Hi Andy,
Thanks for your contributions and excitement! I am sure we all share the same enthusiasm as you. In my opinion It's really fantastic to see an original SSL designer coming in and be part of this amazing community. After all, this is what it is all about, the love for these fantastic consoles. We're all like a big family!
This would definitely be super awesome! We've all been working for the past few years on adding here and there some replacements and improvements to this amazing console and keeping the legend alive. Whenever possible we always make an effort and try to manufacture these replacement/improvements specifically for the benefit of the SSL community and all its members.
An SSL EQ revamp designed by you with the contributions of the community would in my opinion the pinnacle of the commitment and collaboration between us all. I would love to see this come alive and, and if it comes to that, help out with the manufacturing process.
Anyways here's my ideas:
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should be as much retrofit as possible. - Any drastic modifications typically is scary for some members and there's always the fear of loosing value on the console. With I mean with this is that it should be easy to roll back if someone wishes to. The success of this is also directly related to the simplicity of retrofitting.
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should support TR, or at least we get someway to get it to work over the TR bus, even if the legacy software wouldn't know how to interpret it. This is because our new designed computer (XK-System) will eventually come out and we can add support for this new EQ card and new TR "object" ids. But for this to work, it must be over the TR bus and be able to live with all the other TR bus members.
Regarding specifically EQ, personally, I would be happy if I had a genuine 242+292 card, with all the curves and a switch to alternate between them. Much like later consoles had something close to this, but now perfected. Of course I am not against any further improvements/options, but just this for me would be great!!
We could also take advantage of modern technology (e.g. SMD) to be able to design a EQ card with roughly the same size, but with added functionality, better SNR, and sound quality overall.
What do you think?
Thanks,
Artur