EQ Sweetening and Focus

Hey J,  for myself it's, HP/LP filter, compress, eq... generally, i do believe the eq into a compressor thing is popular with SSL guys

Well I used the 553 for the first time on a mix and put them on the guitar bus. It's rhythm and lead guitars together but not solos. So all ensemble elements.

I'm mixing guitars in to a bus compressor...in this case it was a pair of new-Ish 1176. Once I had the basic mix/balance going, like 2 hours in to the mix, I added maybe 2 hash marks of the mid and just clicked the high band out of the detent, boosting. Low pass filter in on the middle setting (can't remember what the number is) and high pass on (can't remember that number either but I usually end up between 100-150). Subtle. It just sharpened the focus of the guitar picture...like a little lift. I usually keep rhythm guitar stuff out of the middle except in rare cases. So this focusing kinda made the guitars feel wider too. It's not a big difference at all but turn off the Eq and...blah. The guitars and consequently the whole mix, seemed a little less vibrant.

This is after channel Eq and compression for individual elements so it's not surgery...it's sweetening for sure. I keep a few pairs or stereo Eqs set aside for bus duty like that. A retro 2a3, a pair of maags, 553s, a pair of AWTAC channels, the Overstayer VCA has bass/treble type knobs.
For me these are like 1% or 2 % sweeteners. I think of them like cheats for some reason.

I always think "I gotta find 100 ways to make this sound 1% better" so little tiny Eq boosts start to add up and seem to help refine things a notch here and there.

That Maag 40hz band is really powerful. I perceive it like a baxandall shelf but I don't know if that's what it is. But man...1 click of that band is like photoshop or something. It's addictive and easy to overdo but it's pretty great.

All that said, the 553 on individual guitars is killer too. I'm not a big Eq booster except in rare occasions. I'm always curious and inspired when I hear about people doing drastic Eq and I try all the time but usually it's only on the vocal for me, in combination with cuts. Like broad boost with narrower cuts within the same areas.

This goofball post is too long already. Blah blah blah.

Well, we do choose gear for the tone of the gear and the things it does for us, don't we? 

They do indeed have a specific sonic footprint.  I don't think the console was meant to have this sound, but most users tend to push the boards into an area that some call the "sweet spot".  I tend to think it's really just getting the bussing levels up high enough that you start to round everything off as the amps become non-linear.  Effectively a compression effect.  That's what I think I hear from them most often.

Yeah, the crunch I guess you could call it, although I was thinking more like "gooey". I think it's inherent to pushing the busses hard, not necessarily the main bus compressor itself(although they did use a lot of similar amp sections, so I'm sure you could push it as well).  i think it's mainly the act of pushing the opamps until they start to run into headroom limits more than anything, especially the bus summing amps in the old 4/6K series.  Those were a little bit slower than the 9K and beyond, so the sound of the 4k being pushed is much more pronounced than in the newer stuff when you're trying to sum so many channels at the limits of the amplifiers.  It explains why a lot of heavy rock and metal guys swear by the 4K/6K stuff and avoid the 9K and newer stuff.

IKR?  I've been eyeing some short framed 24ch 4K's over the years kinda waiting for the prices to come down.  They're almost affordable, but the age is showing in the amount of upkeep they need, which is a big cost of owning..  The power hogging and the cooling bills are something else entirely!