's built

The mic uses a JJ 12AY7 tube from the Slovak Republic. Warm Audio tested tubes from three brands and got hooked on this model because of its frequency response and the smooth, classic way it contributes to the sound.

The unit's entire capsule is brass, with no intermediate Teflon parts, with edge finishing that captures smoothness and a top end that enhances the warm tones and the very special vintage sounds of the original CK12 capsule. It also uses a variant of the CEK-12 backplate as its basis, which overcomes the limitations of the original. Its diaphragm is a "Nos Pet" film sputtered with 24k gold. The result is a truly consistent, reliable capsule that matches the frequency response and tonality of the classic 1970s capsule.

It is powered through a US-made CineMag transformer, which helps deliver optimal performance for its capacitors, made of polystyrene and Wima, plus a French Solen capacitor.

Although this detail often goes unnoticed, the seven-pin cable connecting the mic to the power supply makes the shielding especially robust, which can completely change the resulting sound of a tube mic. To achieve this, Warm Audio partnered with Gotham Audio in Switzerland. The end result is the carefully built, high-end GAC-7 cable.

Using this cable increases signal presence at the top end and widens the overall image of stereo recordings, while also reducing phase shift and the "parasitic effect" that usually occurs with low-quality cables. In short, it is a high-quality boutique cable that adds more to this package than you might think.

Polar patterns

The front of the power supply has the 7-pin connection that goes to the mic and the XLR output that goes to the input of our console, preamp, EQ or interface. We also find the polar pattern selector, offering the following choices.

Omnidirectional

Sound is captured with the same intensity from all sides of the mic. It is an ideal polar pattern for capturing sources that have several emitters, for example a choir or vocal groups singing around the mic.

In general it is a very realistic pattern, or rather a very natural one, so it is very well suited to recording acoustic instruments. If we are working with a choir, we can move the singers farther from or closer to the mic depending on the strength of their voices, creating a balanced take.

Cardioid

The cardioid polar pattern is very common in pop music recordings. Cardioid polarity is characterized by picking up the signal from the front, on-axis. In other words, sources in front will be picked up more strongly than those to the sides. Off-axis, that is, at the rear, the mic rejects incoming signal.

This prevents unwanted reflections or noise that may come from nearby "sources," such as a computer or an amp, which we should place behind the mic.

Figure 8

A third option, in which the mic picks up signals from the front and the back but rejects those coming from the sides. When recording a duo of singers, or two guitarists (looking for very natural sounds), we could place one at each position (front and back). The take will be somewhat more natural than if we recorded the two tracks separately. We can also use the mic for a single source when applying stereo techniques or if we want to capture the source's nuances in a different way.

The figure-eight polar pattern is also characterized by noticeably amplifying the proximity effect, giving denser lows. This disadvantage(?) could be put to use to add body to singers with thinner voices or to other instruments that need more thickness and body.

Conclusions

The conclusion can be summed up as the intersection between a "big indulgence" of a mic for your studio and a professional tool for getting very warm tube tones that recreate the legendary 251 of the '60s and '70s. When you enter the world of microphones and learn to capture nuances that will give richness and quality to your recordings, you fall into a vicious state of anxiety that makes you want to complete your collection. As always, you will have to assess your recording contexts, but this mic is one of those that make you want it.

You do have to invest a bit of money (€800/900), but compared to the classic it honors, it gives you access to timbres and tones that are hard to achieve with other versions of the 251.