Pendulum Quartet

This is an essential part of my studio. It will add richness to any track. Because of the capability to drive the tubes - in any of the sections - pre, eq, comp - as hard as you like (or not) , it can be very clean or very gritty. The grittyness is different from the grittyness of of a lot of old  solid state gear - it seems like more harmonics are generated when you push it - which can make for a stringent quality - even strident on the wrong source - but the box is so flexible that you can tweek it to flatter almost any source. The compressor, while Opto, is fast as you need it to be - well behaved and easy to control. . The EQ is sweet - and the step mid sweep positions are useful. The pad and rolloff are handy. Being able to switch the order of the comp and eq is useful on anything where the comp will bring out more lows than needed.

We did aa AB comparison against an Amek 9098  on several sources - and the pendulum smoked the Amek on all aspects except noise.  The Amek was very accurate to the source but the Pendulum just made stuff sound better in our (subjective) opinion. This was not as formal a shootout as I would have liked - but the differences were so obvious that  a lot of formality wasn't required. 

There is a little noise - there's a lot of tubes in the signal path when all the elements are "in" - so they add up.  Being able to use the elements as inserts to other pre's independently of each other is nice - its like getting the components seperately - or together - however you want to use them.  Very nice if you have a pre/converter combination you like and just want a nice tube compressor or eq in line.

This is not your highly colored tube pre. Its quite clean - but the tubes ability to be linear, and clip nicely add a lot of options. Its expensive but its worth it to have at least one pre in your rig that can take simply take care of any job you need done with class.  Greg - owner, designer, industry guru,  will talk to you and be very helpful - but will get a little grumpy if you ask stupid questions. t.