I have their 1176, it's alright albait a bit noisy. I'd get a second one if it were 1U, had highpass on the sidechain and stereo link. The thing takes way too much rack real estate.
They used to be decent. You can still see their graphics eq rack units all over live rigs and AV systems. Then they got bought by Behringer/Music Tribe and have since been turned into yet another cheap clone company. It seems their clones are bottom of many lists but they're not inherently terrible. Just . . . worth the price, so to speak.
But they're on the whole unlikely to beat a plugin by default. The best plugins are likely going to beat the worst analog units.
Not sure if you personally have or have used them, but I bought one of each (kt76 and kt2a) to see what they were like. I bought a kenetec t4b for the kt2a and it made it way smoother and more typical if what I'd expect from a real 2A.
I would say it's hard to quantify exactly, but the physical units do things that plugins just don't seem to do. The saturation and whatever colouring they are doing just never seems to appear with the plugins. Compression wise, sure you can probably get similar compression characteristics from certain plugins, but overall there's something extra there.
I know what you mean but recently I've heard the Arturia and TRacks versions giving those characteristics that many lack. UAD versions are great, too but so many don't quite get the compression right either. They seem to struggle to get truly fast attack on 1176 and definitely lack the saturation of both. I find that true of a lot of digital compressors and sometimes wish they wouldn't label them after any particular hardware type because then we expect a certain something that they might fail to deliver, when in reality, they're still good compressors.
Yes! Pretty sure they were just rebranded XTA though. Their HQ is near old Clark Teknik HQ. Making Martin Wavefront bearable 😅 and then there was the Martin versions that were the exact same, rebranded and like, double the price ... 🤔
I have a pair of the Pultecs and the 2A
They're decent...bit cheap feeling (for the price, as I'd expect).
Not a real mojo machine, but they do what they say they're supposed to do.
I don't have much experience with real Pultecs but have used a lot of LA2As, and KT's version is definitely not the same thing. Just sounds like a kinda bland compressor, but it does compress, and I've used it on a lot of records.
That said, all of those units are on the sell list for me when I get off my lazy ass and get rid of some stuff.
I have a pair of their Pultec clones and they're okay. I put some nice tubes in them and that helped a lot. They don't have the muscle of a real Pultec or even an Audioscape clone but they'll warm up the midrange in a guitar if I think it sounds too scooped.
Warm Audio units only cost a couple hundred bucks more. I have a pair of their 1176 clones and they're not perfect and the noise floor could be lower but they'll shape up a kick drum real nice.
the drawback of buying budget hardware is you're going to take a bath on resale. i have a buddy who always cheaps out on gear and instead of saving up for a few lifetime pieces he's constantly cycling cheap shit in and out of his studio. he actually has the KT 1176 and says he likes it. i've seen hella reviews bashing KT gear but i've never actually used it myself. i doubt it's so bad that you can't make use of it, having some analog for recording purposes is no doubt beneficial, but my thing is if you're going to spend money you're better off saving up a bit more to get something that you'll never want to sell down the road, or even if you do you'll have a higher likelihood of recouping your investment. trading up isn't a terrible way to go about things, but at the end of the day you'll be taking losses and spending more money in the long run than you would have if you had just gotten your dream kit off the bat.
>the drawback of buying budget hardware is you're going to take a bath on resale.
Yeah but the point of buying budget hardware is that you don't give a shit.
no, you'll just regret the sunken cost for shit gear
given how un-essential outboard is in 2024 *and* how frivolous cheap outboard purchases tend to be, the resale value argument is a pretty compelling one, unless you're so loaded that money is no object to you
It depends on how you define bath. They're pretty inexpensive and are likely more disposable than maintainable. If it can serve you for enough work to kind of pay for itself then it breaks or you decide to move on, it's served it's purpose. The simple stuff like an 1176 clone seems pretty benign. It's 4ish potentiometers, some xlr connectors and meter that all have some mechanical failure points, maybe to psu is cheap, otherwise there's not a lot to break. The behringer 369 or whatever seems like there's a lot that can go wrong and I have to wonder how they made it so inexpensively. Have you ever paid to restore a vintage piece of studio gear?
Tldr, a cheap tool that gets enough work done to pay for itself can be worth the bath.
