FS: 70's Broadcast Limiter McMartin LR-1004a

[DrAlienSmith]

McMartin Compressor/Limiter LR-1004a...$240 plus postage (item is in Perth).

This is an old broadcast limiter I bought back in 2007. It was in poor shape when I got it but I sent it to Rob Squire who restored it to full working condition, added a passive output control, changed it to 240V and brought the attack and release controls for the compressor to the front panel. At the time Rob was working on it he said "It is an interesting limiter. It works using a diode bridge, like a Neve 2254 or EMI limiter, but is cruder in its design. Pushing into limiting gives a nice pure 3rd harmonic distortion...very 70s!" and he wasn't wrong. When abused this thing distorts like crazy and it clamps down at +16dBu so even with the compressor off, the limiter will never let audio past that limit.

Essentially this is a character box, it doesn't really do nice sweet compression. I've tried it on everything and its been killer on some things and not so good on others. It tends to sound great on sources with sharp transients and not too much bottom end. My favorite memory of this unit is recording an acoustic guitar lead break with a copperphone mic and running it into this and distorting it so much it sounded like and electric guitar thru an amp. I'll try and find the audio for that and link it here later.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g6vob0t4p6mli50/2013-06-03%2009.37.32.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m2cu44bf7j7qduh/2013-06-03%2009.39.46.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/krkq1ad6dgtwgvo/2013-06-03%2009.43.01.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xrek6ta1gjuivl0/2013-06-03%2009.44.04.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2od6ccqjm8y2wwb/2013-06-03%2009.43.56.jpg

[Paul Maybury]

Sounds fun.
P.M. sent

[DrAlienSmith]

On hold

[DrAlienSmith]

Sold