Today we are excited to announce that we have finalized and launched major updates to Nomad Factory's flagship products, Pulse-Tec EQs and All-Tec EQs.

https://www.nomadfactory.com/news/n251-NEW-Retro-EQs-Bundle-from-Pulse-Tec-All-Tec-Major-Upgrades/

 

I like the white GUI:


cant they just do the other Pultec, the solid-state modern one (EQP-1A3-SS) or the Lang PEQ2 or something. Or any other modern interpretation with added feature and such but still can do the basic Pultec perfectly. Too much standard Pultec emu plugin already.




Anyway their old ones are bad by today's standard. None tube-sat emulated just a soft clip and the curve interaction doesn't really behave as a Pultec would, as in the dip frequency won't move deeper when you combine boost+cut. Hard to explain, but if one been using Pultec would understand. All the EQ cramped at Nyquist too. Funniest part is the Vintage toggle that just add clean 1db boost.

Dunno if they'll fix or improve the design on V2. The other EQ on the bundle, the ALTEC seems more interesting to me tho. it has Motown EQ section too.

 

Wait, those weren't Langevins? BC Fuse Audio has the same filters and Kazrog has the 252. Didn't knew there were Altec takes on those filters.

 

I think they are all the same, no such thing as brand back then, the race was improving the circuitry design on the very early stage of them all. Motown engineers took those design and make their version, so does Altec I guess before that. The Cinema EQ has different EQ point which isn't that musical, maybe that's why Langevin and eventually Altec and Motown version use different EQ points than the Cinema EQ.





- Rupert Neve had different idea and nailed those EQ point later tho. they are similar to the Cinema EQ lol
- also the newer design keep improving the bandwidth with Neve managed to get up to 16kHz and later succeeded by the Sontec that was 1st designed to have as high as audio bandwidth covered according to Burges McNeal & George Massenburg. Forgot which video at yt i watch him talking about it. it's on Make Believe channel.
- I think the later API version with solid-state circuit became more popular in studios and people abandon these earlier passive design.


Nomad made them both (the Motown version) back in the Dark Age lol



There's someone selling the Altec on Reverb dot com and this is how he described it.

I'm selling a really nice Altec 9073A passive graphic equalizer. These are very similar to the Altec 9062A's and Langevin EQ-252-A's, also known as the Motown EQ. The main difference is that the 9073A is 6 band instead of 7 band so it has some unique frequency options.

INFO/HISTORY: The Langevin 252A is the 2nd true graphic equalizer ever made (the even rarer Cinema Engineering 7080 being the 1st), making these a true piece of music recording history. Designed by Art Davis in the late 1960's, this was a "work-horse" of the industry. Altec equalizers were used by A&M Records, Columbia, Universal/Decca, MGM, Paramount, United Artists, and Walt Disney to name a few. Motown actually built these into custom boxes that included their own tube makeup amplifier for unity gain.

 

Last edited: Oct 25, 2023

I wish to know how those companies and studios used those units. I think it's cool on the bass, but this is the only usage i found for those eqs (the motown/252/hitsville). I tried on melodies also. i like the 5k and 16k on those. but i didn't felt the magic all people talk about those eqs and i see myself using much more the API 560 for graphic eq than those, for me it just sound more solid on all the sources

 

me personally I like these Proportional EQ for boosting the resonance of instruments, just midrange the "tone" of the instrument if you may. The moves are usually not subtle at all and it brings everything forward. I believe that's the "magic" they are talking about, things suddenly popped out. Add that with the tube amplification stage after, I can see why they are being used back then. Well, you could still do it with Pro-Q3 (Gain+Q interaction mode) + Saturn2 with ease at the right settings these days, nothing impressive really lol.

 

Last edited: Oct 25, 2023