What is this Radio Shack EQ Everybody's Talking About?

[philbo]

Well I've got a blackface BSR EQ that makes everything passing through it sound magic. Especially when hooked to the Lafayette receiver that is my normal signal chain. The BSR has LEDs on every slider.

I'd sell it for 3k if anyone's seriously interested.

Yeah, I have one of those too. Maybe a different model, mine has an RTA with a little measurement mic. The sound isn't magic (as far as I can tell), but it sure is handy if you need to handle a lot of consumer level I/O (has 3 stereo ins/outs, and will dub from any source to any destination while monitoring any of the 3 ins. The RTA is sort of cheesey, but it does serve as a quick visual reference of spectrum while doing mixes... Cost me $150 about 20 years ago from this wierd catalog called DAK.
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[inverseroom]

Damn, I remember DAK. They listed the "hiss assassin" NR unit, and I used to buy their cassettes in packs of ten. It was cool because nobody else's mix tapes were DAK. Word.

[Radioaction]

Well damn.... after reading all these posts, I was sure I had this thing sitting up in my attic, after half an hour of moving boxes I found it and it was the black-faced 10 band version (with the IMX stereo expander). Is this thing any good at all, or should I put it back in the attic?

Scott

[Mr. Dipity]

Well damn.... after reading all these posts, I was sure I had this thing sitting up in my attic, after half an hour of moving boxes I found it and it was the black-faced 10 band version (with the IMX stereo expander). Is this thing any good at all, or should I put it back in the attic?

Scott

Put it back in the attic. The silver face, 10 band, LED'd versions are all fine Radioshack products, but they don't have the tone and sound of the original 7 band. Call me a snob if you like, but I haven't seen any of those models selling for $3k+.

[RefD]

*tries to not harp too much on the importance of the mods*

[bantam]

so its the black face 7 band thats worth a dam? anyone have a picture? anyone opened one up? any iron in there. opamps. what are we talking.

thanks

[Mark Alan Miller]

I love this thread.

[ubertar]

I love this thread.

Me too.

Hey, is this the holy grail one? It's blackface, 7-band-- but I think this is meant for in a car. I do my EQing "in the box", otherwise I'd consider it.

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

I had one of those 10 band, IMX, black-face jobs.

Noisy, big phase problems and the danger of mud when trying to tweak a mix.

It did yield some cool tones when processing a keyboard track, say and the IMX was an FX in itself.

Now I've got linear-phase EQ plug-ins and I wish I had that little crazy character back.

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

That is....

I don't want to be a part of an unintentional movement to cannonize some mediorcre gear.

("Everybody at TapeOp is talking about the Rad Shack EQ, I think I'll bid the price of a used car to get one on Eee-bay")

Seriously if I saw a clean one at a tag sale for $10 USD I'd pick it up and run a couple of my tag sale Yamaha or Casio synths through it to groovy-up the sound.

Horry Grairh, I don't thin so, Rucy!

Bill

[toothpastefordinner]

Seriously if I saw a clean one at a tag sale for $10 USD I'd pick it up and run a couple of my tag sale Yamaha or Casio synths through it to groovy-up the sound.

You're talking about something completely different than what we're talking about. Of course the plastic ten-band radio shack EQ sounds stupid and bad. RS didn't know why people were buying/hoarding/using the 7-band and probably went "duh, they'll love this plastic ten band with LEDs everywhere!" and it sounded like crap.

The input circuitry on their later stuff is standard noisy radio shack crap. The 7-band that everyone is talking about has unique loading and phase response. If you change out the caps on the input to better-quality ones (poly works fine but if you go overboard you can use orange drops or something similar) you can clean up the signal while maintaining the overall sound.

It's important to drive it from a good preamp, which, of course, people who bought this thing for their home stereo system weren't doing. The way it's set up, the output impedance of the input signal has a huge effect on the sound. In the consumer world this means that it sounds kind of mediocre when you plug your turntable or CD player into it.

There have been people talking smack about 4558's in this thread too, but they're a big part of the design - without the low slew rate of the 4558's, the input would oscillate crazily at high frequencies... necessitating compensation... thus ruining the sound of the input circuitry.

Anyone else want to step up and say "This can't be good, I have a completely different unit and it sounds bad!"?

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

Toothpaste,

It seemed that we hadn't determined which model was the desired unit, so I wrote about the box I knew something about.

I would like to check the sound of the one you describe with open ears.

We've made headway by agreeing the 10 band is what you'd expect from a RS sonic Band-Aid.

Bill

[toothpastefordinner]

It seemed that we hadn't determined which model was the desired unit, so I wrote about the box I knew something about.

I would like to check the sound of the one you describe with open ears.

We've made headway by agreeing the 10 band is what you'd expect from a RS sonic Band-Aid.

fair enough, I guess! It's the 31-1989. If you find one, crack it open, switch out the ceramic caps in the signal path with poly caps (the two-bit green caps from mouser/digikey are fine) and take it for a test drive!

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

Fair enough, indeed.

Now I have yet one more reason to venture into the dusty underworld where the wild orphaned gear roam.

[apropos of nothing]

Yamean like this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Realistic-31-1989-S ... dZViewItem