The other day I played some isolated tracks from The Beatles “Something” that featured the unique Abbey Road RS124 compressor, a modification of Altec’s 436C vari-mu compressor. There were only 25 of these hand-built units ever made so it’s rare to find one. However, Heritage Audio has brought a version of the unit back with its new Lang Electronics P.Lane Type 436 hardware compressor.
Some Background
The Altec 436 compressor was an all-tube, vari-mu design originally developed in the 1950s by Altec Lansing for broadcast and public address applications. When EMI acquired several Altec 436B units for its Abbey Road Studios in the late 1950s, their engineers found the stock units insufficient for music recording.
This led to significant modifications, resulting in the Abbey Road RS124 compressor, a highly coveted piece of gear specifically tailored for professional studio use. The modified unit offered greater control over dynamics and a smoother, more polished sound, which made it much more versatile for music production, particularly for achieving the iconic “Abbey Road sound.”
Bring On The New
The Lang Electronics P.Lane Type 436 is a two rack space unit that has 3 tubes (1 x NOS 6H5P, 1 x JJ E88CC, 1 x NOS 6AL5) like the original design, plus Lang Electronics input and output transformers custom designed by Heritage Audio.
Like the Abbey Road RS124, it features a selectable, stepped Attack control with 6 settings starting at the fastest 15ms and getting longer as you increase the selection number.
It also has a selectable, stepped Recovery control with 6 settings that go from 300ms up to 6 seconds, which also features a unique “HOLD” position for each constant that will keep the source signal compressed to the most recently processed peak level. These HOLD settings can be great for avoiding any level drops that might happen when less compression is applied to the signal so that the level remains consistent.
A six position DC Threshold control adjusts the knee of the compression, with position 1 being the standard 436 sound up to a faster, harder sound at position 6. You’ll also find the standard Input control to set the threshold, and Output control to adjust the gain as needed. A vintage style Gain Reduction Meter in the center of the unit completes the front panel controls.
The front panel also includes two adjustment screws for placing the needle at ´ZERO´ and for fine tuning the tube Balance (BAL). After time the zero position of the needle may drift, but can easily be set back by the user. The Balance is set from factory, but if needed, you can adjust the exact matching of the two Vari-Mu triode tubes.
The Lang Electronics P.Lane Type 436 is available for $799, which is way less that a vintage RS124 would cost, if you could even find one. You can find out more here, or watch the video below.
