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Post by jcoutu1 on Aug 28, 2014 5:06:10 GMT -6
Just checked the Kickstarter page and the campaign succeeded! I'm getting very curious.. I'm still trying to make some sales and get on board! Clock is ticking though.
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Post by jcoutu1 on Aug 29, 2014 10:42:17 GMT -6
Hey unit7, I'm rooting for you to win the second unit. Unfortunately for me, It looks like I'm out of time to raise the money. Good luck and enjoy the comp!
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Post by unit7 on Aug 29, 2014 15:07:55 GMT -6
Hey unit7, I'm rooting for you to win the second unit. Unfortunately for me, It looks like I'm out of time to raise the money. Good luck and enjoy the comp! Thanks man! I'll report when it arrives!
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Post by brianscheffer on Sept 3, 2014 18:01:25 GMT -6
I spent the long weekend with demo units of both the preamp and compressor from Locomotive Audio and was impressed enough that I'll have a new compressor in my rack next week after Eric finishes building it! I tracked some aggressive vocals with the preamp and found it to cut through the mix a little better than the UA 610 I compared it to. I spent less time with the pre than I would have liked, but found it totally useful for the task at hand. I played around with pushing the gain of the pre a bit while we were dialing in sounds, and it will definitely run the range from clean to pushed to over the top. The built in high pass filter and impedance switch helped bring a bit more functionality and variability to the table.
I enjoyed the preamp, but was most excited about putting the compressor through the paces. I tried feeding it a number of sources out of Pro Tools in order to check it out on a bunch of different instruments. I liked it best on bass, clean guitars, mono drum room, and vocals. I'm not crazy about DI bass, but this thing glued it together and shaped the tone in a nice way that made it more palatable to my tastes. Throwing it on the cabinet microphone treated me well. I liked the compressor best generally when not doing a ton of heavy lifting, but pushing it a little harder on drum room sounded cool in a way that no other compressors I have right now will do. I don't have any other vary-mu units, so it's nice to finally bring that flavor to the table on the front end. The side chain high pass filter proved more useful than expected, so that's a welcome addition from a versatility standpoint. I cracked the unit open and all the solder work looks nice. I know Eric is using quality components, so it was good to see the build quality was on the same level.
I hadn't seen any real world feedback in the forum yet, so I thought I'd throw this post up to let people know that the units aren't just nice looking boxes! Eric has been very informative and receptive in all our conversations so far. I'm excited to see something like this happening in my home town of St. Louis and wish him the best of luck.
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 14,940
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Post by ericn on Sept 4, 2014 7:36:08 GMT -6
I spent the long weekend with demo units of both the preamp and compressor from Locomotive Audio and was impressed enough that I'll have a new compressor in my rack next week after Eric finishes building it! I tracked some aggressive vocals with the preamp and found it to cut through the mix a little better than the UA 610 I compared it to. I spent less time with the pre than I would have liked, but found it totally useful for the task at hand. I played around with pushing the gain of the pre a bit while we were dialing in sounds, and it will definitely run the range from clean to pushed to over the top. The built in high pass filter and impedance switch helped bring a bit more functionality and variability to the table. I enjoyed the preamp, but was most excited about putting the compressor through the paces. I tried feeding it a number of sources out of Pro Tools in order to check it out on a bunch of different instruments. I liked it best on bass, clean guitars, mono drum room, and vocals. I'm not crazy about DI bass, but this thing glued it together and shaped the tone in a nice way that made it more palatable to my tastes. Throwing it on the cabinet microphone treated me well. I liked the compressor best generally when not doing a ton of heavy lifting, but pushing it a little harder on drum room sounded cool in a way that no other compressors I have right now will do. I don't have any other vary-mu units, so it's nice to finally bring that flavor to the table on the front end. The side chain high pass filter proved more useful than expected, so that's a welcome addition from a versatility standpoint. I cracked the unit open and all the solder work looks nice. I know Eric is using quality components, so it was good to see the build quality was on the same level. I hadn't seen any real world feedback in the forum yet, so I thought I'd throw this post up to let people know that the units aren't just nice looking boxes! Eric has been very informative and receptive in all our conversations so far. I'm excited to see something like this happening in my home town of St. Louis and wish him the best of luck. Thanks for the review Brian, maybe we can tempt you with some BBQ to make a road trip to KC to show off your new gear!
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Post by brianscheffer on Sept 4, 2014 7:53:05 GMT -6
I do enjoy BBQ... But I also have an impossible mountain of work to finish in the near future. Come to St. Louis instead. Aside from the occasional riots, it's pretty pleasant here! Seriously, though, if anyone is ever in the area, I'd be happy to let you slide in and twiddle some knobs on this thing.