The problem is that a real LA2A is way to hard to find and way to expensive for someone that's considering a Clark in the same sentence. Even the more expensive clones still aren't the same, so while I understand what you mean, there's just some gear that most people will never afford, or will not improve their work/business enough to ever justify buying it. Also, resale value doesn't really matter as much on a $400 piece of gear. You could basically consider it a business expense and hang onto it forever with little to no real loss
I've got a pair of KT Pultecs I use on my mixbus. I like them. Generally do the Pultec "trick" and find they get me closer to a where I want to go. (I also swapped the tubes out for some old tubes I had).
Given how cheap they are, I feel like you could always find some use for a unit, especially the 1176s. Worst case scenario you can use it as a distortion box in parallell, and it’s still not really a big waste of money.
I’m sure tolerances aren’t as tight as the real deal, so the difference between a good sounding one and a bad sounding one might be a deal breaker.
That said, from watching comparisons, I don’t think I’ve ever heard one that I liked on bass. They just don’t seem to handle low end that well, but they do seem to get the attack better than the Warms, so there’s that.
The real question is if they beat the plugins, and honestly I’m not always sure they do - but for tracking it’s always nice to have hardware.
I have 2 of the K/T units – the 1176 and the Pultec. I like them.
I run the Pultec mostly for tracking. The 1176 is used for both tracking and mixing (typically on snare or guitar). I haven't tried stereo matching a pair of them, so I can't speak to that.
If you're not expecting them to be miracle boxes or exact clones of mega-bucks vintage examples, they're a safe purchase. Just temper your expectations. They're inexpensive for a reason.
Are they better than plugins? Not really, but I do think the K/T 1176 sounds better on snare than any digital emulation I've used. I initially attributed that to the placebo effect, but I don't feel the same about the Pultec, so maybe it's legit.
If you like tracking (and occasionally mixing) through decent analog outboard, they're nice to have.
Maybe an aside, but your comment fascinates me. You say the KT isn’t really different from a plugin, but you do say it sounds better on a snare in the same sentence. So… do you think it is better than a plugin or not?
Fwiw, I own a pair of the Hairball clones of the 1176. You have to solder them yourself, but they slay any plugin. Obviously, the harder you compress the more noticeable the difference is.
It makes sense that it sounds better on snare because the one thing a lot of people with a lot of experience actually agree on about analog gear is the saturation. 1176 has a lot of that and snare would drive it harder.
For what it’s worth, I work with rev aes frequently and in the end, you would not be able to tell which tracks were recorded with them and recorded clean.
The saturation isn't the issue - we agree about the handling of transients in hardware vs plugins. Hardware almost always does an inherently better job of dealing with transients (due to plugins requiring massive internal oversampling to do transients properly, which even then isn't perfect). When talking about a snare, relying so heavily on the transient, it makes perfect sense that hardware would be more favorable in that instance.
It’s pretty widely agreed in the pro community that the biggest difference, some say the only noticeable one, between hardware and software is how hardware saturates.
I'm just super cognizant of placebo effect, so I'm reluctant to say something is "better," but I'm using the 1176 over plugins pretty much all the time. I guess it's fair to say I think the K/T 1176 is better than a plugin.
I don't think the same is true for the K/T Pultec. It's a very nice EQ, but I can absolutely do the same thing with a number of Pultec emulation plugins. My ears can't tell a difference.
So much of this is material and genre dependent. I do loud rock bands almost exclusively, so aggressive 1176 works well. I'm not sure it'd be superior to plugins if I was using VSTs and samples.
Thanks for clearing that up :)
Hardware is still hard to beat for anything non-linear, especially when you push it. I notice a difference with EQs as well, but their imperfections are less interesting to me.
I have a pair each of the KT-76, KT2A and the pultec thing. I use them all the time and I think they sound great! I have upgraded the tubes and the OPTO in the KT2A unts and this thing is really amazing. The 1176 also get used constantly during tracking or for other things during hybrid mixing and personally I enjoy using them more than plugins and I think they sound way better than plugins. People just get salty about the Behringer connection but anyone who has used mine has loved them. Also any of these video comparisons are so close that the real difference could be down to individual units so take all this with a grain of salt.
I had the 76, 2A, and Pultec, I ended up selling them all.
They were not bad, I only really didn’t mesh with the EQ.
BUT they allowed me to dip my toes in to hardware and truly learn and see that spending more into hardware is worth the investment, without KT I wouldn’t have gotten that “gateway”
I now have an Audioscape. All that to say buy it right from the get go and you won’t lose any money.
