RMS12a
A long lost microphone from the golden era was the AKG C12a. While a successor to the venerable C12, it shares nothing with its older brother except for the beauty of the original CK12 capsule, a genius design in microphone engineering. We built the RMS12a upon the original CK12a design but with some modern enhancements including a true cardioid polar pattern adding better signal to noise ratio in the cardioid pattern, a fully regulated modern power supply, ultra quiet 1% metal film resistors, polystyrene filter capacitors, Neutrik 7-pin XLR connectors and a high-quality wet tantalum output capacitor.
This mic has tons of SPL handling anything thrown at it including drum overheads, guitar cabs, etc., but also excels on vocals and acoustic instruments as its super quiet, and just a plain cool sounding vintage tube mic. We modeled this after a few original C12a's that we were working on and realizing we could make them a little better. One of the drawbacks of the cathode follower design is a lower output than a typical tube/condenser mic. However, we addressed that by adding a true cardioid pattern with the use of a remote relay triggered by the polarity knob on the power supply and a small change to the output transformer turns ratio which ended up adding a few db to its output and a better signal-to-noise ratio. Anything that comes through this mic sounds better on its way out!
The RMS12a is also offered in matched pairs. Please contact us for pricing.
Details:
- Cinemag CM-11021 Transformer
- True multi-chambered CK12 capsule
- NOS JAN 7586 Nuvistor Tube – hand selected for low noise and microphonics
- Vishay Wet Tantalum output capacitor
- Modern, handmade PSU with all polar patterns
- Vintage style tube cable
- Custom aluminum flight case & shockmount included
