Fairchild has announced that after five years of R&D and testing, it will debut a new recreation of the 670 vacuum tube compressor at the upcoming AES 2023 Convention at the Javits Center in New York City (booth 427).
Hand-built in Estonia and tested/burned in at Fairchild’s headquarters in Connecticut, the new 670 is available in very limited numbers. One of the first to test out the new 670 was LA-based producer/mixer/engineer Rafa Sardina, an 18-time Grammy and Latin Grammy Award winner, who says, “I’ve heard other attempts to recreate this remarkable unit they lack that real Fairchild gain structure and tonal balance. I’ve worked with this new Fairchild 670 in my studio with my own recordings and I really pushed it. I did A-B comparisons and the stereo was perfectly matched left and right, no artifacts at all.”
Toni Fishman, founder and CEO of microphone designer/manufacturer TELEFUNKEN Elektroakustik, is behind the new company, with the 670 utilizing the same tubes and custom-wound transformers as the initial units, and it’s built to the original specs. The architecture, point-to-point soldering and turret-style construction help make it an authentic recreation of the original 670 designed and built by Rein Narma at the request of Les Paul in 1959.
The new vacuum tube 670 provides modern producers and audio engineers with the classic sound of the first intelligent automatic volume control limiter. Its dual-channel design and compression characteristics are stated to add warmth, depth, and character to audio signals.
Key features include dual mono operation, six selectable time constants, threshold, compression, makeup gain controls, VU metering, hand-wired point-to-point construction, custom-designed transformers, tube-driven amplification. Applications: vocals, drums, bass, guitars, strings, piano, brass, orchestral instruments, mix buss/mastering.
Sweetwater Sound and Vintage King Audio have been named initial domestic dealers. European dealers include Klemm in Austria, Germany and Switzerland; Funky Junk in France, Italy and Spain; Cyber Farm in Denmark and Sweden; SX Pro in the UK. Asian dealers include MID in Japan; Gearlounge in South Korea, and Budee in China.
