Louder Than Liftoff
Royal Blue British Channel Colour
$149.00USD
- Assembled
Royal Blue is Louder Than Liftoff's take on the vintage Neve* console sound. This meticulously miniaturized channel strip adds the hallmark Neve thickness and richness to individual tracks and mixes.
The circuit is based on the 1081 Channel Amplifier from the 80-Series recording consoles of the 70's. This legendary mic/line preamp and equalizer module featured discrete transistor amplifiers and transformer-coupled input and output stages. Its powerful, yet musical equalizer section was state of the art for its time with a whopping 6 bands.
Louder than Liftoff miniaturized the essence of this classic to fit within the space limitations of the Colour format. Multiple transistor amplifier stages drive a custom steel output transformer that offers the characteristic big tone one of the original LO2567. They even recreated the 4.7 kHz Upper Presence shelving EQ per the original circuit and carefully dialed in a fixed 5 dB boost that sounds divine on just about everything.
Features
- Inspired by 1081 modules used in vintage Neve* 80 Series consoles
- Discrete transistor circuitry adapted from BA306 and BA338 Neve* amplifiers
- Tantalum capacitors and BC axial coupling caps like original design
- Custom American made steel output transformer
- Switchable 4.7 kHz "Upper Presence" shelving boost
Assembled and tested by Louder Than Liftoff.
*Neve is a registered trademark of AMS Neve Ltd.
Samples
Customer Reviews
A huge thanks to the team at DIYRE and LTL for making these available, and all the other customers that left helpful enough reviews for anyone to feel enthusiastic in their purchase. Every single way I’ve thought of and tried to use these has paid off in immediate, tangible, audible improvements that are deeply satisfying having spent so long wondering what we all do… is analog really that much better than plugins? A thousand times yes, and DIYRE is giving you the opportunity to discover that at a seriously attainable price point.
Ran a Fen-tone ribbon mic through this and the presence boost makes it sound like there’s a blanket coming off the mic. Can’t wait to see how it sounds on a bass guitar without the presence boost. I have the Red25 discrete op amp, tm79, and 15IPS Tape also… don’t get me wrong those colours are excellent but the royal blue is officially my favorite.
I built two colour pallets and bought 2 royal blue, two hitmaker, an aubergine, a CTX and TM79 which I buggered and awaiting a part to hopefully fix. I put all the stems through in mono and it sounds finished and shiny and punchy. I’m looking forward to strapping two royal blues and hitmaker 4000s on the ass end of my Fostex A8 LR into mix down of a tascam 32, sent from a teac model 3 mixer. Likely will dope 👍 I’d buy this stuff absolutely, and building it was super cool and relaxing.
I don’t get it. I rendered every track on a death metal project im mixing through this thing, with tracks I didn’t record, and suddenly this mix went from sounding like a home studio mix to one that sounds professional. My client said “whatever that new gear is that you used, it really polished this mix up.” Yep. Best 150 bucks I’ve spent all year. You can’t buy a plugin for this cheap that will ever come close! I’m telling all my engineer buddies. Now my problem is I need two of these so I can speed up rendering every track next time. My new favorite knob!!
What can I even say, it’s like I have the sound of a Neve 1081 right here in my own studio. Completely blown away and definitely planning on getting more!
