Why don't plugin Pultec EQ's have graphic displays?

Almost every parametric EQ plugin can do that pultec "trick" that everyone is raving about. Am I missing something?

DMG EQuilibrium has the Pultec Cut and Boost shelves with a nice GUI.

My understanding is that the curves for the "same frequencies" on a Pultec (a misnomer to be sure) are not "normal." I.e. their individual "bell" curves are skewed to start, and working in concert they create curves that simply can't be achieved with a standard parametric EQ - though I suppose it might be possible to get close using combinations of 3 or 4 different filters.  It just seems to me that it shouldn't be all that hard to quantify what's going on and use the now standard GUI for manipulating it.  It almost makes me wonder if the target customers of plugin Pultecs are hardware nerds that just need to see its iconic facade in order to feel that old-school pultecy goodness.

Yeah, I remember seeing this post a year or so ago. Awesome thread - but I would still LOVE to be able see those curves.  Will it affect the way I set the knobs? Not necessarily, because I'm still likely to do it with my eyes closed, but for me SEEING can often be confirmation of what I'm hearing.  Also, and again, how cool would it be to grab a node and be able to shift frequency and amplitude simultaneously?

DIYRE does this. FWIW.

...not really a clone either I guess, but similar idea anyway.

Reaper has noise and sinewave sweep generators. I like the free blue cat analyzer. Then any gear that is a mystery I run the generators and watch, just to calibrate and check wtf is going on??? I did this once to see the shape of the shelves on my board, how many dB they boost and where the cutoff frequency is so I could try and mimic with plugins. It helped. Also I swore my board had some extra lows and highs when I ran stuff through, but it measured incredibly flat. That was surprising- some things are audible but hard or maybe near impossible to measure. Another thing you can see if when settings are flat but not bypassed, what is the curve? not always flat.

Yes, that was one of my theories, but I still that maintain moving a node on a graph with a mouse/trackpad beats the hell out of NOT being able to turn multiple knobs simultaneously. Not to mention how nice it would be to be able to slide through a range of frequencies as EmRR mentioned with the ability to select separate frequencies for cut and boost.

ericn What you're saying doesn't make sense to me.  I have no idea what a real Pultec sounds like, so I'm one of those people. so why would I care about look and feel any more than someone who knows what they feel like?  If anything I could care less.  I know WHAT it does and I want the Pultec sound and Pultec functionality++.  A simple optional drop-down menu for a graphic display would please everyone, no?

Geez, Sometimes I wish every meter some of you hardcore listen-only guys have would break so you had to use your ears for EVERYTHING.  Yeah, I get it. Ears are more important than meters, but meters teach me things, reinforce understanding, help me maintain continuity in my mixes.  My ears are variable from hour to hour. I dunno - fatigue, ear-wax, bad hair.. Well, not really; I'm practically bald.

You paint a good picture of the orientation difference between original experience and latecomer with fresh point of view.

I remember an old broadcast guy railing about what junk all the old BA-6A's/26U's/SA-39's were compared to that station with the LA-2A, they had the hottest flatlined signal. Which was never about it sounding good, it was about maximizing broadcast coverage within legal power rating.  

Pultec were $50 apiece because no one wanted that old big crap that didn't do much. blah blah blah

"Geez, Sometimes I wish every meter some of you hardcore listen-only guys have would break so you had to use your ears for EVERYTHING. Yeah, I get it. Ears are more important than meters, but meters teach me things, reinforce understanding, help me maintain continuity in my mixes."

I use meters all the time, spectrum analyzers and etc. Constantly. There is a learning curve to it though, at first its all about seeing and coming up with ideas based on what we see. That always causes really dumb decisions like "Oh crap.. not enough highs, boost the highs! And "way too quiet, need more limiter ". I see the results of that all the time, everywhere. But often the reason there's not enough highs is because we don't realize while we were opening the plugins and making our moves the song kept playing and now we are at the part of the song that's supposed to be quieter and supposed to be darker. It took me a long time to study tons of reference tracks before the analyzers started to make sense... We have to understand how quiet dark stuff can look too, not just the polished loudest stuff. Sadly all this was just a lot of wasted time to confirm what I already knew; if it sounds good it is good. Duh!

I agree analyzers are helpful on EQ's, for spotting noise or weird stuff quickly, the exact fundamental frequency etc. But I don't really look at them. Does that make sense?