“I needed to be able to control the edginess of vocalists, and of horns, and of anything that would get harsh, like a guitar. I had at the time a console that allowed me to have the bands that were broken down into five bands. There’s an EQ3 circuit, and one of those bands was 2.5K. So, I found that if I would just take and tweak that down, as they would hit the harsh places, I could control that edge. We decided to build a compressor that controlled the 2.5K. We modified an EQ3 circuit board and put that control circuit on it to pull that gain down, to control the harshness, so that it wouldn’t hurt your ears. It would take it right up to the edge of hurt, and you’d think it was going to hurt, but it made it sound so much more powerful, that your ears would actually relax and be able to go, “Wow. That sounded amazing.” – Cliff Mäag
