Review: Retro Instruments

Another piece of quality Retro gear has hit the desk, and I’m already rueing the day I have to send it back. The first thing I notice when I went to screw the Retro Instrument’s Doublewide 500 series tube compressor into the rack — other than it taking up two 500 series slots — was that it had its own spring-loaded screws built into the faceplate. It’s a thoughtful innovation that saves rummaging in studio drawers for the appropriate screws and also means the little buggers can’t get lost in transit. Just the kind of throwback build quality Retro is known for.

Being a variable-mu compressor, the Doublewide topology borrows elements from the company’s Sta-level and 176 designs while not being exactly like either. In particular, the single and double modes behave in a similar way, with single mode utilising fixed ratio characteristics and double mode providing dynamic program-controlled attack and recovery. While Retro encourages swapping out the tubes to achieve various tonal behaviours, the Doublewide ships standard with four self-biased NOS (new old stock) 6BJ6 pentode tubes in its gain stages, fully floating Cinemag transformer input and output circuits and the usual Retro attention to detail with hardwire bypass, meter-zero adjustment and safe power-up circuitry to avoid excess current inrush. Speaking of current, those concerned about the tubes eating into valuable 500 series power headroom need not worry. The Doublewide requires 180mA (6W), well within the two-slot power allowance.

OPEN WIDE 

Once I started using the Doublewide in earnest I quickly discovered that it has an interesting set of strengths and weaknesses. My main conclusion about this compressor is that it excels at many tasks involving slower and medium time settings but is not so flattering on quicker ones. The good news is that on vocals the Doublewide does pretty much the same magic trick that its much more expensive brethren in the Retro stable do. That trick is a smooth, buttery compression that subtly enhances the lower midrange while retaining clarity and articulation, making the vocal simultaneously shine and nestle comfortably into a mix. In Single or Double mode with the attack and release settings around the medium zone it is possible to compress the vocals by as much as 10dB without encountering anything ugly at all in terms of artifacts — quite a trick, as the signal remains musical, detailed and sweet. 

This same trick also works very well on bass and electric guitars where the subtle extra weight and tonal smoothing makes good guitar sounds noticeably better and bad ones more likeable. Ditto for acoustic guitars where I was able to get some very musical pumping happening that reminded me of the good old days of tape compression. The bad news is that on transient-heavy signals like drums and percussion, the Doublewide struggles to deliver the useful results I expected it to. On snare it seemed to emphasise some of the less pleasing harmonics of the attack and body of the drum, while when dealing with drum bus duties it was hard to come up with a setting where the energy and tone of the drums was enhanced meaningfully except at very mild settings where the benefits were extremely subtle. Anything more tended to sound grabby at the faster settings and a bit billowy on the slower times. The Doublewide is definitely not a compressor designed for mashing up drums and/or program material at fast, high settings. It does not break up easily and when its hand is forced the results are nowhere near as pleasing as something like a JLM or API module. The one exception here is kick drum where a reasonably fast setting did enhance the whallop and punch of the drum without introducing too much edginess or grab.

DOUBLE VISION

While the top-end retro compressors are more capable of aggressive compression effects, the more affordable Doublewide does its best work as a relatively transparent dynamics controller. Its tonal shaping abilities are subtle but nevertheless very sweet, particularly on guitars and bass. Its other great strength is as a centre-stage vocal compressor where the results can be truly compelling while not messing up the original signal’s tone. Phil Moore and the crew at Retro have played to the traditional strengths of tube gear here with the emphasis on power, clarity and high headroom. And while the Doublewide is not the mojo box I had thought it might be, it does deliver smooth, classy results unlike any other 500 series compressor I’ve heard. Well worth a look if your setup needs some polish and transparent control on key elements during tracking or in the mix.