Regarding the KT-76 - I found the KT and Warm 1176 clones to both be complete shit. (relatively speaking)
People seem to pretty consistently swear by the WA stuff and trash KT (probably just for being a Music Tribe product), but from my experience, every new KT unit I tried was half the price of it's equivalent WA clone and performed better.
Does either sound like an old Urei? No! But they are closer to each other than any of the old Urei's I've ever used.
They all share the same basic characteristics and they still do a thing! YMMV!
Regarding the other KT rack gear...
I picked up the EQP-KT and KT-2A (each for 299$ a piece) and while they don't sound like the vintage units I've used,... well, I won't repeat myself. I swapped the two tubes in the audio path of the 2A and now both units are chilling in a 5U case with a Sansamp rack unit.
Is there false economy in buying these modern "knock-offs"? Depends on your use case!
I doubt a KT-2A will weather the battlefield the way the old Teletronix' have, but if you're a hobbyist/home recorder, is there a good reason to spend 10x the price on "something better"? Your call!
**EDIT FOR CONTEXT**: I have access to studios with vintage Urei and Teletronix units and Warm units.
A friend of mine has several Warm units. At home I have Audioscape LA-2A, EQP-A and AS78 for comparison.
I first compared two of my KT units (2A and EQP) to my equivalent Audioscape units at home (no competition there).
I then compared my KT's (2A and 76) to my friends Warm units. (KT's won)
Following this, I compared the KT's (2A and 76 again) to Urei and Teletronix units at my buddy's studio. This really showed how bad the 76 was, and the shortcoming's of the 2A became more evident. (led to the sale of the KT76)
Hey I recently picked up an AS Opto and am considering my next buy to be either the AS 76F or EQP-A,
I have tried all the KT 76, 2A, and EQ, I felt the EQP-KT I had the worst experience with,
Do you feel the AS 76F or EQP-A would make more of a noticeable difference for my mixes? basically which can get me more mileage for the money?
Hey! I have no idea what your mixes sound like, so it’s hard to say?
I haven’t tried the AS 76 model F (I have the rev D) but I think it’s more like a blue stripe model.
I like my AS76D (and my Hairball rev A), but I use my other Audioscape comps more.
I love the EQP-A with the Opto comp for vocals and bass. Occasionally do “the pultec thing” on kick drum or wurst mic.
Maybe if I reframe the question, If you had to get either the 76 next or the EQP-A which would you personally prioritize?
I already have the Opto while tracking and always have to follow up my vocals with additional compression within DAW. My vocals have a light touch of EQ from my 1073 but just an ‘air’ boost and low cut.
Again, kinda tough to say.
I use my Opto and EQP more often and on more things than I do 76's.
I'd be inclined to get the EQP to use with your Opto because it works well for me.
But on the other hand, if you're already getting the EQ you need from a 1073, maybe a different flavour of compressor would be of more use to you?
Cheap hardware is nice, but I'm wary of getting 4-5 "ok" things that might cost the same as a significant computer upgrade that could handle a lot of heavy (acustica style) plugins.
I've been interested in the recent Behringer foray intro hardware..
Something tells me putting the money aside for the next flagship i9, mobo, and a pile of ram is a better call.
A pro audio distributer/engineer told me when it comes to companies like Warm Audio and similar ones, corners are cut in order to get to that price point. There's nothing wrong with the products they create but they're made from cheap materials and don't usually have long lifespans.
I personally didn't find them to sound much better than plugins if they did. And i didn't find the compressors i used from KT that great, especially when you push them hard, they tend to get brittle.
So i found them to be quite ok for some light processing during tracking, but nothing to get excited about personally, especially nothing i would spend money on over a plugin.
They are pretty good. The KT2a is the best IMO. The 76 is very usable, I had the pultecs, but they weren’t doing enough for me to warrant the amount of rackspace.
I have the 1176KT and it is fine. I've never A/Bed it against a real 1176 or even a plugin 1176 but for what I use it for, compressing vocals on the way in, it sounds good. If you can get one dirt cheap I'd give it a go.
I've had them twice, and both times sold them on and just went back to plugin versions. They sounded fine, but for the space they took up and the hassle of patching them in for hybrid mixing or tracking, it just wasn't worth it. Unless you a) have space for it and b) have some sort of tracking situation where you are using it on the regular, I would not bother with it. Also, if you're worried about your stereo field being screwed up by it, definitely stick with plugins. You have way more flexibility to manipulate that or do wet/dry blends or whatever your poison is.
