Gear Gossip: Black Lion Audio Neve D173

If I had unlimited funds and no need to work for a living, I would hang outside of Black Lion Audio’s headquarters with signs like all of those crazy stay at home moms on vacation do in front of the Today Show. Only it would just be me and I would probably be asked to leave. These guys do God’s work by fixing all of the inherent flaws other companies are either too cheap or lazy to fix in their hardware. Their FM192 mod has been used on countless major recordings and have been the winner in countless shootouts over equipment that is exponentially more expensive. And now they’re tackling Neve. I’ve got an original 1073 preamp out of a board and packed into a rackmount and would love to do A/B tests on this. Here’s what they said on their Facebook Page. (Don’t be afraid, go click on them and “Like” them.)

Neve clone status update: output transformer arrived from the guys at Marvel Electric today. I asked them to wind a custom replica transformer specifically for this project, which they did. It sounds phenomenal, very fat with lots of growl in the 500Hz region. I think the custom Cinemag paired with the custom Marvel is going to be a knockout combination. Plus I finally made some headway late this afternoon in alleviating the unwanted distortion in the + side of the balanced circuit. Very good!

Fantastic… now I’ve just got to get the funds together for my RME Fireface 800 and Pro Tools HD 16 I/O mods.
Head on over to www.BlackLionAudio.com and take a look at the plethora of gear the sell and mod. Then go to their Facebook page and look at their “Pets of BLA” section where you see the real stars.

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