Telefunken Elektroakustik founder and CEO Toni Fishman has launched a new company, Fairchild Recording Equipment LLC, offering an authentic recreation of the Fairchild 670 vacuum tube compressor developed over five years of extensive R&D and precision testing.
Fishman and his Fairchild team recently completed a nationwide US tour with initial demonstrations at top SoCal recording studios, including The Village, Steakhouse Studios, After Hours and Music Box. Following these, demonstrations took place throughout the Midwest and East Coast with an extended presentation at Blackbird Studio and the purchase of the new 670 for the famed Nashville studio.
‘It is so commendable what Toni Fishman has done – nobody else has had the guts to do it this way,’ says LA-based producer/mixer/engineer Rafa Sardina, an 18-time Grammy and Latin Grammy Award-winner. ‘Other attempts that I’ve heard lack that real Fairchild gain structure and tonal balance. Many original vintage 670s don’t sound right because of age and bad servicing. I’ve worked with this new Fairchild 670 in my studio with my own recordings and I really pushed it. I did A-B comparisons and the stereo was perfectly matched left and right, no artifacts at all.’
The original Fairchild 670 has a reputation as the best sounding and most versatile compressor made. Used on countless hit recordings over the years, its combination of tube driven amplification and gain reduction gives the 670 a wide range of compression effects, from subtle and transparent to heavy and pumping.
With applications including vocals, drums, bass, guitars, strings, piano, brass, orchestral instruments and mix bus/mastering in its sights, Fishman’s new vacuum tube Fairchild 670 is faithfully recreated to provide modern producers and audio engineers with the classic sound of the first intelligent automatic volume control limiter. Its dual-channel design and unique compression characteristics, make the Fairchild 670 capable of adding warmth, depth, and character to virtually any audio signal. The vacuum tube technology used in the 670 adds a natural, organic quality to the compressed signal, providing that distinctive classic analogue sound to both digital and analogue productions.
Among its features are its dual mono operation; six selectable time constants; threshold, compression and makeup gain controls; vu signal metering; hand-wired point-to-point construction; custom-designed transformers and tube-driven amplification.
Available in very limited numbers, the rekindled vacuum tube Fairchild 670 will initially be available in the US through Sweetwater Sound Inc and Vintage King Audio. European dealers include Klemm in Austria, Germany and Switzerland; Funky Junk in France, Italy and Spain; Cyber Farm in Denmark and Sweden and SX Pro in the UK. Asian dealers include MID in Japan; Gearlounge in South Korea, and Budee in China.
More: www.fairchildusa.com
