In 1976 David Blackmer built the first solid-state VCA compressor and changed recording forever. The 160 is brutally simple, three knobs and a big switchable VU, but it does one...
The 160S is dbx founder David Blackmer's high-end reimagining of his own legendary 160 VCA compressor, hand-built in the boutique Blue Series. A true-stereo (or dual-mono) VCA compressor with that...
The legendary dbx Boom Box: an all-analog subharmonic synthesizer that doesn't just boost your bass, it manufactures it. Feed it a signal and it tracks the bass already there, synthesizes...
The Warm Audio WA76 is a faithful, fully-discrete take on the legendary 1176 FET compressor, the one that has slammed drums, vocals and bass on countless hit records. Lightning-fast attack,...
The LA-2A is the most famous compressor in the world, and for good reason. This is Universal Audio's faithful reissue of the early-60s Teletronix classic, point-to-point hand-wired in California, using...
Ask a roomful of engineers to name one compressor they cannot live without and a scary number will say the Distressor. Since 1995, Dave Derr's EL8 has been the go-to...
The 1176 is the other most-famous compressor in the world (the FET one), and this is Universal Audio's hand-built reissue of the blackface 1176LN, true to Bill Putnam's D/E-rev design....
If you could own one stereo bus compressor for the rest of your life, a frightening number of top engineers would name the Neve 33609. Derived from the legendary 2254...
The Boss BX-600 is a tidy little six-channel stereo mixer from Roland's Boss line: gain, pan, effect send and volume per channel, a built-in effect loop and that dependable 80s...
The DRV-3000 is Korg's dual digital effects processor from the back end of the 80s, and it carries that slightly gritty, characterful early-digital voice that producers now chase on purpose....
The M5000 was TC's flagship Digital Audio Mainframe, a modular, software-upgradable processing platform that became a studio benchmark for reverb in the 90s and never really left. Engineers still rank...
The Yamaha CA-X1 is a gorgeous slice of late-70s silver-faced hi-fi: a natural-sound integrated amplifier with twin output-level VU meters, a satisfying heavy volume wheel, and that clean, slightly warm...
The AKG BX20E is the king of spring reverbs: a torsional transmission-line spring system in its own substantial cabinet, giving long, lush, three-dimensional decays that sit somewhere between a plate...
The Maxon AD-150 is a rackmount bucket-brigade analog delay from the company behind Ibanez's classic effects. Warm, dark repeats, gentle modulation and that organic BBD smear digital cannot fake.A lovely,...
Released in the early 1970s, the TEAC AX-300 is a 6:4 analog mixer built for the golden age of home multitrack. Conceived as the mixing companion to TEAC's legendary 4-channel...
If a record sounds good on NS-10s, it sounds good everywhere, which is why these white-coned Yamahas ended up on the meter bridge of nearly every serious studio on earth....