This EQ is a bit of a combination of the legendary sontec 250 and GML (hi-shelf) EQ’s but with Burr Brown opamps and Fred Forsell DOA 993 discrete opamps in the output. All controls are stepped switches which means a massive 800 resistors all soldered point2point by hand. A lot of work but worth all the time, money and effort and I am proud to own and built this one of a kind masterpiece. This really is a one of a kind EQ.

Barry Porter (2001) was known for some great electronic designs. He left a brilliant EQ design behind which begged to be build, and so I did back in 2012. I was basically the first to built this while using the original design. More people followed after this built.

The Barry Porter NetEQ is known to be a really transparant and very musical sounding design, but I made it even more transparant and minimalistic with less capacitors and better opamps. Because I use it as a mastering EQ, total recall is a no-brainer and so I used stepped switches. This means over 700 resistors all soldered by hand.

The Foote Control Systems P3S Mastering edition is used by a lot of mastering-studio’s worldwide for a reason. It can be very transparant, doing it’s thing without letting you know it’s even in the chain. But it can also growl a bit more when changing the time-constant mode to N/L for example.

The only thing I missed was more control over the sidechain filtering, so I decided to built myself a nice and neat sidechain frequency selector with full options. Besides 8 different HPF frequencies (default is 74hz) I also implemented the API THRUST® circuit in Med and Hi mode, which I also loved in a long gone GSSL compressor I built years back. This circuit, according to API, is used for ‘a chest-hitting, punchy bottom end’ which is indeed true, it can give power to the lowend by simply leaving it alone but sill taking care of the mids and highs. You can never have enough control over your compression can’t you? 🙂

The D-AOC is an optical tube compressor with a ‘set and forget’ functionality. The original design was done by Analag from the GroupDIY board and was later modified to be more flexible. I did my own version of this nice, transparant compressor with Lundahl input and output transformers and Mullard tubes.

For mastering recall is a must, so I used stepped switches and I also modified it to have 3 curve-modes by using multiple vactrols. It works great on acoustical music and it adds a nice distinguished tube and transformer sound. I love this green beast!

This is a one of a kind Vari-Mu tube compressor based on a PM670 compressor, but it’s different, way different.. The design was decent but had quite a lot of distortion and it messed up the lowend. This one has a LOT of modifications like Cinemag transformers, matched tubes, floating balancing, a more powerful sidechain section with both solid state and tubes, HPF and lots more. All of these modifications resulted in a yellow beast with one set of controls for both channels that does not just looks great, its sounds even better.

When pushed hard the tubes and transformers really add something massive to the lowend and also the highs can really sparkle and shine. It’s punchy and wild, but it can also do it’s job really subtle and just add a bit of character which you simply can not get with plugins. While most compressors go to 10 or some go to 11, this one goes louder, it goes to 11 and a half..  😉 That is why I named it, the Mu666.