Top 5: Mark Moffatt

I bought this 15 years ago while I was working on a project with a female artist whose voice was overloading my usual vocal chain. The VoxBox optical compressor works on the voltage straight from the mic before it hits any electronics, which is a great concept: the circuit compresses the voltage from the mic before it hits the preamp — which is why it works so well for vocals. With most other electronics, the microphone will go through the preamp before it gets to the compressor. You can really dial in the dynamic and make it manageable without it squashing anything. The de-esser is also the best I’ve ever used and can also be used as a limiter and sounds very similar to the old Urei 175. The stepped gain knob is more like a control of how much tube sound you are getting, which is very useful on vocals. Its other strength is as a bass DI. Manley claims the EQ is similar to a Pultec and that’s true. I owned an original EQP1A and A/B’d it with the VoxBox and it sounded very close; so close that I sold the Pultec. It occasionally gets used on instruments like Dobro, fiddle and mandolin and really warms up the sound of those instruments.

I have a long history with this unit. In the early ’80s AMS reverbs arrived in Australia about six months before they hit the US thanks to a young English distributor who had moved to Australia. I was using mine in the mix room at EMI Sydney when Taro Kakehashi, founder of Roland came into the studio and paid a visit. I had met him before and was a Roland endorsee, hence the visit. He mentioned Roland were making a digital reverb and I said “will it do this?” and dialled up Non Linear 9.9 on the AMS on the snare. The Roland Sydney guys told me he rushed straight back to his hotel and called Japan about this and I was up in Hamamatsu the week later working with the R&D team. They gave me one, which I still have, along with several others and use them as my main drum reverb to this day. They are grainy and sweet at the same time and somehow just really sit naturally with drums in a mix.