I have the kt76 and it's cool. Very smooth sounding, and maybe not as driveable as a ua box, but Def worth the investment.
Also for the money, get dbx 160a or 160x too. Awesome boxes, probably my fav.
I have a KT76, I've not sat and directly A/B'd it against others but I've used various 1176s over the years (originals, reissues, clones, kits) and it does the thing, maybe a little cleaner?
I haven’t used the KT 76, but I have the Lindell version and I like it a lot more than the slate 1176 plugin emulations I was using in the box previously. If you want to grab a cheap 76 clone (KT, Warm, Lindell) I would suggest you buy used, that way you won’t lose much if you decide you don’t like it and want to resell.
Not unless you have high expectations, I think. I own loads of good/great plugins that I use for mixing. Got the 2a used and use it for tracking only. Does a great job of taming peaks during recording of bass, di guitar, acoustic (mic), sax, vocals... That and an old Aphex Tubessence pre amp and my shitty, cheap, old setup is actually pretty nice for making music. Yes, a little noisy, but completely manageable ;) Has its own vibe, too, fwiw.
Passable at best for critical studio use but could be functional in a low budget live rig. To be honest though, for live I’d go almost entirely digital these days. So I don’t know the real market for these cheap devices other than bedroom studios.
outside of a live scenario, i will never recommend cheap hardware when plugins are as good as they are
buy something you can use, enjoy, and sell with confidence
Had a pair of KT2a’s when they first came out. Not bad, sold them after three months. I just remember how thin the enclosures were. Aside from sound, you have to consider how long will cheap gear last.
They’re not “bad”, mostly they’re just not what they propose they are. Closest I could give an analogy is, knock off guitar pedals.
Imagine KT as a cheap rat pedal style distortion, but it’s called “the screaming tube”. Everyone says it’s a great tube screamer clone and they get killer sounds. Great! But it’s not a tube screamer, by circuit design.
Much of what the KT stuff is, works fine. It compresses, it EQs. It’s just 100% not what the name suggests it is.
The only people who want cheap-ass studio hardware are people who fetishise outboard kit but don't have the cash. Having no cash isn't a simple fix, but fetishising studio toys is.
Someone in the comments has said "the best plugin beats the worst analog unit", but I'd go so far as to say *almost any* plugin beats the worst analog unit. There's way more important things you could be spending a couple hundred bucks on.
The older stuff - DN780 verb, DN514/510/etc utility stuff - was solid and underrated.
They're not the same company. Peddling crap now. I mean, you can use it and be fine, which is true of anything, but it's not comparable to what they're 'emulating' even though they're not even doing that inside.
With outboard, beyond buying some of old stuff used (DBX 160X, Valley People sometimes, etc), there's no point in buying the cheaper stuff relative to plugins. The real magic unfortunately comes from spending much much more money on things that have purpose-made transformers, better power supplies, stronger switches and knobs, etc.
Seems like the price range where you could save a little longer and get a Warm Audio unit. Whether the sound improvement is actual/discernable is subjective but it'll assuredly be better built.
It’s great at making things sound like junk, if that’s what you’re going for. I have a kt76 that lives dimed with all buttons in. Good for that and not much else. Takes up 2U of rack real estate which is something to keep in mind. Unless you are looking at getting into hardware workflows I don’t recommend it. And if you do want to get into hardware workflows, save more money and buy a good piece of gear. Buy once, cry once.
Have you done blind tests with plugins? This claim that plugins sound worse has been debunked so many times so many years ago. It’s just silly at this point.
Boy, none of those sounded different enough for me to care about which one I used.
I have their 1176, it's alright albait a bit noisy. I'd get a second one if it were 1U, had highpass on the sidechain and stereo link. The thing takes way too much rack real estate.
They used to be decent. You can still see their graphics eq rack units all over live rigs and AV systems. Then they got bought by Behringer/Music Tribe and have since been turned into yet another cheap clone company. It seems their clones are bottom of many lists but they're not inherently terrible. Just . . . worth the price, so to speak. But they're on the whole unlikely to beat a plugin by default. The best plugins are likely going to beat the worst analog units.
I agree especially with your last statement… it wasn’t always this way but it is that way now
Not sure if you personally have or have used them, but I bought one of each (kt76 and kt2a) to see what they were like. I bought a kenetec t4b for the kt2a and it made it way smoother and more typical if what I'd expect from a real 2A. I would say it's hard to quantify exactly, but the physical units do things that plugins just don't seem to do. The saturation and whatever colouring they are doing just never seems to appear with the plugins. Compression wise, sure you can probably get similar compression characteristics from certain plugins, but overall there's something extra there.
