500 Series EQ Goodies

A couple days ago I rearranged my 500 series rack gear… And couldn’t resist taking some photos 🤗 These are two of my favorite EQ modules at Pique Recording!

The Trident A-Range EQ (first 2 photos) features a Sowter input transformer, and inductors on the high and low mid bands. These EQ’s sound super smooth, and they particularly love guitars. Their design is completely discrete and a faithful recreation of the original four band A-Range eq from the early 70s. Only 13 of these consoles were ever made - one of which most famously lived at Cherokee studios in Los Angeles and recorded records for David Bowie, Rod Stewart and Frank Sinatra. Again, in the 90s, the A Range had a resurgence of hits when one was used at Smart Studios in Madison WI. Producer Butch Vig made records through an A-Range by The Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Tad, and more.

In the opposite corner, the Elysia Xfilter is a modern Class-A technology, true stereo EQ made in Germany. Elysia prides itself on the highest quality component tolerances …and it can be heard! This eq lives on my master 2bus channel and sweetens final mixes. I particularly like the sound of the HighMid band to bring out detail in the 5K frequency area. It can really help a mix bloom and give it a polished/more expensive sound 👌🏼

Thanks Wikipedia and the respective brand websites for the detailed info here 🤙🏼