Favorite Analog Gear: Top 5 Pieces of Gear I Can’t Live Without
As an online sound mixer who also offers music mastering services, I’m no stranger to websites and forums reviewing and discussing analog gear from old to new. Ever since buying my first DBX 160X compressor in 2014, I’ve been on an endless journey to find the pieces that inch me closer to sonic glory. Buying and selling, sometimes trying something out for a day, sometimes a few months. In the last 10 years I’ve found a number of keepers, and a smaller number of pieces I will never say goodbye to. Here is my top 5 pieces of gear I can’t live without:
Louder Than Liftoff Silver Bullet MKII: The Silver Bullet is a “tone amp” with an internal routing matrix that allows processing for mixing and tracking without touching your patchbay. It also includes two high quality preamps, a three-band Baxandall EQ, a “vintage” low pass filter and a feature called Aspect Ratio that enhances the stereo width, height and clarity of your mix. The two tone circuits are modeled after the circuit topologies of API and Neve consoles and can be used individually or in sequence. My Silver Bullet lives on my mix bus for every song I work on. LTL also just released a plugin version, so if you can’t spring for the physical unit go check out the plugin!
Telefunken TF-51: I’ve owned mics by Neumann, Mojave, Lewitt, Rode, Shure and Blue, and worked extensively with others from AKG, Pearlman, and Manley. none of the mics I’ve owned or worked with have given me more bang for my buck than the TF-51. I almost exclusively use it on vocals, with the occasional acoustic guitar recording thrown in, so this is a vocal-focused opinion, but the combination it brings of warmth, smooth brightness and detail is incredible.
WesAudio _Rhea: The Rhea is a stereo vari-mu compressor with digital recall in a 500 series unit. Bringing its tubes and Carnhill transformers to anything that passes through it, there is a warmth and fatness it effortlessly imparts. On top of that, it has a mix knob for parallel compression and THD (total harmonic distortion) function that brings extra sizzle and excitement if desired. I love this unit on everything from guitars to synths to vocals, and the digital recall makes it incredibly user friendly. No more writing down your setting to get that analog juice!
Audioscape Golden58 Stereo Tube Preamplifier: I’ll keep it simple, the Golden58 blew all other preamps I have owned out of the water. Everything you could want out of that “tube sound” come through in spades with this piece. The six tubes make anything put through it sound massive, smooth and gooey warm. It also has line inputs to run anything from you DAW through it, adding to its value. And just look at this thing… It’s just gorgeous.
Antelope Audio Orion 32+: Rounding out my top 5 is my audio interface. While not the sexiest pick, I couldn’t use all of my gear so seemlessly and transpatently without the Orion 32+. With 32 channels of I/O, this is what allows me to use all of the analog gear I have in my workflow without having to touch my patchbay. I’ve owned interfaces from Avid, Universal Audio and Apogee, but none of them touch the crystal clean conversion I get from the folks at Antelope.
So there you have it. Whether it’s getting the perfect vocal, adding vibe and weight or the centerpiece that lets everything talk to each other, all of these tools helps me produce and mix songs at the highest possible level. I highly suggest budding producers, mixing engineers and mastering engineers check out these incredible pieces of analog equipment.
