When to Give Up

If you’ve followed my microphone reviews and opinions, you might know that I am a big fan of Electrovoice’s RE-18 Variable-D hand-held vocal mic. I bought my first RE18 in the 70’s, new, and I’ve owned a dozen or so since. In experiments with a variety of vocalists, I’ve found this microphone to be superior to almost every other live vocal I’ve ever used. In every area (except one), the RE18 excels: handling noise, off-axis rejection and frequency response, proximity effect control (Variable-D), max SPL, distortion, clarity, humbucking noise-rejection, and durability. The one negative, repairability, is the focus of this article.

At one time, Electrovoice offered a “lifetime warranty” on all RE series microphones. After a few years of downsizing, being aquired by a variety of conglomerates, and lowered expectations, that “lifetime” is currently being defined as a "limited lifetime warranty on the acoustic element (due to defect in materials or workmanship), defined as ten years from the last date of the products manufacture." EV seems to have “lost” all of the technical information regarding many of the company’s most respected products, including the RE18, but I suspect that mic went out of production in the late 80’s when EV had all but disappeared from professional audio. Even getting an EV tech support person to admit that the RE18 ever existed requires arm-twisting.

One of the best features of the RE18 was it’s amazing lack of handling noise. That capability as created by incorporating shock-isolation between the element and steel outer case that used butyl-rubber doughnuts and viscous damping fluid. The foam breath and pop filtering was pretty sophisticated, too. To this date, I have not been able to find anything resembling a description of the parts required to repair this shock isolation system and it’s clear that 30+ years of use or improper storage will turn all of those parts into an unrecognizable mess of disolving chemicals. The shock isolation system for my RE18 remains incapacited.

With the assistance of the one helpful tech service person at EV, I was able to obtain a replacement foam filter and Variable-D baffle for their current version of the RE16, but that is a long way from anything used in the original RE18 design. The RE18 used a 3-layer pop filter system, but the RE16 is just typical low density foam. The once-impervious to vocal plosives and sibilance distortion RE18 is rendered passable with the RE16 replacement material.

After decades of recommending this microphone to vocalists of all sorts, I have to give in to the facts and admit that without some sort of support from the manufacturer or someone who was once involved in the design and/or production of this wonderful microphone repairing the RE18 is no longer practical. And, except in incredibly rare instances, I think you will find that upon removing the metal screen that every RE18 is likely in desperate need of serious repair. Typically, the foam has turned to a nasty combination of dust and sticky adhesive and the rubber shock mounts are likely totally deteriorated and there is no evidence that the viscous damping fluid ever existed or any way to determine what it once looked like for the purposes of fabricating a replacement system.

The RE18 shows up often on eBay and Reverb.com; often with an asking price of $200-or-more. Knowing that the microphone is likely in an unrepairable and deteriorating condition, it makes no sense to invest that kind of money in a once-terrific instrument. I would not, under any conditions, pay more than $100 for an excellent condition RE18 and sight-unseen (and before disassembly and inspection) no more than $20 for an on-line sale. At the absolute least, ask the seller to remove the metal screen and take a picture of the foam being distorted with a finger or blunt object to determine if that material is in a state of extreme decay. Usually, when the screen is unscrewed and removed the foam will fall out in pieces and clumps of dust.

Organization? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Organization

I have a pair of Electro-Voice RE-18’s in the shop that need, I hope, minor repair. The RE-18 was one of the best handheld vocal microphones ever made by anyone in audio history. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking with it because I’ve owned about a dozen of these amazing tools and everyone has been terrific. Every vocalist I’ve taught to use the RE-18 has taken to the microphone like it was a revelation. Every FOH engineer I’ve convinced to try the RE-18 has fallen in love with the mics. Obviously, the RE-18 was doomed to failure in an industry where the SM58 is considered “good enough” when it is obviously barely competent as a talkback mic or a taxi company dispatcher’s desk mike.

When I wrote EV’s misnamed “Technical Services” about obtaining repair parts for the RE-18, the response was, “Unfortunately, we no longer have parts or service to support this series." Although this was a very good mic it was discontinued around 1990.” I, of course, knew all of that except for the non-existent parts supply and EV’s arbitrary decision to discontinue their lifetime warranty, “Also, these microphones are guaranteed without time limit against malfunction in the acoustic system due to defects in workmanship and material.” [Words taken right from the RE-18’s Product Manual.] That warranty was one of the reasons EV was able to ask a premium price on all of the RE Series microphones: $350 back when an SM58 had a street price of $75. Bosch, a German company, has no clue how to deal with customer service, manage quality, or produce a competent product: a typical condition for German companies. Nothing new here. If a German company didn’t totally hose up customer service functions, I’d be suspecting someone else actually owned the company.

