Well, lookee what showed up yesterday! Big thanks to Jeremy Darby up in Canada for helping me procure this RCA BK-10A microphone from the legendary microphone guru Doug Walker, who recently decided to sell his collection.
Yes, it looks like something from a 1950s Cold War–era submarine, or perhaps a power tool your grandfather would have used to open a clogged drain, but what you’re looking at here is a very special microphone. It is one of the rarest RCA microphones ever produced, made in super-limited quantities in the early 1960s for a short period of time (one reason they didn’t make it very long might have been the price—the BK-10A microphone sold for $735, while the flagship RCA 77DX microphone sold for a mere $167.50). There are only a few examples known to exist today.
What makes it so special? The BK-10A is known as the “Perry Como microphone,” even though there don’t seem to be any photos of Como singing into one. The story goes that Como (who was signed to RCA Records) had a very soft natural singing voice. In recording sessions or TV appearances, engineers had great difficulty capturing his soft voice without the “bleed-through” of all the other instruments playing in the room. Most RCA ribbon microphones are great-sounding microphones, but they are barely directional—they pick up a lot of bleed-through.
So RCA’s engineers developed the BK-10A especially for Perry Como by combining two separate BK-5A microphones and a series of vents and acoustical labyrinths. The result was an RCA ribbon microphone with a “Uniaxial” pickup pattern—essentially the only RCA ribbon mic that rejected all the noise from the sides and behind the microphone.
The microphone was a technical breakthrough, but a commercial failure. Most studios were moving toward German condenser mics in the early 1960s, and since the BK-10A cost nearly as much as four normal RCA 77DX microphones, they made very few of these, and then the BK-10A became the stuff of legend. I saw one (and first heard the Perry Como story) several years ago while touring the Bob Paquette microphone museum in Milwaukee with Danny Jay.
Recently, Canadian microphone repair guru Doug Walker decided to sell his collection, and most of the rare and valuable mics in his collection went instantly. Jeremy Darby, a very experienced and knowledgeable recording engineer in Toronto (who I worked with a few years ago on the Millwinders album—you should see Jeremy’s list of credits, WOW), knew that I liked RCA ribbon mics, and reckoned that I might be the proper caretaker for Doug’s BK-10A. The price was reasonable, too, based on the fact that the mic was missing its very unique and custom-made microphone shock mount and clip (hey, if anybody has a BK-10A mic clip for sale…umm, let me know).
The mic showed up yesterday, and within 30 minutes I had it all set up with a Peluso shock mount adapter I had bought for another mic. Does it sound good? Holy hell, yes, it sounds amazing! I immediately recorded a vocal track with it, and it sounded killer. Super smooth, tons of presence, not a low-fi sound at all, quite the opposite. Very, very high fidelity. I can’t wait to try it on drum overheads, saxophones, or any other instruments that would sound good with an RCA ribbon mic, when we need isolation from other instruments. Thanks again Jeremy, and thanks again Doug!
As my ex-wife Jessica used to say, “Oh, so you traded some magic beans for some other magic beans? Good for you.” Ha ha, she was right. This stuff fascinates me, I guess it always will!
