Drawmer 1961 Stereo Vacuum Tube Equalizer.
The Drawmer 1961 review
The 1961 has become my real favorite on guitar sounds. The frequency bands are chosen perfectly and the width and boost provide really nice shaping features. I say boost because I don’t tend do anything else with this EQ especially on guitars. Just like the Manley it is by far not just a mastering machine. My Kick and Snare go through it and even Vocals. You can add such roundness to the bass and a really nice air in the top-end on all instruments as the 1961 is going up to 25k and 50k for the Low-Pass.
“Distortion would make a hi-fi enthusiast cringe, but the subjective result is a very slight thickening of the bass end and a subtle lifting of high-frequency detail. This may be used to good effect both on whole mixes and on individual parts such as vocal tracks, where a conventional mic can be endowed with some of the tonal attributes of a tube model. Initially, I thought I might find the switched filter frequencies rather restricting, but in practice, the correct choice of bandwidth or Octave seemed to be more important”, reviews Paul White in this SOS Magazine article.
Paul White continues: “It has long been recognized that vacuum tubes impart a unique sound and musicality to an audio signal. The design of the 1961 allows the user to control the amount of colouration by deciding how hard to drive the tubes giving a sound as clean as the best discrete solid state designs or as hot as the hottest classic tube designs. The 1961 and 1960 can be interlinked using the insert section or daisy-chaining to provide, in effect, a two channel vacuum tube mixing console for recording signals direct to tape/daw. The perfect audio ‘sweetening’ tool.
Each channel of the 1961 has four main equalizer sections with six carefully chosen overlapping frequencies, a separate tube stage for increased harmonic clarity, variable band width and +18dB of Cut and Boost. A variable input level of -20dB to +20dB ensures compatibility with a wide range of input source material and enables the user to optimize signal level and drive the tubes ‘soft’ or ‘hot’ as required. Two additional tube stages in the output section of each channel allow the user to achieve ‘soft clipping’ by adjusting the input level control whilst visually monitoring the effect upon the Soft and Overload LED’s.”
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