People used to find excitement in planning new gear additions for their racks. Now people get even more excited about acquiring new plug-ins for their computers. Strangely enough, the plug-ins that...
The Translator is an interesting little passive device that purports to add “vintage tone” to your stale signals. It’s a small, bright red, inline XLR coupler with a transformer...
My musical tastes are relatively populistic, but I’ve got the merest hint of music snob in my bones. It’s the part of me that recoils when Antares Auto-Tune is used as an overtly applied...
Great River Electronics stalwarts Wes Kuhnley and Peter Bregman have been moonlighting of late, coming up with some promising guitar amp designs as well as a pair of fine guitar pedals. At first...
Here I am, Tape Op’s Gear Geek, butting into an otherwise enthralling review from Joel Hamilton. After reading Joel’s draft of this review of the Yardstick, I asked him to send me the unit...
Next on the 500-series hit parade is Shadow Hills Industries' gorgeous Dual Vandergraph! It's a stereo compressor with roots in Shadow Hills' own Mastering Compressor, a behemoth that has found its...
This past March, I had my first experience recording to tape with CLASP (Closed Loop Analog Signal Processor). CLASP inventor Chris Estes was at Yellow Dog Studios in Austin to help us get started...
If you've heard of Steven Slate and his sample libraries, you're aware of one thing; Steven Slate loves drums. All kinds of drums - big ones, small ones, drums up close, drums far away...... drums,...
Over the years, there have been a variety of tried-and-true compressor/limiter circuit types. For example, VCA was used in the classic dbx 160, FET in the UREI 1176, electro-optical in the Teletronix...
Germany-based Vertigo Sound's first product to market is the VSC-2 Quad Discrete Compressor. The quad part relates to the four VCAs within the VSC-2 and not the number of channels it can process, as...
ART's Pro VLA (Tape Op #37) is one of the best compressors ever made at its price point. You can pick one up new for under $400. It's an electro-optical compressor with a 12AX7 tube gain stage. You...
The Little Devils are designer Wade Chandler's new modules for the 500-series rack system. The Compressor has all the controls to which you've become accustomed in a Chandler compressor, and the...
