Recording - March 2014 - 42

B Y PA U L V N U K J R .

Kush Audio Electra
What's an "Electrified Transient Equalizer" and what does it do for your sound?

This month we take a look at a new
piece of hardware from Kush Audio, the
Electra-an Electrified Transient Equalizer.
Kush Audio is run by Gregory Scott, also
known by his Internet alias UBK. Kush rose
to fame thanks to a modified version of
Empirical Labs' EL-7 Fatso Jr, dubbed the
UBK Edition (reviewed April 2011). This
was followed by the Clariphonic Parallel
equalizer in both hardware and plug-in
form, reviewed March 2013, as well as
the UBK-1 Saturation/Compressor plug-in
and the Gain Train monitor controller.
What sets Gregory's products apart
from the herd is that they are outside of
the norm, like the concept of parallel eq,
and yet they are intuitive, useful and of
course great-sounding. The Electra continues the trend.
Electra
The Electra is a 5-band eq with high
shelving, low shelving, two proportionalQ mid bands, and a highpass filter.
Similar to an API EQ, the Electra uses
dual concentric pots where an outer ring
chooses frequency and an inner knob
boosts or cuts. The Electra is available as
a 2-channel 19" rack mount version
(which I reviewed) and a single-channel
500 Series module; the two versions are
sonically and (almost) functionally identical, finished in Kush's coffee creamer
brown with black and white accents.
I asked Gregory Scott in the course of
this review: "In a market with dozens of EQ
choices, what makes the Electra different?"
His answer was that after years of using the
usual EQ suspects, he wanted to be able to
"bend sound like Silly Putty and change
something from A to B or out to Z and have
it sound like that's the way it always was."
While more philosophical than technical,
this answer sums up the Electra perfectly.
Gregory had been working for years on
a 3-band prototype with proportional Q,
but was never happy with the coloration
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RECORDING March 2014

inherent in the circuit and turned to his
friend, noted gear designer Brad
McGowan, for help. In Gregory's words,
"He totally cleaned up and minimized the
signal path. No transformers, no electrolytic coupling capacitors, nothing at all. Just
a few super-low-distortion op amps,
WIMA film caps for the filters, and that's
it." According to Brad, this signal path
"allows the music to pass through without
incurring any kind of unwanted sonic
stamp that a lot of other gear imposes."
The bands
The low band is a fixed-frequency
shelf, controlled by the first inner knob,
and can be boosted or attenuated ±12
dB. (On the 500 module, this knob can
be switched to act as a level fader if used
in a channel strip.)
The first outer ring controls the unit's highpass filter, which is sweepable from 25 to
400 Hz at 12 dB/octave. Unlike the steep
highpass filters on older vintage EQs, the
Electra has a gentle slope with a resonance
bump at the corner frequency for a combination of smoothness and punch.
The two mid frequencies have very
wide throws and cover the ranges of
30-730 Hz and 250 Hz-5.4 kHz, ±12
dB each. Unlike EQs with a fixed or directly settable Q (width), the Electra's mids
have a proportional Q that gets narrower
as the frequency is boosted or cut. At
lower levels the Electra's Q is described as
gentle and wide, while it changes to tight
and punchy as the gain increases.
Keeping with the clean circuit design,
each band adds zero coloration to the
sound it is adjusting, and has no audible
effect when set to its center detent.
The original design had a proportionalQ high band as well, but according to
Gregory it was too punchy, where he
instead wanted "shimmering floaty
highs". So it was changed to a sweepable (3.8-20 kHz), gentle mastering-style

high shelf. In Gregory's words, "It has an
electric, sparkly quality to it... I tweaked it
to go really low (3.8k) so that it pairs with
the mid bands beautifully."
In the 2-channel rack version, each
channel is fully independent and the highpass filters and full EQ circuits can be
individually bypassed.
Play it by ear
Aside from minimum and maximum frequencies, there are no markings on the
knobs; like most other Kush fare, the Electra
is a by-ear device. Twist a knob until it
sounds good. This may be frustrating to the
anal-retentive frequency crowd who need to
know that they are taking out 3 dB of 350
Hz; luckily I am not one of those people.
Also the Electra is not a "sweep the frequencies until it hurts and then pull out the
offenders" EQ. This is due in part to the
changing width of the proportional Q. In
many instances I pushed the mid frequencies all the way to +12 dB, and after finding a frequency I was not initially crazy
about, I found as I brought the level down
that it started to spread out and sound not
so bad. Instead of doing a full cut as I
would on most EQs, I found myself leaving the frequency gently boosted instead.
In fact, I typically found myself boosting
more often than cutting with the Electra.
Kush has managed to create yet another
device where certain pushed frequencies
may sound wrong for a particular mix,
but they usually don't sound bad.
Drums
My first use of the Electra was on an alt
percussion track on an indie rock mix. Not
so much drums, but a multi-tracking of 14"
and 16" floor toms along with cymbals, a
muted hi-hat and stick rhythms on drum
rims. The high shelf of the Electra opened
up the mix nicely, the high mid band
added a forward coherence, and the low
mid band, along with the low shelf and

Recording - March 2014

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