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Post by unit7 on Sept 5, 2014 16:23:02 GMT -6
Steamy over at Locomotive Audio tube burn in department.. It's getting close! Attachments:
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Post by unit7 on Sept 18, 2014 11:03:48 GMT -6
So finally! Hello handsome! In action.. My studio is a total mess because I'm installing ProTools HDX, new computer, re arranging stuff, new Aviom monitoring etc etc, so I didn't have much time to play with it, but first impression is VERY favorable. The look is stunning (really!) and the build quality is absolute top notch. I'll put it to work next week and I also included some NOS tubes for this one in my recent order from Christian W, but I'm already having a feeling we may have a new serious high end player in town
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Post by tonycamphd on Sept 18, 2014 11:10:16 GMT -6
holy moly! nice Paul!.... i'm green with envy, especially with the rack of 1073's peeking up to take a look from below 8)
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Post by unit7 on Sept 18, 2014 11:27:51 GMT -6
holy moly! nice Paul!.... i'm green with envy, especially with the rack of 1073's peeking up to take a look from below 8) Nothing in that pic is unintentional No seriously, as mentioned my studio is a mess and I preferred not showing too much of the web of cables behind the 14B.. btw, that Neve power rack is a bit unususal. Made by Shep w room for 4x1081 size and 4x1084. Got it cheap at eBay with my first 1081 reissue module more than 10 yrs ago
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Post by Johnkenn on Sept 18, 2014 13:17:49 GMT -6
So what's the verdict?
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Post by unit7 on Sept 18, 2014 13:53:33 GMT -6
Sorry, only had time for a short test ride on a female vocal. Really liked. Duplicated the track and plugged in a Retro 176 on that channel to be able to A/B. Was able to get the compressors to work similarly. Similar goey wonderfulness from both units. 176 at 2:1 has really soft knee, which is softer knee than what I believe the 14 has. 14B had a tiny bit more top end. That's all I had time for. And only tried it on this specific vocal. I'll be back when I've played with it some more and also tried Christian's tubes. But again, it is obvious it's really good.
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Post by jcoutu1 on Sept 23, 2014 19:19:58 GMT -6
The countdown is on. My 14B is scheduled to arrive on Monday!
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Post by jcoutu1 on Sept 29, 2014 14:13:42 GMT -6
007 baby! Mine just arrived. Man alive it looks and feels great. I can't believe how big the transformers are. Can't wait to put it through it's paces... Full album found here... imgur.com/a/m8EwN
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Post by jcoutu1 on Oct 2, 2014 7:33:50 GMT -6
Anyone have a vocal and a stereo music stem that they want to share? I plan on running a couple vocals through this tonight. If anyone is interested, I'll run a vocal through this for them. If you have a music stem, we can hear the vocal with comp on their own and sitting in a mix. Might be fun.
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Post by cowboycoalminer on Oct 12, 2014 15:17:37 GMT -6
I have no idea how I missed this gear. I'm going to check into it some more.
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Post by Locomotive Audio on Oct 13, 2014 20:46:48 GMT -6
Hey guys, we had a great time at AES this past weekend! This was my first time as both a consumer and exhibitor... Wow, there was some really cool things to see and hear! Meeting some of the other manufacturers was also a really cool experience as I thought it would be highly competitive. I was way off on that one. I couldn't believe how open, complimentary and at times very helpful they were! I met some pretty cool people and hope to grow the relationships moving forward.
We want to thank everybody who came to our booth to check out our new gear and at least try to listen to it. It was quite loud at times but we think we got a lot of really great listens in. The AES experience was a very enlightening one as we got to hear really good feedback from a lot of different kinds of engineers. Sound, aesthetics, build and price were the main topics and we had mostly very positive reviews.
At this point we will be selling direct, which will definitely help with pricing. Over the next few days we'll be working to get a payment gateway installed on our website... Paypal or not and hope we can enticed some of you to get our products into your hands soon so you can talk about them!
Pricing 14B Compressor - $2,695 286A Dual Channel Preamp - $2,895
We do have a few 14B demo units coming back from the show that we are going to offer on a first-come first-served basis for $2,395. These units are pretty much spotless but would like to get them out asap to get more real world feedback. If you have any interest, please email me at eric@locomotiveaudio.com as I am not on these forums more than once a day!
Thanks so much and I'm so happy to finally be part of this amazing industry!
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Post by Locomotive Audio on Oct 28, 2014 7:39:22 GMT -6
We are excited to announce that Floating Point Audio will be handling our distribution in France, Belgium and Luxembourg! They will have a demo unit for each product very soon!
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Post by tonycamphd on Oct 28, 2014 10:53:06 GMT -6
this is great news Eric! happy to see it, it comes as no surprise to me though, your rigs sounded fantastic and handled extremely well at AES, i was really, really, impressed, and the build quality was woad the nicest i found at the entire show(his gear was mounted open faced to the aisles to show the guts off, and for good "hand built/point to point" reason), it will be fun to watch your company grow based on quality and virtually zero hype, keep us posted, i hope to be one of your customers before too long, hope to see you at 2015 namm 8)
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Post by unit7 on Dec 28, 2016 19:29:13 GMT -6
Far too little fuzz about this brand me thinks. Two years has gone and I haven't used mine a lot until now. For the music I'm doing I have felt it's a bit on the touchy side. Have been in touch with Eric from time to time and he has been super helpful. Great guy. And thanks to that and my new DIY skills I have been able to do a little mod that lowers the GR ratio from the stock approx 5:1 to more like 2:1, and now I LOVE this thing! Always liked the tone, which is a tad bit more open than the Retros for instance, so fixing this was great. Will be mixing a major project soon and did a shootout with all my comps on this artist's (male) voice, and the 14B won, like..no competition. It fit the voice and the style perfectly. Have to say, anyone interested in the Retro 176 but don't have the budget, demo this.