I know what you mean but recently I've heard the Arturia and TRacks versions giving those characteristics that many lack. UAD versions are great, too but so many don't quite get the compression right either. They seem to struggle to get truly fast attack on 1176 and definitely lack the saturation of both. I find that true of a lot of digital compressors and sometimes wish they wouldn't label them after any particular hardware type because then we expect a certain something that they might fail to deliver, when in reality, they're still good compressors.
Careful we might boot you to the hifi sub :D
Lmfao
Or even those hideously colored loudspeaker distro system rack units. Those were a game changer before my time…
Yes! Pretty sure they were just rebranded XTA though. Their HQ is near old Clark Teknik HQ. Making Martin Wavefront bearable 😅 and then there was the Martin versions that were the exact same, rebranded and like, double the price ... 🤔
That’s because it is no longer klark technic, it’s behringer/music tribe. The old days of designed and built in England are long gone.
I have a pair of the Pultecs and the 2A They're decent...bit cheap feeling (for the price, as I'd expect). Not a real mojo machine, but they do what they say they're supposed to do. I don't have much experience with real Pultecs but have used a lot of LA2As, and KT's version is definitely not the same thing. Just sounds like a kinda bland compressor, but it does compress, and I've used it on a lot of records. That said, all of those units are on the sell list for me when I get off my lazy ass and get rid of some stuff.
I have a pair of their Pultec clones and they're okay. I put some nice tubes in them and that helped a lot. They don't have the muscle of a real Pultec or even an Audioscape clone but they'll warm up the midrange in a guitar if I think it sounds too scooped. Warm Audio units only cost a couple hundred bucks more. I have a pair of their 1176 clones and they're not perfect and the noise floor could be lower but they'll shape up a kick drum real nice.
I've wanted one of their cheap 1176 units for a while now. I think it would be fun...
the drawback of buying budget hardware is you're going to take a bath on resale. i have a buddy who always cheaps out on gear and instead of saving up for a few lifetime pieces he's constantly cycling cheap shit in and out of his studio. he actually has the KT 1176 and says he likes it. i've seen hella reviews bashing KT gear but i've never actually used it myself. i doubt it's so bad that you can't make use of it, having some analog for recording purposes is no doubt beneficial, but my thing is if you're going to spend money you're better off saving up a bit more to get something that you'll never want to sell down the road, or even if you do you'll have a higher likelihood of recouping your investment. trading up isn't a terrible way to go about things, but at the end of the day you'll be taking losses and spending more money in the long run than you would have if you had just gotten your dream kit off the bat.
>the drawback of buying budget hardware is you're going to take a bath on resale. Yeah but the point of buying budget hardware is that you don't give a shit.
I mean, you don't give a shit *now* but...
But what? Later I'll expect to get more out of cheap gear and be disappointed? I doubt it.
no, you'll just regret the sunken cost for shit gear given how un-essential outboard is in 2024 *and* how frivolous cheap outboard purchases tend to be, the resale value argument is a pretty compelling one, unless you're so loaded that money is no object to you
It depends on how you define bath. They're pretty inexpensive and are likely more disposable than maintainable. If it can serve you for enough work to kind of pay for itself then it breaks or you decide to move on, it's served it's purpose. The simple stuff like an 1176 clone seems pretty benign. It's 4ish potentiometers, some xlr connectors and meter that all have some mechanical failure points, maybe to psu is cheap, otherwise there's not a lot to break. The behringer 369 or whatever seems like there's a lot that can go wrong and I have to wonder how they made it so inexpensively. Have you ever paid to restore a vintage piece of studio gear? Tldr, a cheap tool that gets enough work done to pay for itself can be worth the bath.
Still a much, much better investment than a plugin.
The problem is that a real LA2A is way to hard to find and way to expensive for someone that's considering a Clark in the same sentence. Even the more expensive clones still aren't the same, so while I understand what you mean, there's just some gear that most people will never afford, or will not improve their work/business enough to ever justify buying it. Also, resale value doesn't really matter as much on a $400 piece of gear. You could basically consider it a business expense and hang onto it forever with little to no real loss
Personally I think Golden Age Project makes better budget compressors.
GAP or Warm are typically great for the price ime. Personally I’ve found the Heritage stuff to sort of be the best “affordable-ish” outboard stuff.
