The Pendulum Quartet (Updated August 2010) (U

The Pendulum Quartet is an all tube channel strip, hand built. If you are in the market for this gear you are serious so I won’t lecture. Here’s my opinion. It sounds great. Period. Its easy to control, got great features, and world class sound. Not sterile, not too much character. I’d put it up against any preamp I’ve ever heard for male vocals. It does wonders on kick, snare, violin – it’s a long list.

The only thing I wish it had was a faster meter on the compressor. It’s so transparent you can take out too much if you are in a hurry. I wish it had a single notch/parametric sweep as well.

It just plain sings. All the articles I’ve read about it are true. I tried some sexy nos tubes in it – but I ended up taking them out because they were too colored. I don’t use the de-esser in mine – it came broken – but I use it so often I don’t want it to leave the studio even for a couple of weeks. Greg will fix it for free, of course.

I have AB’d it with some very fine gear and It always had the coolest sound hands down. For the price (I got mine for around 2800), it’s a steal. The Focusrite and the Manley equivalent channel strips (http://www.manleylabs.com/containerpages/voxbox99.html)were tempting (Producer Pack, and Voxbox) but for my money this sounded better.