Seems Like Xformers are Worth Their Weight in Gold Now

[emrr]

As for the Triad pair shown above, I have a couple of those along with about a dozen of the A-65J’s (15k:600/150 parafeed output). Talk about milky/smeared. if you want color, it’s there, but might not be the color you’re looking for.

I wonder what happens to these prices over time as the younger folks start dominating the market. Younger musicians and aspiring engineers lately ask me why I even bother with hardware, something I didn’t get asked much just a few years ago.

Milky/smeared is it exactly with many Triads. The actual famous 'tone' of the Pultec! I had a whole pile of HS-66's I got for $10 apiece in the late '90's, they were occasionally nice 'milk softeners' on harsh electric guitars in a mix, but that was about it. I was more than happy to let them go when the market went crazy building Pultec clones.

The vintage transformer market was never recording, it's always driven by foreign hifi people. It doesn't mean those trying to sell understand that, thus the wild claims and prices, most just afraid of selling too low in a market they don't actually know.

 

[skipwave]

Sorry if you don't agree but it's just my honest opinion and experience

Nothin’ to be sorry for. We all have our preferred workflow.

Do you track through plug-ins? use effects in your monitoring chain?

I wanted to mix on physical faders and couldn’t find a control surface that I liked, so I got an analog mixer. Then I was reminded that interfacing all the outboard gear into an analog workflow takes a ridiculous amount of cabling. Now I’m tempted to rely entirely on plugins and use the mixer only for summing.

The appeal of tracking through outboard is still strong for me, especially given the option of splitting to capture the dry signal. It’s analog with undo. Most times it’s just about giving the performer something fun to monitor. With very polished performers all you need is a little reverb in the cans.

 

[skipwave]

As for the Triad pair shown above, I have a couple of those along with about a dozen of the A-65J’s (15k:600/150 parafeed output). Talk about milky/smeared. if you want color, it’s there, but might not be the color you’re looking for.

I have a pair of A-69J on the outputs of OneBottle preamps and they never get used. I always opt for switching them out and taking the unbalanced outs. Smeary, oh so smeary.

 

[eskimo]

Does anyone happen to have a sound example of said milky/smeary?

 

[Whoops]

Nothin’ to be sorry for. We all have our preferred workflow.

Do you track through plug-ins? use effects in your monitoring chain?

Hi mate,
I don't use plugins when tracking, I will use for sure analog Compressors and EQ's when recording (depending on what is available in the studio), but I rarely record nowadays as 90% of my work in the last years is Mixing and Mastering.
I'm into using analog hardware processing before the A/D conversion, and leaving the processing inside the computer after it's converted to Digital.
I'm not really into Summing outside the computer, I used it for years. We had an SSL4K G console, Phoenix Nicerizer and a Dangerous summing box, we used any of those for summing but one day I did some experiments with In The Box Summing and Analog summing and I discovered that I was not only not gaining anything but I was loosing somethings.

I still think analog hardware and transformers are Sexy

 

[skipwave]

Does anyone happen to have a sound example of said milky/smeary?

I can make one

The fact that I don’t have any is because I always switch those Triads out of the circuit, every time.

I thought they would be helpful for drum overheads with overly bright cymbals, but all the drummers I record seem to love Zildjian K’s