Every EQ designer has to decide what their shelf sounds like. It's one of the choices that gives an equalizer its personality, and once it's made, it's made. An API shelf is an API shelf. A Neve shelf is a Neve shelf.
I couldn't decide.
The EQ in the UTEQ500 started when I was building a custom console. I needed one equalizer that would do everything all my other EQs did. It had to have the musicality of a classic Neve or EMI and the flexibility of a GML or an Orban. Larry Jasper and I spent years on it.
The original plan was simple: each band would have a peak mode and a shelf mode. The hard part was deciding what the slope of that shelf should be. So we set up the prototype with a trim pot on the circuit board that let me adjust it, with the idea that I'd listen, pick a setting, and we'd lock it in.
As soon as I had a chance to play with that trim pot, I knew it wasn't staying inside the box. It needed to be a knob on the front panel. That's the Shape control.
Eric Valentine
Shape blends between a bell and a shelf, and it's continuous. Every position along the way is a usable curve.
Fully counter-clockwise you have a normal bell. Boost or cut a peak, set the width with Q, done. Nothing unusual yet.
As you turn it clockwise, one side of the bell starts to lift. On the high band, everything above your frequency comes up. On the low band, everything below it does. There's a spot partway there that I use a lot: a midrange boost that also opens up the top end a little, from one band.
At 12 o'clock it's a conventional shelf. The boost starts rising below the frequency you've selected, reaches full height at that frequency, and stays there. If you know the shelf on an API 550A or an SSL E Series, this is that neighborhood.
Past 12 o'clock is where it turns into something you can't get elsewhere. You're now changing the slope and contour of the shelf itself. The rise gets slower and more gradual. Partway through that range is one of my favorite shapes: a very linear, gentle climb that makes a sound brighter without it really sounding EQ'd, because there's so little phase shift happening at any one point.
Fully clockwise you get the classic vintage shelf, the kind on an 80 series Neve, with a small dip just before the rise.
One thing to know as you turn it up: the boost will seem to move higher in frequency. The frequency you selected hasn't changed. The slope is just putting more of its emphasis further up.
Because every shelf anyone has ever built is a point somewhere on that knob. When I say the UTEQ500 can recreate the shelf of any other EQ, that's what I mean. It isn't modeling anything. It's the same kind of curve, and you get to choose which one.
And because it's a knob and not a switch, you're not limited to the famous ones. There are a lot of positions between the API and the Neve that nobody ever put in a box.
Next week: what happens when you leave Shape on a shelf and start turning the Q.
Move the Shape control yourself on the UTEQ500 Control Map, then find a dealer.
Working in the box? The MPEQ-1 plugin has the same Shape control and the same settings apply. It has a 14-day trial.
API, Neve, SSL, EMI, GML and Orban are trademarks of their respective owners. Undertone Audio is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.