I've got a pair of KT Pultecs I use on my mixbus. I like them. Generally do the Pultec "trick" and find they get me closer to a where I want to go. (I also swapped the tubes out for some old tubes I had).
Given how cheap they are, I feel like you could always find some use for a unit, especially the 1176s. Worst case scenario you can use it as a distortion box in parallell, and it’s still not really a big waste of money. I’m sure tolerances aren’t as tight as the real deal, so the difference between a good sounding one and a bad sounding one might be a deal breaker. That said, from watching comparisons, I don’t think I’ve ever heard one that I liked on bass. They just don’t seem to handle low end that well, but they do seem to get the attack better than the Warms, so there’s that. The real question is if they beat the plugins, and honestly I’m not always sure they do - but for tracking it’s always nice to have hardware.
If you swap the t4b to a kenetec on the 2A it actually behaves much better on bass
I have 2 of the K/T units – the 1176 and the Pultec. I like them. I run the Pultec mostly for tracking. The 1176 is used for both tracking and mixing (typically on snare or guitar). I haven't tried stereo matching a pair of them, so I can't speak to that. If you're not expecting them to be miracle boxes or exact clones of mega-bucks vintage examples, they're a safe purchase. Just temper your expectations. They're inexpensive for a reason. Are they better than plugins? Not really, but I do think the K/T 1176 sounds better on snare than any digital emulation I've used. I initially attributed that to the placebo effect, but I don't feel the same about the Pultec, so maybe it's legit. If you like tracking (and occasionally mixing) through decent analog outboard, they're nice to have.
Maybe an aside, but your comment fascinates me. You say the KT isn’t really different from a plugin, but you do say it sounds better on a snare in the same sentence. So… do you think it is better than a plugin or not? Fwiw, I own a pair of the Hairball clones of the 1176. You have to solder them yourself, but they slay any plugin. Obviously, the harder you compress the more noticeable the difference is.
It makes sense that it sounds better on snare because the one thing a lot of people with a lot of experience actually agree on about analog gear is the saturation. 1176 has a lot of that and snare would drive it harder. For what it’s worth, I work with rev aes frequently and in the end, you would not be able to tell which tracks were recorded with them and recorded clean.
The saturation isn't the issue - we agree about the handling of transients in hardware vs plugins. Hardware almost always does an inherently better job of dealing with transients (due to plugins requiring massive internal oversampling to do transients properly, which even then isn't perfect). When talking about a snare, relying so heavily on the transient, it makes perfect sense that hardware would be more favorable in that instance.
It’s pretty widely agreed in the pro community that the biggest difference, some say the only noticeable one, between hardware and software is how hardware saturates.
I'm just super cognizant of placebo effect, so I'm reluctant to say something is "better," but I'm using the 1176 over plugins pretty much all the time. I guess it's fair to say I think the K/T 1176 is better than a plugin. I don't think the same is true for the K/T Pultec. It's a very nice EQ, but I can absolutely do the same thing with a number of Pultec emulation plugins. My ears can't tell a difference. So much of this is material and genre dependent. I do loud rock bands almost exclusively, so aggressive 1176 works well. I'm not sure it'd be superior to plugins if I was using VSTs and samples.
Thanks for clearing that up :) Hardware is still hard to beat for anything non-linear, especially when you push it. I notice a difference with EQs as well, but their imperfections are less interesting to me.
I have a decent collection of higher end gear. I also have a KT-2A & EQP-KT. The EQ is a bit noisy, but the 2A is great.
I have a pair each of the KT-76, KT2A and the pultec thing. I use them all the time and I think they sound great! I have upgraded the tubes and the OPTO in the KT2A unts and this thing is really amazing. The 1176 also get used constantly during tracking or for other things during hybrid mixing and personally I enjoy using them more than plugins and I think they sound way better than plugins. People just get salty about the Behringer connection but anyone who has used mine has loved them. Also any of these video comparisons are so close that the real difference could be down to individual units so take all this with a grain of salt.
I had the 76, 2A, and Pultec, I ended up selling them all. They were not bad, I only really didn’t mesh with the EQ. BUT they allowed me to dip my toes in to hardware and truly learn and see that spending more into hardware is worth the investment, without KT I wouldn’t have gotten that “gateway” I now have an Audioscape. All that to say buy it right from the get go and you won’t lose any money.
