What are your must have hardware EQ’s?

Desert island for me would be a Great River Harrison 32EQ. All the flexibility of an SSL with a really beautiful, smooth tone.

Personally, I wouldn't consider a 1073 a must-have for the EQ section alone. Don't get me wrong — they sound awesome and I absolutely love them for recording, but the EQ doesn't always work well on everything. The high shelf in particular always struck me as way too drastic on most sources.

Also, nothing wrong with digital EQs like FabFilter. I use analog EQs when I want tone/"color" (man, I'm starting to hate that term), and use FF as a bread & butter EQ to sculpt things in a mix. In a mixing situation, having limitless options is a blessing. Both have their place.

Right, I’m not saying I don’t want to use Fab, I like it for surgical cuts, General high pass, etc. I’m just trying to get familiar with the “character” pieces that are worth having the hardware version. My impression, and I might be wrong, is API and Neve eqs add something to the audio that is in addition to just adding or cutting. Those are the things that seem worth having the hardware version. In some cases it seems like the plug in version just doesn’t get the same mojo. I’m basing this in part from comparing waves la2a to my audioscape Opto. Pretty big difference in my opinion.

You're just adding distortion and running out of clean gain while boosting leading to saturation. The other thing is running the hardware eq high shelf into something else that eats highs. Run your boosts on a clean eq into something for a similar effect itb. There are tons of decent saturators. Even the ancient Oxford "warmth" and Vintage Warmer still sound pretty good.

Many of the older filters aren't the most utilitarian things either. The Neve 1073 12khz high shelve is resonant.

The smoothest distortion machine "analog" eqs like this I've used itb are the old Variety of Sound Boot EQII with the vintage output stage on and the Tokyo Dawn Slick EQ GE with a colored output stage and saturation on while boosting. They are both incredibly non-linear and super smooth distortion machines.


Emulations: PSP Avedis E27, PSP NobleQex, the Apogee Pultec plugs, Black Rooster Vpre-73 high shelf, Fuse TCS-68, and the Fuse VQP Langevin eqs. The last are clean until you hit them hot.

Hardware
Single channel:
API 500 something style eqs are classic filters for a reason.

Pretty much any hardware EQ is easier for me to use than a plug-in, so I still use quite a few with fixed frequency choices;

pair of 1073s
pair of 1084s
pair of 1081s
pair of Pultecs

Don't find fully variable EQs any more difficult so long as they're in hardware form, still using these;

sixteen Trident 4-band EQs
Tonelux stereo 4-band EQ

The silver bullet in the classifieds is mine. The eq is great but for some reason the mojo section doesn’t do anything for me so seems a shame to keep it just for the 2 eq. I’m on the list for the mk2 so maybe in year or so I’ll get another. For mojo, running signals thru preamps I’m liking the AS V108 better but I’ve only got one so that is my plan to get another and some other eq. Also have the AS bus comp on my mix bus. That seems to add more mojo just barely touching the meter than the SB mojo. But I could be gain staging or doing something else wrong. Like I said I’m just a rookie hobbyist but I’m a sucker for gear. 

If the mojo section does nothing, you won't like current API, which is pretty clean except for the bass and high treble. CAPI might be more up your alley.

You don't know what you want so buy used and sell if you don't like it.

I do like the SB Eq quite a bit.. is it based on Pultec?

Miad LC4040's
Amtec PEQ1A's
HendyAmps Michelangelo
Electrodyne 711's and 712's channel strips
Avedis E27's and E12's
Capi LC25's
Heritage 6673's and 8173's
Quadeight Coranado EQ's channel strips.

All my other hardware EQ's I could live without.

Boy, that sounds , excuse the pun, like a great versatile design !

They are absolutely magical to record with. Unfortunately, I only have two of them. But everything that goes through them comes out better 

Mic? Who needs em?

I’ll add Iron Age V2 to your growing list!