And if you haven't seen this.. Pretty cool..
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Post by drbill on Dec 28, 2016 19:45:00 GMT -6
I've got a couple of Eric's Weight Tanks on order. Excited to put them into the fray.....
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Post by M57 on Dec 30, 2016 5:56:15 GMT -6
Far too little fuzz about this brand me thinks. Two years has gone and I haven't used mine a lot until now. For the music I'm doing I have felt it's a bit on the touchy side. Have been in touch with Eric from time to time and he has been super helpful. Great guy. And thanks to that and my new DIY skills I have been able to do a little mod that lowers the GR ratio from the stock approx 5:1 to more like 2:1, and now I LOVE this thing! Always liked the tone, which is a tad bit more open than the Retros for instance, so fixing this was great. Will be mixing a major project soon and did a shootout with all my comps on this artist's (male) voice, and the 14B won, like..no competition. It fit the voice and the style perfectly. Have to say, anyone interested in the Retro 176 but don't have the budget, demo this. And if you haven't seen this.. Pretty cool.. Every time he tries to describe what the piece of gear does with any kind of detail, he's reduced to "I don't know, it just makes it sound better." It's almost comical. Then he goes on to say that it's his job as a professional to be able to describe what these things do. ~7:00. Sorry, but I haven't finished my first cup of coffee so I'm still a bit curmudgeonly.
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Post by mrholmes on Dec 30, 2016 6:15:33 GMT -6
Far too little fuzz about this brand me thinks. Two years has gone and I haven't used mine a lot until now. For the music I'm doing I have felt it's a bit on the touchy side. Have been in touch with Eric from time to time and he has been super helpful. Great guy. And thanks to that and my new DIY skills I have been able to do a little mod that lowers the GR ratio from the stock approx 5:1 to more like 2:1, and now I LOVE this thing! Always liked the tone, which is a tad bit more open than the Retros for instance, so fixing this was great. Will be mixing a major project soon and did a shootout with all my comps on this artist's (male) voice, and the 14B won, like..no competition. It fit the voice and the style perfectly. Have to say, anyone interested in the Retro 176 but don't have the budget, demo this. And if you haven't seen this.. Pretty cool.. Every time he tries to describe what the piece of gear does with any kind of detail, he's reduced to "I don't know, it just makes it sound better." It's almost comical. Then he goes on to say that it's his job as a professional to be able to describe what these things do. ~7:00. Sorry, but I haven't finished my first cup of coffee so I'm still a bit curmudgeonly. Come on we all know its a product placement show. And its hard to do if you don't want to make the impression that it is one of those shows. He is an AE and not a professional talk master. BTW I like the way he is not overdoing it. In the end its up to me if go for it or I don't. Think the Slate Videos, as much as I love his plug ins, he tries to make the impression that you cant live without it anymore. That is maybe not believable for adults. Have a happy new 2017.
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Post by ChaseUTB on Dec 30, 2016 18:00:46 GMT -6
Dave means well, but every young pensodian running out to buy a mono $2,800 compressor cracked me up. Comments like that show his reality vs someone like me... I enjoy most of his vids but the product placement vids need help. Put the damn files aside and organize ahead of time, use drums, vox, and bass ( Gtr ) and put the pieces to the test. Then compare, don't blab about nothing, then say I promise you will like it after playing almost fully mixed a/ b examples, where the " affected " is always louder is not helping the young pensodians learn form the examples, plusnit teaches you have to have HW to make a great mix, which is not true either.
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Post by drbill on Dec 30, 2016 18:30:19 GMT -6
plusnit teaches you have to have HW to make a great mix, which is not true either. No, it's not true but it sure helps. I'll use virtually any hardware that's appropriate for the job over plugins - and when you take a great piece like the Locomotive stuff.......well....even for hard core ITB plugin's are the only way fanatics, it's really a no-brainer. One of the reasons I'm upping my AD/DA i/o to 64 this week, and soon going to 80. BTW, Eric @ Locomotive put up a bunch of examples on his Weight Tank release, and it didn't take more than a few seconds to figure it out. Price, performance, tone, and hand built!!! Those clips certainly sold me on buying two of them immediately. Guy does quality work and no matter what it sells for, it's a quality piece at an affordable price. (which of course is relative to your budget, but it's affordable compared to his competition.) Pensado? Heh heh.... I could care less what he thinks or says. I watched about half of one of his vids once.... I'll use my brain and ears, thanks.
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