EV does, however, still make and sell the RE-16. Many of the RE-16;s parts are identical or close enough for practical purposes. After going around via email with the “we no longer have parts or service” Tech Service guy, I called Tech Services today. Same song and dance, except this guy knew he didn’t know much and really, really wanted to transfer me to “Parts.” Usually, I have had to go through Tech Service to get part numbers and/or assembly drawings. At EV/Bosch, Tech Service has none of that. In fact, I have to wonder what technical services Tech Services can provide without actual product information at hand.

Lucky for me, the woman who answered the parts call was, essentially, an actual Tech Services technician. We quickly identified the parts I wanted to buy, she priced them, she told me when I’d receive those parts (about 14 days), and took my order.

All of this hassle could have been easily resolved with a simple parts manual/service data sheet, like the one that is well-distributed and easily found for the RE-20. The fact that this information doesn’t seem to be even in-house at EV/Bosch is disturbing. A lot of companies seem to think manufacturing or service information is “proprietary” information. That philosophy is excessively customer-hostile and leads the company down a path of becoming known for lowered capabilities and lowered expectations from customers turns into lower performance. That results in lower price points because customers assume the company’s products are poor quality, poorly designed, poorly supported, and incompetently represented at all ends of the product chain. That is certainly what has happened to EV over the last 40 years. From a well-known, often used microphone supplier and technical resource in the early days through the 70’s, EV has slowly become a second tier company, mostly known for cheap knock-off microphones and with no real presence in the condenser market at all. In fact, the RE-20 is probably the company’s only well known, well respected microphone. That seems like a pretty serious problem.

REVIEW: Electro-Voice RE18

Electro-Voice was once one of the great American audio companies who pioneered much of the technology that we use everyday. Like RCA, Shure, JBL, Altec-Lansing, AT&T and Bell Telephone, EV was once an industry leader who created products with reputations that would out-live the company's ability to sustain that kind of brilliance.

A few years ago, one of my classes took on the task of identifying the best hand-held vocal mic available. We had an opportunity to look at Neuman's KMS 104/105s, Sennheiser's e 965, Shure's KSM9, EV's RE-410, and the usual suspects of dynamics (SM58, SM57, etc.). The end result of that test was that we recommended the school buy several of the Sennheiser microphone.

After the test was completed, we continued to play with the Neuman and Sennheiser in a variety of live applications. One result of that activity was the paranoid-seeming warning in my shootout write-up: "WARNING! There is one big downside to using condensers in a live environment that should be discussed before you ever consider this adventure: cables and phantom power. The live environment is not conducive to cable integrity and 48VDC can deliver a driver-shattering blast when it is toggled off and on through a defective mic cable. Before using a hand-held condenser on stage, you should be very careful in selecting the mic cable for this application and consider the talent and cable-abuse-tendencies of the performer. If there was ever a good time to consider quad-star mic cables, this is probably it." As much as I love condenser microphones in all of their musically accurate glory, cheap cables and live sound and condensers do not mix well.

The school's live stage equipment is pretty abused and marginally maintained, so my recommendation to buy the e965s was probably less enthusiastic than it might have been after a few near-catestrophic phantom-popping events. One result from those moments was that I included a pair of my personal RE-18's in a later comparison. While I have always loved these microphones, it was eye-opening to hear my ancient (1980's vintage) microphones stood up to the best modern technology. At first, all of us had difficulty telling the Sennheiser from the EV. The clarity of both microphones was head-and-shoulders above the usual SM58 muddle, but the RE-18's lack of proximity and sibilance control was noticably better than the Sennheiser. Handling noise was also better in the EV. In the hands of one of the school's best vocal instructor/performers, the EV performed like a studio microphone; providing incredible isolation from the stage instrumentation and near-transparent reproduction of her voice.

If you look at the RE-18's spec sheet, you'll find that the manufacturer provided a collection of specifications that are uncommon in today's market. My favorite nearly-non-existent specification is "off-axis reponse." This is never a pretty chart, as much as we'd like to imagine cardioid microphones are really cardioid. As ugly as it is, this chart (left) is about as good as it gets in vocal microphones.  With as little as 15dB of off-axis rejection in the upper-range and 50-150Hz and as much as 20-30dB in the upper mid-range to 10kHz, the RE-18 is a very directional microphone. There is no specification for shock-isolation, but the RE-18 is multiply rubber-mounted from case: everything from the step-up transformer to the element are shock-mounted and handling noise is all but non-existent.

If you would like a general description of the RE-18, S.O. Coutant does a fine job on his excellent microphones website: http://www.coutant.org/evre18/index.html. However, the best sonic description I can provide is "clarity." Voices through the RE-18 cut through the mix without equalization or a particularly high level. Like the condenser hand-helds, the RE-18 does not provide the low-mid honk of the SM-58 and that is what many live engineers have come to describe as "presence" on their way to hearing impairment.