[Dean Roddey]

Well, I sold my Waves plugs to finance another round. Once again I whimped out on the DIY front. I looked at the Pultec DIY EQs, and they are nice. But they aren't the kind of thing that you could use to never have to use a software EQ. They would be great for overall mix EQ and whatnot. But I wanted something that I could use to replace software EQs during tracking, and bounce the BFD drum tracks out through (the non-stereo ones anyway.) That's a fairly hard thing to do for the $1200 I'm clearning on this Waves sale.

But, in the end, I went with an Emperical Labs Lil'Freq. I found a used one for $1200 (though I had to cough up the taxes since the place I found it is in CA unfortunately.) It's really the only thing out there for anything near the price that has that kind of flexibility. It has a high pass, low shelf, four fully parametric bands, and then either a high sheft or a de-esser selectable. And it offers both a clean output and a transformer driven vintage output, so you can patch both into the patch bay and us which ever is the most advantageous.

It was a tough call, and I could have done a couple DIY projects for that. But in terms of getting myself into a position where I can track things as they should sound, I don't think that there's anything else I could have done that would have served my needs better. I thought about trading up my accoustic instead, which would have been another very useful thing since mine doesn't sound so great. But, I went with the EQ in the end since it will serve on guitar, bass, vocals, drums, etc...

So, sadly I have to say that my wad is now fully blown and the end of my big adventure is over, sigh... I wish I had the bucks to just keep going on and on. It's actually quite healthy for me, keeping me active and challenged and whatnot. But, in the end it was a very advantageous rearrangement.

Let's see, I went from:

Pearlman TM-1
Distressor
Lunchbox with Great River/P-1 pre-amps
padKontrol MIDI drum input pad
Waves Platinum/SSL plugs
RME 9632

And ended up with:

LA-2A
1176
SSL stereo comp
ZenDrum
SCA Neve and API pre-amps
Kjearhus plugs (comp, EQ, gate, mastering limiter, track limiter)
Voxengo plugs (r8brain sample rate converter)
Acoustic Arts reverb
E-Mu 1616M
AT 4047 mic


I have some other plugs from before as well, a couple URS EQs, Vintage Warmer, and Trash, and the Stillwell Vibe EQ and Rocket comp. I might pick up a couple small things still.

The only place where I downgraded was the microphone. But in my not so great sounding room, I think that the 4047 will serve me as well as the Pearlman.