Recording - October 2011 - 61

Learning from scratch The sound of the Nail can best be described as clean, pure, and out of the way. Despite its tube stage, this is not a heavy color box. Instead, its “tubeness” reminds me of the Blue Robbie mic pre or my Millennia twin topology (tube/solid state) gear, where the tubes do just the right job of rounding the top edges and keep the unit from sounding sterile or boring. The Nail has a touch of a learning curve where the Hard Threshold is concerned; you really need to play with it and see how it reacts to your own music before it really makes sense and feels natural to use. Therefore I do want to thank Joshua Aaron, a fanatical Nail evangelist, and regular Recording contributor Mark Hornsby for their tutorials, explanations and even some starter settings. I will also suggest you check out some of Chris Ronan Murphy’s online Nail videos linked from A-Designs’ site, as well as Tony Sheppard’s starter settings in the manual, to get a better idea of how the Nail works and sounds. Yes, it is that different from every other bus compressor when you first take it out for a spin, but once you learn to juggle all of its functions simultaneously then the Nail gets deep and comes to life.

In use I used the Nail on some mixing sessions ranging from modern heavy rock to ’70s-style jazz fusion to straight-up folk, and the first and best advice I got (thanks, Joshua) is to mix into it right from the start. This is of course good advice when using any 2-bus compressor, but where most 2-bus comps are simple pieces, often with minimal controls, this is a finesse piece with a lot of choices. For mix-bus work I set my initial threshold at 2–6 dB of gain reduction, adjusted the Attack and Release according to the feel and flow of

found it very handy for vocal tracking, where the two Thresholds worked more like a limiter to control extreme transients, but still in a natural unclipped-sounding way. It’s also very nice on guitars and drums in a parallel bus setup, and if you want a vintage, smooth, heavy-handed compression, leave the Hard Threshold, Filter and Mix controls off and just dig in hard with the standard Threshold. Conclusions Adjectives that usually get thrown around when describing compressors include “glue”, “slam”, “squash”, “gooey” and the like. For me, none of these really describe the Nail. Sure, it can get pretty heavy-handed and ultra-compressed, but it is not a slam-it-andsmash-it compressor. Instead, this is a very smooth, high-fidelity-sounding box that uses compression to achieve a very wide and open mix, one that still gels together. Like the Hammer, this is a very serious box and it won’t be for everyone. But if you want a bus compressor with an amazing new sound, check out the Nail. It’s a magical little box that can do things other compressors only dream of. Price: $2750 More from: A-Designs Audio, www.adesignsaudio.com.

the music, and then engaged the Hard Threshold until the gain reduction appeared to stop. Then I backed off the Hard Threshold until there was an occasional 2–4 dB of reduction on very loud peaks. Lastly I set the Filter so the low end sounded natural and un-pumped and then I dialled in about 20% dry to taste. This was not a set-it-and-forget-it piece; I continued to make minor adjustments to all the settings as the mix progressed. The result was a gelled and controlled mix that actually sounded more open and opulent vs. glued and thick. While A-Designs says that the Nail was designed with the 2-bus in mind, I also

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Recording - October 2011

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