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hallymusic

Member
Joined
Jun 27, 2015
Messages
8
Hi,
I hope everyone is doing ok. I bought a pair of the WA-87 mics (version 1) on the 2nd hand market a year or so after they had been released. I got them for a good price and although I wasn't expecting a pair of original U87's I did expect that they would get more use in the studio. I'm pretty underwhelmed by them and although I have tried them on lots of different sources I struggle to find their sweet spot.
Are their any mods that people have done to these to breed a bit more life, vibe and character into them... do people have the same underwhelming feeling as I do about these mics?
Any help and advice wil be much appreciated
regards
hally
 
There is not much to it. The circuit is a blind copy of u87. One thing you can do is check the value of the feedback capacitor values, and measure if the feedback network is tuned like in a real u87s. If that checks out, and it should, i believe the issue is the capsule. It is close to impossible to nail real Neumann sound without the real capsule.

There is no "magic" shortcut, or a component you can blindly change to make it sound better. You have to measure them accurately, both circuit and capsule, find the issue, and fix it. 

I feel that way about u87 in general, those were great mics for what they were back in the day, these days in modern production you need lots of eq to make them work. Very flat mics with rolled off both highs and lows.
 
I once had a WA-87 in for repair here.
I was astonished about the build quality...
Capacitors glued to the PCB with the pins protruding through holes in the PCB, just to save teflon feedthroughs...
The whole construction looked like a schoolboy had put it together in the attic!
But most important: it didn't sound anything like a U87.
 
I traced it from pictures on the web and some that were sent to me. I guessed at a few part values and the schematic

So if what I traced is correct

One resistor change did not make sense to me

Gain stage is a little different





 
Thanks for the replies, I have an AI version of the U87 and the WA 87 is nowhere near the vibe of that. As I was saying I never expected the so called clone to match the real thing but I did expect a usable studio mic. I would even feel bad selling these things on without giving full disclosure about their extremely brittle top end and general blandness. In front of the right sourse the my U87 ai can be incredible, a very dark tenor or baritone vocal can be amazing but at the same time a soprano falsettoish female vocal will be ruined by a U87.
Thanks again for the input and thoughts
regards
hally 
 
Thanks for the replies, I have an AI version of the U87 and the WA 87 is nowhere near the vibe of that. As I was saying I never expected the so called clone to match the real thing but I did expect a usable studio mic. I would even feel bad selling these things on without giving full disclosure about their extremely brittle top end and general blandness. In front of the right sourse the my U87 ai can be incredible, a very dark tenor or baritone vocal can be amazing but at the same time a soprano falsettoish female vocal will be ruined by a U87.
Thanks again for the input and thoughts
regards
hally
I was surprised by this assessment because I recently purchased a WA-87, and compared it to a U-87ai that was rented by a NYC production company for my use about a month earlier. I took a short phrase that I recorded with the Neumann and re-recorded it with the WA-87. The Neumann had a slightly fuller bottom end. SLIGHTLY. But the rest of it sounded pretty much identical to the WA-87. I didn't sense the brittle top end you referenced. I DID with the Warm Audio WA-47Jr which I bought on a black Friday sale for $200, though. The top end had the sizzle of a cheap Chinese mic and even worse, the mic body of the 47Jr had too much self-noise with "ringing" resonance. So I sent it back. But I'm generally happy with the WA-87. I think it is closer to the 87ai than was originally intended, whereas the 87 R2 will be closer to the original U-87, which was Warm Audio's original goal to begin with. Their WA-67, however, is my favorite of their lineup. Smooth, with a creamy top end that takes eq beautifully.
 
The issue with the original wa87 is primarily head basket resonance in my experience. The r2 fixes this problem to some degree but not completely. High-end response is also different from an original u87 because I believe the capsule is one of 3u's and it's tuned slightly differently so the feedback circuit has been adjusted to compensate for that. All in all, the r2 is a decent sounding mic but I have heard complaints of build quality
If the person who started the threat is still around, I would suggest seeing if you can't swap head baskets to see what that does.
 
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