- in Production by Bobby Owsinski
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New Music Gear Monday: Drawmer 1977 Channel Strip
No matter what you’re recording, it will always sound better with the mic connected to a great sounding preamp. It can sound even better with a little compression and EQ, and when all those pieces are put into the same box we have the modern channel strip. Drawmer has been making rack mounted channel strips for quite a while now, but its new 1977 seem to have just about every feature that an engineer could want included, as you’ll soon see.
The 1977 channel strip consists of mic amp, equalizer, compressor and output sections, which isn’t that different from others available. However, each section has some tweaks that feel that they’re imitating what you might see on a channel strip plugin, and that’s a good thing.
The Preamp
The preamp, for instance, has 66dB of gain, with phase reversal switch, a variable high pass filter that goes from 10Hz to 130Hz, and an instrument input on the front panel. The extra tweak is that there’s also an instrument Thru jack for connecting to other gear, and selectable impedance on the mic input that allows you to select either 200, 500 and 2.4k ohms.
The EQ
Next comes the three band EQ with the High and Low sections variable and the mid band parametric. The low frequency section, which goes from 40 to 725Hz, also has a slope control that selects between 6, 9 or 12dB per octave or a narrow band peak. The high frequency section, which goes from 530Hz to 20kHz, also has a slope control that can be set at 6 or 12dB per octave.
The Compressor
The Compressor section has the typical Threshold, Attack, Release, Ratio and Make-Up gain controls (going from 1:1 to 10:1), but also includes a Program switch that causes the release times to vary automatically with the dynamics of the incoming signal.
Then there’s the Big and Air switches. Big reduces the side-chain’s sensitivity to low frequencies so that less gain reduction is applied at those frequencies. This creates the effect that the bass is louder or bigger sounding. Air is used to re-introduce high frequencies, which can sometimes be lost after heavy compression. You can also switch the order of the sections with a switch that selects the EQ into the Compressor or the Compressor into the EQ.
The Saturate control sets the amount of saturation applied to the signal, from very subtle through to warm and to overdriven. There are also two filter switches – one that rolls off the highs and the other rolls off the lows. When both are bypassed saturation is applied to the full frequency band.
The Output Section
The output section consists of a real VU meter showing the output level. It also has a +10dB pad switch to accommodate for those situations when you’re working with hot levels. A Mix control adjusts how much EQ and compression is applied to the signal, and an Fade control adjusts the output level.
Finally, a Preamp/Direct switch allows you to bypass the EQ and compression sections completely if desired.
The Drawmer 1977 channel strip costs $1,749 and is available at an audio retailer near you. You can go here to find out more details.
