Altec compressor

[Dick.1]

Wondering if anybody has anything like this or can perhaps suggest an alternative ?

Bit of a long shot I know, but.................................

Dick.

[Diabolical Artificer]

Check this out https://electronaut.info/m97/ looks very nice, probably very pricey too. If you look on his site, he goes into quite a lot of technical detail about valve compressor design. There's also the diyaudio forum that has a lot of rack gear designs, there's a bloke on there in Norfolk who builds valved mixers etc who might be worth contacting.

For myself I use a BSS compressor/limiter/gate; does the job for far less cost. But then if I had a few spare thousand quid I'd certainly try one out.

What are you using the Altec for? I'm a bit suspicious of using valved gear to record music, but I know a lot of producers swear by valve preamps etc. If you want a warm triode sound with loads of 2nd harmonics it would be pretty easy to knock up a preamp with tone controls and use a direct coupled cathode follower to "warm" the sound up, maybe even use a White KF for OT- less connection. Again, lot's of info on diyaudio.

Andy.

[Dick.1]

Hi Andy

One of my friends has imported an Altec436c & has posted a couple of (instrumental) sound files with his new "toy" with very impressive results
He was driven by the Abbey Road connection & it seems he's "in heaven" at the moment

Like you I use digi compressors both pedal & plug in but my interest is now aroused by the success this Altec has had & I I would like to try out something like this

Pre-amps are sorted for my guitar there's also a interesting "triodizer" version that uses 4 FET to mimic triode operation that is particularly "sweet"

I'm still at the "thinking about it" stage at the moment but have a couple of good links from you that will keep me occupied for a good while now.

Cheers

Dick.