With the advent of digital recording, ribbon microphones made a major comeback. Their ability to
record fast transients accurately without adding upper-range resonances became a positive attribute, as
high-frequency transfer loss was no longer a problem. Users have also become more familiar with the
usefulness of a ribbon microphone’s native figure-eight polar pattern and proximity effect bass tip-up.
With fundamental tunings as low as 16 Hz the 44 is the king of bass. The 44 is flat down to 20 Hz from
a distance, and if used closer than six feet starts to have bass tip-up. No wonder announcers love them.
AEA began restoring and repairing RCA ribbon microphones soon after RCA ceased production and
service. In the early 1980s AEA also began servicing and importing STC/Coles 4038 studio ribbon
microphones. Over the next two decades AEA started making replacement RCA parts, and finally
developed a complete set of external parts for the 44 based on the classic RCA 44BX built in Camden,
NJ. During this period appreciation for the 44’s sonic character continued to grow. Antique and radio
collectors also admired them which decreased their availability and increased their price.
Mentored by Jon Sank, one of the last engineers who worked for the RCA microphone division, Wes
Dooley (AEA’s owner and chief engineer) began work on reproducing the interior parts. The 44 had
been produced in Camden, New Jersey; Hollywood, California; London, England; and Australia. While
repairing and analyzing these different versions, Wes and his team correlated which design elements
had the most “pleasing” sound quality for their owners. The AEA R-44C incorporated those design ele-
ments.
The primary difference between the AEA R-44C and the RCA-44B/BX is in the magnets. The RCA-
44B/BX used high-output Alnico magnets, the best available at the time. By the 1990s, neodymium
had replaced Alnico as the best material for this purpose, so it was used in the AES R44C. True to their
origins in providing repair services for these classic microphones, all of the assemblies of the AEA
microphone are directly interchangeable with the original RCA.
AEA’s service department was already fortunate to be using New-Old-Stock (NOS) ribbon mate-
rial from the 1970s that had been made for RCA. Once a custom microphone output transformer was
developed that matched the original RCA sonics, the culmination of this work was the introduction of
the AEA model R44C at the 1998 AES Convention in San Francisco. AEA has continued to make use
of modern technology to create new versions so as to bring this classic microphone closer to Olson’s
ideal: the best microphone possible for music and voice work.
The AEA R-44CNE was released in 2001 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the NAMM (National
Association of Music Merchants, now named the International Music Products Association). As with
RCA 44s produced in England and Australia, the R44CNE has a simplified shell and cushion-mount
assembly. The internal parts are the same as the ‘museum quality” R44C series. By simplifying the
shell and cushion-mount this version sells at a lower price than the model R44C, the 1936 museum rep-
lica.
AEA developed the ‘X’ motor option using higher energy magnets to increase the output of the micro-
phone by 6 dB. This version was developed at the request of scoring mixers who needed a lower noise
floor, and did not need to match exactly the sound of original RCA 44s. This allowed “Lord of the
Rings” scoring engineer John Kurlander to mix his AEA R44 string pair almost as high in the mix as
his main Neumann M-50 tube microphones on the Decca Tree.
