My new score!

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JR.
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Re: My new score!

Post by JR. »

For TMI, I was not involved in the nuts and bolts design, but was in the peanut gallery steering the high level product definition. I argued for the opto- topology over a classic variable tube mu, which Sondermeyer the senior engineer on the project (director of analog engineering at Peavey and an old RCA guy) was certainly capable of. While the variable mu would have certainly met the letter of the product brief to sound like a classic tube comp, I wanted it to sound like a good classic comp. :D I won that argument pretty easily since nobody was arguing for the other approach and I was the only one there with a clue about recording. Sondermeyer understood how to use tubes better than the why for using them (Note: Sondermeyer was co-inventor on several patents for low cost solid state tube overload mimics, that didn't suck IMO).

In hindsight the one mistake in the VCL was not providing a proper stereo link switch. :oops: I recall after requests from the marketplace, having the junior engineer on the project bench test the tracking from hard linking the side chains and while not perfect it was very usable. Peavey service may even have modification advice, but that was decades ago so I wouldn't count on it. We never made a production change to add this feature, because these products were way too cool for the room (Peavey distribution) and never sold as well as they should have.

The other AMR/Peavey product in this same performance class is the VMP-2 mic preamp, If you see one for sale at a reasonable price you will not be disappointed (IMO).

There were a number of later me-too cheap hybrid products with some tube in the audio path, but I resisted doing one of them for years, and they happened after I left and couldn't stop them. Buy one of them at your own risk.

There may be a few more pearls in the Peavey mud with some all tube guitar products. I recall a simple tube mixer for guitar pedals, that I couldn't give away back in the day, and a tube driven spring reverb. Peavey made thousands of products so not all of them reflected the lowest possible common denominator design. The Peavey customers however rewarded me far more for my "good for the money" value product efforts than novel product directions. The VCL and VMP were fish out water at Peavey (AMR).

JR
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