Product: Moog Parametric EQ
Price Paid: US $100 used
Submitted
04/25/2001
at
01:10pm
by
MC
Email: analogdiehard<at>worldnet dot att dot net
Ease of Use
:
10
This is a three stage fully parametric EQ with frequency, width, and cut/boost controls per stage that is designed for recording or live sound enforcement. The bandwidth of each stage is divided up to cover the full audio spectrum, IE bass, middle, high frequencies. The knobs are really easy to manipulate and they're not crowded, very easy to tweak.
Do not be misled by the knobs marked "Frequency", the filters in this box are *NOT* the same filters found in Moog synthesizers. They are not the fat transistor ladder filters and there are no CV inputs.
There's also a gain control and a drive control. The latter tends to confuse many people, because there's no perceived effect on the sound when you tweak it. What the drive control does is reverse the gain structure at the input and output stages for the purpose of improving S/N ratio. Rotating it one direction (I forget CW or CCW) decreases the input gain while increasing the output gain. The only change you will hear is decreased noise, if any.
A power switch and a status switch (for enabling/disabling the effect) is also on the front panel (yay!), and there's also a set of LEDs for power, status, and clipping.
The rear panel has -10dB input and output 1/4" jacks and a 1/4" "remote" jack for enabling/disabling the EQ. For the remote switch all you have to do is to short the tip to ground - simple. There's also a switch for local voltage, 120VAC or 240VAC so no internal modification is needed. The spec says that in 120VAC mode, the unit will work down to 90VAC so it should work fine in Japan where the local voltage is 100VAC. The power cord is the standard detachable IEC cord.
Another bonus - the rack ears double as handles for standalone use. Just remove the four screws on each side and rotate the ears.
Sound Quality
:
10
The effect is very predictable and effective. When I first got it back in 1987, I used it on my Kustom 88 electronic piano to get rid of some of the mud and to make it cut through better in my club band. Having the ability to dial in the width of the cut/boost band is a powerful tool.
The Kustom is long gone but I still keep this EQ around because it's useful. On one occasion I had a multitrack live recording to mix down and there was some ringing on the snare drum that interfered with the vocals. So I pull out the EQ, route the drums through it, set the cut to max and swept it until the center frequency of the ringing was found. Then I decrease the dB cut level and tweak the width and frequency until the ringing is attenuated just enough to let the vocals get through but without ruining the tone of the snare drum or losing the timbre of the rest of the drum kit. Very effective tool.
The sound quality is real transparent and it doesn't seem to add any noise. There is no audible clicking or anything when the effect is switched in and out.
Again, this is not a Moog filter like on the synthesizers. The typical synthesizer filter is a low pass filter with resonance control, that means all the high frequencies above the cutoff frequency are diminished, kaput. This parametric EQ has bandpass filters with width and cut/boost controls and you will always hear the full spectrum. You will not get the same sounds of a synthesizer filter. This parametric EQ is used for precise audio processing.
Reliability
:
10
It hasn't broken yet. These were made back in the 1970s and they're pretty solid.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Moog Music is long gone, but these units shipped with the schematics packed inside a plastic bag.
It uses standard parts except for the width control, which is a dual ganged pot with different values for each pot. These aren't known to fail, but I don't think you're going to find them anywhere.
Overall Rating
:
10
I see this parametric EQ in a lot of studios. It's a practical item. Mixing boards at best have semi-parametric EQs, with sweepable frequency and cut/boost controls but they omit the width control. This is good enough for most applications, but for those occasions like the drum example described above a parametric EQ does a better job. There are not many rackmount parametric EQs around; Furman is the only other one I can think of, yet I see quite a few of the Moog ones.
