No other manufacturers that I know of are offering the 1081-inspired design. They are a Class AB design rather than the Class A found in the ez1073.įor around £200 in kit form, these are a seriously good buy. They have a full-bodied sound but yet still keep transients punchy and detailed. These are my go-to preamps for drum recording. I then went on to build 6 ez1081 mic preamps for the API 500-series and these get a lot of use at Threecircles. I have built the ez1073 preamp and equaliser which I documented in a previous blog post. You can buy the ez1073 mic preamp and EQ, ez1081 & ez1073 preamp and ez2254 compressor. All kits draw inspiration from Classic British hardware. I have built many pieces of studio gear in search of the tones I heard on records from the 1970s and 80s and I would like to talk about my top 5 choices for the small studio that won’t break the bank.Īudio Maintenance Limited make a selection of DIY audio kits. You can also pick up cheaper versions of U87, U47, U67, and C12-style microphones. The Urei 1176, API 312, Pultec EQ and LA-2A are the most-often cloned pieces of hardware, yet it doesn’t stop there. Warm Audio, Stam Audio and Klark Technik amongst others, now sell affordable clones of many pieces of gear. Many classic pieces of recording gear are now available either in kit form or within a small budget. Today there are many great DIY options available to the home recordist. We are now in a golden age of affordable music technology. Pieces like the Fairchild compressor, Pultec equaliser, Neve 1073 preamp, and Neumann U47. Before then, the only real possibility to get into a studio was to already have a record deal in place.Įven then though, certain pieces of studio equipment were out of the budget of most small studios. In the 1990s, technology such as the ADAT and hard-disk recorder meant that the home studio finally became a reality. Yet they also built their own mixing consoles and the circuits they developed are still used to this day. Names such as EMI, Decca and Trident are synonymous with music labels. They couldn’t just nip out to Studiospares! If a studio engineer wanted a piece of gear for a specific function they had to build it. The earliest recording studios didn’t have the possibilities we have today.

DIY audio has been around for a long time.

Diy neve 1073 preamp eq