Motown era: compression?

[dannybuoy]

Best pedals I've found for this are the Catalinbread SFT and the B-Drive (or the older Grunt pedal) from Cave Passive Pedals.

 

[Fuzzbass]

Yep. And in case it's not clear, the compression wasn't just from the LA-2A, but from the whole mixing and mastering process. The recording desk and EQ's were all tube and transformer-based, and the saturation of that gear with strong bass signals caused compression; the tape itself also got saturated, causing strong compression; and every time tracks got bounced, the saturation increased. Even if they had never used a "compressor" per se, they ended up with a heck of a lot of compression just from recording the way they did, on the gear they had.

This bears repeating.

 

[winterburn69]

This bears repeating.

Precisely why I believe a compressor is essential for playing Motown "properly"

 

[ELG60]

I appreciate all the insights. I'll have to hook up my old dbx160x and do some experimentation soon.