Drawmer 1960

Drawmer 1960

 

There is little doubt in the minds of many engineers and producers that vacuum tubes possess a unique sound quality providing a "warmer, more alive" sound. Combining eight active tube stages and the low noise and reliability of solid state electronics, the Drawmer 1960 provides the ultimate direct interface between the sound source and the recording medium. The Drawmer 1960 is a two channel unit with each channel comprised of a completely natural sounding "soft knee" vacuum tube compressor and an extremely low noise microphone pre-amplifier with switchable 48 volt phantom power. A further auxiliary instrument pre-amp with EQ is also provided.

 

The Drawmer 1960 powerful combination of the classic valve circuit, offering unsurpassed tonality, and the low noise balanced microphone input with up to 60dB of gain has allowed engineers throughout the world to exploit the full potential of high performance condenser microphones. An example of this would be the direct to digital stereo recording of live classical music without the necessity of a mixing console.

 

Drawmer 1960 Compressor: Because the compressor is a soft knee type, it requires few controls. Strictly speaking, a soft knee design does not have a rigidly defined threshold but the title 'Threshold' has been retained for the "amount of compression" control for the sake of familiarity. The Threshold range is continuously variable between infinity and -24dB, the theory being that signals below the threshold are essentially unprocessed and the signals exceeding this threshold are subjected to increasing amounts of gain reduction dependent on by how much they exceed the threshold.

 

The attack and release times are switchable rather than being continuously variable and this method of operation falls into line with that of its all valve predecessors. Attack simply offers a-choice of slow, medium and fast whilst release has six settings. Positions one to four have fixed release times whilst positions five and six are two different programme dependent release time modes making the unit ideally suited to programme material with complex dynamics such as complete stereo mixes and vocals. Interestingly, the attack times are further modified by the choice of release setting so the range of choices are wider than it might first appear.

 

Because compression is a form of controlled gain reduction, a stage of make-up amplification follows the compressor section giving a range of +20dB. The VU meters may be switched to monitor either the amount of gain reduction taking place or the output signal level and the two channels may be used either independently or as a stereo pair, depending on the setting of the stereo link switch.

 

The side chain access points may be used to patch in equalisers to enable the compressor to act as a de-esser. As with other Drawmer products, the by-pass switch offers a choice of Normal. By-pass and Side Chain Listen modes so that if you have patched in any additional side chain processing, you can easily monitor what effect it is having.

 

In addition to the balanced microphone and line inputs on the rear of the Drawmer 1960, an auxiliary input on the front panel gives direct access for guitars or electronic instruments. Equalization is provided along with sufficient gain to overload the tube pre-amp for sustain effects. The Aux input is a valuable addition as it combines the virtues of a D.I. box and equalizer with the compressor allowing the instrument to be simultaneously processed and routed to the mixing console or directly to the recorder.

 

DRAWMER 1960 TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

(All measurements taken at +4dBu operating level)

 

INPUT IMPEDANCES

LINE 20K Ohm

MIC 150 Ohm to 600 Ohm

AUX 2.2M Ohm

MIC INPUT NOISE -128.5dB (@ +60dB gain)

MAXIMUM INPUT LEVEL +20dBu

OUTPUT IMPEDANCE 50 Ohm

MAXIMUM OUTPUT LEVEL +22dBm (balanced)

BANDWIDTH < 10Hz to 22KHz -1dB

 

COMPRESSOR NOISE AT UNITY GAIN

Wideband 22Hz - 22KHz CCIR ARM IEC A Q-Pk CCIR

AV -82dB -88dB -88dB -91dB -77dB

RMS -81dB -87dB -87dB -90dB -

 

DISTORTION (THD & NOISE) @ 1KHz

Line Input with BYPASS selected < 0.1%

Line Input with NORMAL selected < 0.3%

 

POWER REQUIREMENTS 100-120Volt or 195-250Volt at 50-60Hz, 38 Watts

FUSE RATING 250mA for 240Volt, 500mA for 120Volt

CONFORMING TO BS EN 60127-2:1991 SHEET III

FUSE TYPE 20mm x 5mm, Class 3 Slo-Blo, 250Volt working

CASE SIZE 482mm (w) x 88mm (h) x 250mm (d)

WEIGHT (incl packaging) 6.0 Kgs