Pawn Shop Comp 2.0 - User Manual
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One of the few times we think you should be looking at the meter is setting release times.
Ideally, you want the Release set so that as the vocal trails o
ff
or gets quiet, the meter
needle is moving back to 0dB. When the vocal dies out the meter should be back to 0.
On The Other Side, get rid of lower end chestiness by doing a tiny cut with WEIGH at
171kHz, and top o
ff
and widen the vocal a bit with FOCUS set to 2.4kHz. You can lean
pretty hard on the FOCUS without making the vocal sound harsh and chi
ff
y. Use that
OPERATING LEVEL control to add gain and presence to the vocal. Crank it way up (don't
forget to drop the OUTPUT level a little!) to get distortion and mojo happening. A touch of
gain added with the PREAMP control will give vocals a nice, glassy sheen.
Experiment with the TRANSFORMERS on vocals. In some cases there will be almost no
e
ff
ect, but in other cases the e
ff
ect can be huge. Happy songs = Iron? Sad songs = Steel?
On Drums
Again, the Pawn Shop Comp was developed by an engineer known for great rock drum
sounds, and he made the plugin for his speci
fi
c work so... It’s great on drums. Use it on
everything from kicks to snares to toms. Turning up OPERATING LEVEL by 3dB or more
makes drums jump out of the speakers like cannons. Dialing in a higher BIAS setting can
add vintage overload crunch to a kick. The WIEGHT control, set to 63Hz, is speci
fi
cally useful
for drums and kicks in particular.
The Pawn Shop Comp works on overheads, but we suggest for this application that you set
a little too much compression—really get those cymbals to last, and then go to The Other
Side and dial in some unprocessed signal using the WET/DRY to recover lost high end. IRON
transformers work well on cymbals and switch in METAL FILM resistors for maximum high
end.
Across the Drum Bus
On a drum buss, the Pawn Shop Comp is
fl
at out amazing, and you can get sounds from
subtle to the classic "All Four Buttons Down" sound of the 1176. Use the RELEASE to adjust
how much room sound there is (fast release = more room) and ATTACK to let the initial hits
get through (slower attack = more punch... up to a point. Too slow an attack results in
loss
of punch and very little compression applied to the tracks). In fact, often when working
on a mix we’ll put the Pawn Shop Comp on the drum bus
fi
rst thing and start playing with
settings before working on any of the drum tracks individually.
WEIGHT and FOCUS are especially handy on the drum bus. Cutting at 171Hz can clean up a
sloppy, mushy room, and a bit of a push at 2.4kHz is nice for cymbals and high hats.
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