Building a portable tracking lunchbox - compressor recommedations

[canidoit]

I have a 3 slot Sm Pro juicebox 500 series chassis and so far I have my onlymee Nv73 and Peters EQN eq, and wanting to find a compressor for the last slot. Still trying to decide whether I get one with vibe or transparency.

Here are my options for 500 series full kits:
- Sound skulptor CP5176
- Sound skulptor mu524
- JLM La500a
- Hairball Fet D

I was really considering Don Classic u76a, but I realised I don't want to be spending time on hunting parts any more (getting old) and they don't have a full kit.

Anyone here ever do a portable setup and what do you guys think?

Should I just buy an IGS 576 ready built?

Thank you.

 

[pucho812]

go with the local team of JLM

 

[Rob Flinn]

The CAPI compressor is pretty good just to make the choice more difficult.

 

[the_racker_reilly]

another vote in favour of the JLM

 

[john12ax7]

You need to decide on flavor, fer or opto. For commercial and fet the bac500 is excellent.

 

[johnsonic]

I really like my JLMs

 

[TwentyTrees]

Depending where you are, the DIYRE OLA5 may also be an optical option - LA-4 style, I like mine. For 1176-style FET, the Hairball is brilliant in my opinion.

Do you have a sense of what flavour of compression you're going for (eg FET, opto, varimu), what sources you'll be tracking, and what you're looking for from your compressor (eg lightly controlling peaks vs overall levelling)? That may help focus the recommendations.

 

[canidoit]

The CAPI compressor is pretty good just to make the choice more difficult.

Hi Rob,

I was considering the capi with their fet compressor, but they don't have it in stock from what I checked.

 

[canidoit]

Depending where you are, the DIYRE OLA5 may also be an optical option - LA-4 style, I like mine. For 1176-style FET, the Hairball is brilliant in my opinion.

Do you have a sense of what flavour of compression you're going for (eg FET, opto, varimu), what sources you'll be tracking, and what you're looking for from your compressor (eg lightly controlling peaks vs overall levelling)? That may help focus the recommendations.

I am really stuck TwentyTrees, I was considering the vari-mu because I do not have one, but then thought, I really need to decide based on an all rounder, great on vocals and instruments, but mostly vocals.

Anyone ever have a portable setup? I just want something where I can go to a vocalist or musician's house, set it up and get some good recordings. Il just set up one of those mic isolators, some blankets.

 

[TwentyTrees]

I tend to use optical compressors for general purpose vocal compression when tracking remote - either the OLA5 or an old LAZpro LA3A. If I was in your shoes I'd be looking at the JLM LA500a, sounds like it's firmly in the same ballpark.