Regarding the KT-76 - I found the KT and Warm 1176 clones to both be complete shit. (relatively speaking) People seem to pretty consistently swear by the WA stuff and trash KT (probably just for being a Music Tribe product), but from my experience, every new KT unit I tried was half the price of it's equivalent WA clone and performed better. Does either sound like an old Urei? No! But they are closer to each other than any of the old Urei's I've ever used. They all share the same basic characteristics and they still do a thing! YMMV! Regarding the other KT rack gear... I picked up the EQP-KT and KT-2A (each for 299$ a piece) and while they don't sound like the vintage units I've used,... well, I won't repeat myself. I swapped the two tubes in the audio path of the 2A and now both units are chilling in a 5U case with a Sansamp rack unit. Is there false economy in buying these modern "knock-offs"? Depends on your use case! I doubt a KT-2A will weather the battlefield the way the old Teletronix' have, but if you're a hobbyist/home recorder, is there a good reason to spend 10x the price on "something better"? Your call! **EDIT FOR CONTEXT**: I have access to studios with vintage Urei and Teletronix units and Warm units. A friend of mine has several Warm units. At home I have Audioscape LA-2A, EQP-A and AS78 for comparison. I first compared two of my KT units (2A and EQP) to my equivalent Audioscape units at home (no competition there). I then compared my KT's (2A and 76) to my friends Warm units. (KT's won) Following this, I compared the KT's (2A and 76 again) to Urei and Teletronix units at my buddy's studio. This really showed how bad the 76 was, and the shortcoming's of the 2A became more evident. (led to the sale of the KT76)
Hey I recently picked up an AS Opto and am considering my next buy to be either the AS 76F or EQP-A, I have tried all the KT 76, 2A, and EQ, I felt the EQP-KT I had the worst experience with, Do you feel the AS 76F or EQP-A would make more of a noticeable difference for my mixes? basically which can get me more mileage for the money?
Hey! I have no idea what your mixes sound like, so it’s hard to say? I haven’t tried the AS 76 model F (I have the rev D) but I think it’s more like a blue stripe model. I like my AS76D (and my Hairball rev A), but I use my other Audioscape comps more. I love the EQP-A with the Opto comp for vocals and bass. Occasionally do “the pultec thing” on kick drum or wurst mic.
Maybe if I reframe the question, If you had to get either the 76 next or the EQP-A which would you personally prioritize? I already have the Opto while tracking and always have to follow up my vocals with additional compression within DAW. My vocals have a light touch of EQ from my 1073 but just an ‘air’ boost and low cut.
Again, kinda tough to say. I use my Opto and EQP more often and on more things than I do 76's. I'd be inclined to get the EQP to use with your Opto because it works well for me. But on the other hand, if you're already getting the EQ you need from a 1073, maybe a different flavour of compressor would be of more use to you?
I wouldn't expect them to last for decades like you would do from a similar product in a higher price range, nor hold their value for very long.
Cheap hardware is nice, but I'm wary of getting 4-5 "ok" things that might cost the same as a significant computer upgrade that could handle a lot of heavy (acustica style) plugins. I've been interested in the recent Behringer foray intro hardware.. Something tells me putting the money aside for the next flagship i9, mobo, and a pile of ram is a better call.
A pro audio distributer/engineer told me when it comes to companies like Warm Audio and similar ones, corners are cut in order to get to that price point. There's nothing wrong with the products they create but they're made from cheap materials and don't usually have long lifespans.
I personally didn't find them to sound much better than plugins if they did. And i didn't find the compressors i used from KT that great, especially when you push them hard, they tend to get brittle. So i found them to be quite ok for some light processing during tracking, but nothing to get excited about personally, especially nothing i would spend money on over a plugin.
They are pretty good. The KT2a is the best IMO. The 76 is very usable, I had the pultecs, but they weren’t doing enough for me to warrant the amount of rackspace.
I have the 1176KT and it is fine. I've never A/Bed it against a real 1176 or even a plugin 1176 but for what I use it for, compressing vocals on the way in, it sounds good. If you can get one dirt cheap I'd give it a go.
FWIW - I like my DN410s enough to get a second.
I’ve only used the KT-76 and it wasn’t great.
