Description
Designed in 1969, the Spectrasonics 610 is a legendary compressor / limiter from the USA. It’s a super-fast compressor with a separate diode limiter and its speciality is savage compression. In the right hands it can be subtle but, at heart, it’s a killer
The 610 has enough gain to be used as a preamp with high-output mics. Gain staging it takes some time to learn – the combination of lots of gain available on the input, the slope control and lots of gain on the output means it’s a juggling act to get the desired level of compression & distortion. Get it right and the 610 will blow your mind
This vintage 610 is in lovely condition and sounds great. There’s plenty of vintage iron & Class A transistor wonderfulness inside and we’ll recap it before sale. Tested & working 100%. Photos show the 610 for sale
Want to hear some sound samples? Upload your sounds via WeTransfer to upload@bn1studio.co.uk and we’ll run them through the 610
“The controls will allow you to absolutely defile your audio at the extreme ranges of the knobs’ travel; it can get fast enough for the compression envelope to track the waveform of low-frequency stuff”
“Somewhere in the middle of the control-range, it’s a pretty useful general-purpose compressor”
“can distort pretty nicely, especially on mean bass guitar or submix under a snare. The transformers seem to saturate pretty nicely to round things out, and it’s got a diode limiter on the output stage”
“As I got ours I expected only a fx or distortion box, but was really impressed how useful they are. I use them on aggressive snares, bass or bass mults, sometimes vocals… Drum rooms are great to get that JJP or Tschad Blake sound”
“Someone else mentioned acoustic guitar, he’s right I never thought this beast would be great on a guitar, but it is, specially on strummed guitar”
“I’ve always used mine as a room mic preamp/comp when tracking drums. works great with a 57 or SM7 or even sometimes an old oktava ribbon”
“I have had the privilege of working in studios with Fairchild 670’s, 660’s, LA2A’s, LA3’s, La4’s, 1176 (all types), etc… There is no compressor in that elite level that is better than a Spectrasonics 610”
“think of 610 = rude, big, fat, neve-ish, classic, rock, a bassdrum forcer, a guitar stabilizer, a snare Puncher, a vocal rocker”
“Very strong sonic imprint one trick pony”
“They’ve been on every record I’ve engineered since, (1993), and most that I’ve mixed.” – Tchad Blake
