Chandler Limited TG12345 Curve Bender Review
The Curve Bender EQ lives up to its legendary credentials!
The Chandler Limited series of processing equipment has done the seemingly impossible. Wade Goeke, founder of Chandler Limited, in partnership with EMI Studios in London, has released a line of outboard EQs, limiters, and preamps that are remakes of the original recording consoles from Abbey Road Studios. Goeke has been given exclusive access to the private vault of design notes at Abbey Road, along with the combined technical expertise of the Abbey Road technicians and actual console models to dissect. His overarching concern is recreating the sound of the original devices, which means making almost no changes to the circuit topologies or manufacturing methods.
The Chandler Limited TG12345 Curve Bender is a 2-channel EQ recreation of the Abbey Road TG series console EQ. Part of what gave the TG consoles their warm, rich tone was the germanium transistors in the amplifier stage, which is also what the Curve Bender employs. I used this EQ to process bass guitar, drums, and acoustic guitar, and I also ran it on the master bus to hit the whole song.
This EQ has a full-throttle low end that adds grit, presence, and thickness to anything it touches. The high band nicely rounds out the flatness of digital high-frequency content (such as cymbals), while the two middle bands provide an extreme range of sculpting and smoothing options. The tone of this unit is colored in exactly the way you’d want to color any modern rock or dance track – with grit, warmth, and energy.
While most of us will never get the chance to tinker on the desks at Abbey Road, Chandler has made them available for every studio artist to enjoy. The Curve Bender EQ lives up to its legendary credentials, and makes the ideal outboard EQ for boosting the character and presence of mixes.
