After two years of careful R&D followed by extensive beta testing by savvy engineers like Dylan Dresdow, Dean Landon, Ronan Chris Murphy and Tony Shepperd, among others, Peter Montessi and his team at A-Designs Audio are proud to finally introduce the company's new, vacuum tube-equipped HM2EQ, better known as the HAMMER.

The HAMMER is a dual mono channel, three band, analog equaliser engineered with an ingenious filtering system that allows the even harmonics to flow through its 12AT7 Philips valves filtering out unwanted noise. The resulting sound is warm and 'musical' yet highly transparent with a clean, airy high end. The smoothness of the HAMMER's operation prompted Tony Shepperd (Kenny Loggins, Take 6, Whitney Houston) to comment, "You don't know it's there until you take it out."

Housed in a 2U metal chassis with an aluminium faceplate and beefy toroidal power transformer under the hood, the HAMMER is an invaluable tool for any studio. Both channels feature switches for bypass, high cut and low cut, as well as six large aluminium rotaries for the EQ section. The frequency bands are:

Low 30/50/100/200/300/400Hz,

Mid  250/500/1.2k/1.6k/2k, and

High 2.5k/3.5k/5k/7.5k/10k/15k, with ±13dB of boost/cut for each frequency range.

The right side of the HAMMER faceplate houses a heavy duty Carling on/off toggle switch and large brilliant blue jewel lamp for power indication. Rear panel connections include a pair of balanced Neutrik XLR inputs and outputs.

"Although the digital recording world has certainly come a long way, especially over the last couple of years, it still can't accurately mimic the warm, musical tones that a vacuum tube can best provide," says A-Designs Audio's Peter Montessi. "We've gone through countless tube choices and combinations to find the best possible sonics for the HAMMER and I know that discerning engineers are going to be very pleased with it when they hear it for themselves."

REVIEW - Paul White, Sound on Sound, Sept 2008

#  "If you want 'that' analogue sound, sometimes real analogue gear is the only way you can get it - and that's what this valve EQ is all about..."
#  "...though this valve EQ is not fully parametric, the excellent results speak for themselves."
#  "..The HAMMER brought about an immediate improvement when I added just a dB or two of adjustment, especially at the low end.  Two or three dB of boost at 100Hz really rounded out the bottom end of the mix I was working on, but without compromising clarity or making things sound mushy; it also seemed to make the bass end more even, with better definition between bass guitar and kick drum.  Just one dB of 10kHz added some 'breath' to the top end, and all the instruments seemed to come into better focus without suffering the gritty harshness that 'in the box' plug-in processing sometimes brings out".
#  "Equalisation is, and always will be, an area where the subjective result far outweighs what is written on the spec sheet - and in the case of the Hammer, I really like what I hear!"

Click here for the complete review.

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