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20 kHz. These three bands—low shelving boost/cut, mid boost, high cut—interact to produce some truly extraordinary sounds. Aficionados of the old Pultecs point out that while the units used some pretty choice tubes for their electronics, the real magic was in the input, interstage, and output transformers; the generally-held belief was that if you didn’t have real Pultec transformers, you could get close to the Pultec sound but never quite emulate it perfectly, and it was almost as easy to buy a used vintage EQP-1A3 as it was to find original transformers! That’s why Dr. Jackson’s painstaking recreation of the transformers in the EQP-1A3 is critical to the end result being so faithful to the original. So in construction and design it’s as real as a Pultec can be, which carries a lot of weight and a lot of expectation. How does it sound? Analog matters In today’s all-digital recording environment, I find that using at least one analog unit in the chain makes all the difference in the world. Quite honestly, I really don’t believe in the attitude of today’s engineers who only mix all “in the box”—how boring, not to mention how flat sounding. I truly believe you need both, analog and digital, to get a good sounding mix. This becomes evident when placing the Pulse EQP-1A3 in an instrument insert point on a bass or guitar during a mix and just listening to it all come alive. But don’t get me wrong—it won’t miraculously make bad audio sound good, but with good tracks it sounds fantastic. In use I put a couple of mono guitar tracks through the Pulse EQP-1A3. I began with an aggressive bass part that I had recorded with Billy Sheehan, and it gave it a full spectrum of sound, without the mud. It let me hone into the low-mids to give the bass defined detail as well as sharpening up the notes in the mix. On Billy’s solo part it worked beautifully by letting me work on the higher mid frequencies to have the solo stand out. I also took a Frank Gambale guitar solo I had recorded earlier and ran it through the EQP-1A3, with very pleasing results. The tubes really gave warmth to the aggressively distorted guitar tone without taking away from Frank’s signature sound. Having the bandwidth from sharp to broad is a great asset to carve in the sound. Finally, I put some tracks by keyboard legend Max Middleton through the EQP-1A3; those tracks didn’t really need any enhancement, but the Rhodes responded very favorably to the tube equalization, enabling me to set it apart in the mix in its own frequency, and you could really hear the woodiness of the hammers hitting the tines in the Rhodes.
RECORDING OCTOBER 2011

In conclusion The EQP-1A3 really shines when used sparsely on an instrument—I found that a little tweaking goes a long way. Slowly dial in the frequency and, most importantly, use your ears, not your eyes. I found myself not even looking at the unit, but just slowly dialing in the tone with my head in between the monitor speakers and stopping when I finally hit the mark. The ears don’t lie, and the EQP-1A3 is a great tool for those who still think sound really matters. Such handcrafted technology doesn’t come cheap, but when you consider that the originals, when you can find one, still go for twice the cost of the item under

review, then the price of the new model can appear like a bargain. And there is no question to my mind that the quality of the resulting audio is all you could hope for, and more. Price: $3495 or $6495/pair More from: Pulse Techniques, LLC, www.pultec.com Brian Tarquin (tarquin@recordingmag.com) is an Emmy-winning recording engineer and guitarist, who runs the guitar-centric label Bohemian Productions based in New York (www.bohemianproductions.net).

http://www.pultec.com http://www.bohemianproductions.net http://www.vintageking.com http://www.vintageking.com/free-rack http://www.vintageking.com

Recording - October 2011

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