Golden Age Project COMP-54 Single-channel Vintage Style Compressor

Description: Golden Age Project Comp 54Solid-state Mono Compressor If it's true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Rupert Neve should feel very flattered indeed. Many of his classic preamp, EQ and compressor designs from the late '60s and '70s have been copied in recent years by commercial manufacturers and audio‑gear DIY fanatics alike. Some people go to great lengths to ensure authenticity, down to sourcing NOS ('new old stock') parts that are no longer in production, whereas others take the designs and tweak them — whether in order to make technical or subjective improvements, to integrate more readily available components, or to make an acceptable compromise to bring the price within the reach of home‑studio owners.Golden Age Project (GA) base their current outboard line on classic Neve designs, and reduce costs by carefully choosing cheaper components and assembling everything in China, before quality checking, and if necessary tweaking, in Europe. They should know what they're looking for, as they're also high‑end audio gear distributors in their native Sweden. There are currently only two hardware units in GA's range. When Paul White reviewed the first, the Pre 73 mic preamp, back in SOS March 2009 (/sos/mar09/articles/goldenagepre73.htm), he found that "given the very affordable price of the Pre 73, its performance is astonishingly good... I can't detect any serious corner‑cutting, and the aim of presenting a warm, vintage sound that's musically attractive has been met extremely well.” I agree with that assessment: to my ears, the Pre 73 is nicer than anything similar at anything like a comparable price.Comp 54A peep inside reveals a high quality of construction, with no surface‑mount components or ICs in the audio path, and easy-to-access slots for transformer upgrades.I was understandably keen, then, to review their latest release, the Comp 54 mono compressor. Like the Pre 73, the design follows that of a classic Neve unit very closely. This time it's the 2254 compressor/limiter, one of a family of similar processors (including the 33609 stereo compressor/limiter) that use a diode bridge as the gain-control element. If you want to know more about the 2254, I'd recommend reading Hugh Robjohns' review of the Neve 2254R in SOS August 2009, at /sos/aug09/articles/neve2254r.htm. GA's Pre 73 gave us just the preamp, but not the EQ, from the Neve 1073; in a parallel move, the Comp 54 gives us the compressor from the 2254, but not the limiter circuit.The interior, as you can see from the photo , is neat and tidy. Everything's laid out on three circuit boards: one for the power supply and rear-panel connectors, one for the compressor itself, and one mounted vertically, which hosts the controls. Good-quality components are used, and despite the savings in labour costs through manufacturing in China, there are few obvious cut corners: the switches seem solid, and I could see no surface-mount components, for example, and no ICs in the audio path. The whole thing is mounted in an unfussy, burgundy‑painted, half‑rack, metal box, and comes with an external 'line-lump' AC power supply.The cost will have been brought down considerably by using cheaper audio transformers than are present in the original, and by leaving out the limiter (the side-chain for which included yet another expensive transformer!). GA have used plain, no‑brand transformer models, and given that some people ascribe the classic Neve sound at least in part to the choice of transformers, the nature of the sonic coloration that the Comp 54 imparts will probably be different, albeit subtly.Cleverly, however, Golden Age have made it possible for users to upgrade all three of the Comp 54's audio transformers. The original 2254 employed transformers made by Marinair, who have long since ceased trading, and the original transformers command a high price on the second‑hand market. Another British manufacturer, Carnhill, make a reproduction model that's used in many of the DIY 2254‑clone builds I've seen photo‑documented on forums. I'll leave the tone geeks to debate the relative merits of the Marinair and Carnhill models, but for those who want to chase 'perfection', there are two spare sockets on the main circuit board for the first two transformers, into which you can place Carnhill models. As I was completing my review, Golden Age made available a Carnhill transformer upgrade kit for both the Comp 54 and Pre 73. It looks as though fitting this will be a simple case of unplugging and replugging a few cables (there's no soldering required!) and you're done.Controls & ConnectorsAs well as the usual connectors on the rear panel, there's one to allow the linking of units for stereo operation.There are detented knobs for threshold, ratio, attack, release and a high‑pass filter for the compressor's side‑chain. The release times are augmented by a second auto-release mode that didn't appear on the original, but perhaps a more useful addition is the side-chain filter, which can be set to off, 50Hz, 100Hz or (presumably for de-essing) 7kHz.Between the filter control and the non‑detented gain control on the far right is a VU meter, which can be switched to display the output level or the amount of gain reduction. Other buttons account for power on/off and linking of the detection circuits of two Comp 54s for stereo operation. In/Out allows you to bypass the compression facility while passing signal through the rest of the circuitry, and there's also a true bypass.On the rear, the inputs and outputs are presented both on balanced XLR and quarter-inch jack, while there's another jack for linking two Comp 54s, and a power inlet for the supplied 24V AC supply. With such a small case, there are good reasons for keeping the power supply external, but three GA products in my rack means three power supplies and an unsightly weave of cables. It would be nice at least to be able to drive a stereo pair off a single supply, and correspondence with GA suggests this option may appear in the future.

Price: 350 USD

Location: Winchester, Massachusetts

End Time: 2024-08-01T13:51:55.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 USD