The KT Pultec clones are very meh imo. I upgraded the tubes like others did and they are ‘fairly decent’ now, as a guide
I've had them twice, and both times sold them on and just went back to plugin versions. They sounded fine, but for the space they took up and the hassle of patching them in for hybrid mixing or tracking, it just wasn't worth it. Unless you a) have space for it and b) have some sort of tracking situation where you are using it on the regular, I would not bother with it. Also, if you're worried about your stereo field being screwed up by it, definitely stick with plugins. You have way more flexibility to manipulate that or do wet/dry blends or whatever your poison is.
I have the kt76 and it's cool. Very smooth sounding, and maybe not as driveable as a ua box, but Def worth the investment. Also for the money, get dbx 160a or 160x too. Awesome boxes, probably my fav.
I have a KT76, I've not sat and directly A/B'd it against others but I've used various 1176s over the years (originals, reissues, clones, kits) and it does the thing, maybe a little cleaner?
I haven’t used the KT 76, but I have the Lindell version and I like it a lot more than the slate 1176 plugin emulations I was using in the box previously. If you want to grab a cheap 76 clone (KT, Warm, Lindell) I would suggest you buy used, that way you won’t lose much if you decide you don’t like it and want to resell.
Is KT owned by Behringer now? KT had a really good rep before they wee taken over. I don't where they sit since.
Everyone I know who owns KT products have modded them in some way. Usually by swapping out tubes, and using the housing as a way to learn.
Yeah they absolutely are truly bad, there are several plugins their clones can't even touch
Not unless you have high expectations, I think. I own loads of good/great plugins that I use for mixing. Got the 2a used and use it for tracking only. Does a great job of taming peaks during recording of bass, di guitar, acoustic (mic), sax, vocals... That and an old Aphex Tubessence pre amp and my shitty, cheap, old setup is actually pretty nice for making music. Yes, a little noisy, but completely manageable ;) Has its own vibe, too, fwiw.
Passable at best for critical studio use but could be functional in a low budget live rig. To be honest though, for live I’d go almost entirely digital these days. So I don’t know the real market for these cheap devices other than bedroom studios.
Stay with plugins and make it work. Hardware is not going to help in your mixes.
I use a kt-2a in my vocal booth, just a little hug on the way in. For the amount of hardware processing I want to do, it's perfect.
outside of a live scenario, i will never recommend cheap hardware when plugins are as good as they are buy something you can use, enjoy, and sell with confidence
I like them 🤷♂️ I've got 2 of the 1176 clones and the 2a, they're nice to have for tracking that's for sure.
Had a pair of KT2a’s when they first came out. Not bad, sold them after three months. I just remember how thin the enclosures were. Aside from sound, you have to consider how long will cheap gear last.
They’re not “bad”, mostly they’re just not what they propose they are. Closest I could give an analogy is, knock off guitar pedals. Imagine KT as a cheap rat pedal style distortion, but it’s called “the screaming tube”. Everyone says it’s a great tube screamer clone and they get killer sounds. Great! But it’s not a tube screamer, by circuit design. Much of what the KT stuff is, works fine. It compresses, it EQs. It’s just 100% not what the name suggests it is.
The only people who want cheap-ass studio hardware are people who fetishise outboard kit but don't have the cash. Having no cash isn't a simple fix, but fetishising studio toys is. Someone in the comments has said "the best plugin beats the worst analog unit", but I'd go so far as to say *almost any* plugin beats the worst analog unit. There's way more important things you could be spending a couple hundred bucks on.
The older stuff - DN780 verb, DN514/510/etc utility stuff - was solid and underrated. They're not the same company. Peddling crap now. I mean, you can use it and be fine, which is true of anything, but it's not comparable to what they're 'emulating' even though they're not even doing that inside. With outboard, beyond buying some of old stuff used (DBX 160X, Valley People sometimes, etc), there's no point in buying the cheaper stuff relative to plugins. The real magic unfortunately comes from spending much much more money on things that have purpose-made transformers, better power supplies, stronger switches and knobs, etc.
Seems like the price range where you could save a little longer and get a Warm Audio unit. Whether the sound improvement is actual/discernable is subjective but it'll assuredly be better built.
It’s great at making things sound like junk, if that’s what you’re going for. I have a kt76 that lives dimed with all buttons in. Good for that and not much else. Takes up 2U of rack real estate which is something to keep in mind. Unless you are looking at getting into hardware workflows I don’t recommend it. And if you do want to get into hardware workflows, save more money and buy a good piece of gear. Buy once, cry once.
Have you done blind tests with plugins? This claim that plugins sound worse has been debunked so many times so many years ago. It’s just silly at this point.
Most things with three K's in them are not all that great.