This past Thursday I shipped a Flux Bender out to Mix Engineer, Ronan Chris Murphy, who will be reviewing the Flux Bender on his youtube channel, Recording Boot Camp.   If you haven't read the May issue of Recording Magazine, the review on page 58 is a worthwhile read.  Paul Vnuk Jr. was quite impressed by the Flux Bender and I'm sure Ronan will not be let down. The Flux Bender is a very serious piece of equipment.  Keep a lookout in the future for Ronan's review of the Flux Bender! 

Some may know from previous posts that I have been developing a new equalizer, called the Arque Equalizer.  This is a mono, passive EQ with a crazy ton of controls and it will be introduced to the market at a very low price point.  About 2 days ago I finally completed the first prototype after a great deal of real world use in the studio and many modifications to the design.  Next on the road to production is a second prototype, which looks more like what the final product will look like.  This next prototype is more for the front panel layout design than anything else.  I plan to have the product ready for release before the year is out.  

Simultaneously I've also been developing a new dual channel mic preamp.  I started with the 1401 preamp and began making changes to it.  It was originally intended to be Rev. B for the 1401, but its now so radically different I can't justify giving it the 1401 label.  The new preamp offers 2x as much gain as the 1401, while amazingly exhibiting a lower noise floor.  It has VU meters for both channels, front panel DI inputs (which sound incredible, BTW), and maintains the 1401 treble cut filter circuit and gain control.  The preamp currently has a slight deficiency in treble which I'm currently working to iron out.  After that's complete, the next phase is adding on phantom power, a low cut switch, and line input switches.  There's still a lot of work to do before its ready for production, but as with the Arque Equalizer, I'm aiming to have this product complete by years end.

The mighty Flux Bender goes on its second bender today.  This afternoon I'll be shipping off a Flux Bender to world renown Mix Engineer, Ronan Chris Murphy for his professional review of the EQ.  Keep an eye out on his youtube channel for that review in the coming months!  

It may not seem obvious that I'm constantly designing and building new gear unless you have the inside scoop.  FWIW, that inside scoop is pretty simple to acquire if you follow along to my alternate blog at www.lbastudios.com.   LBA Studios is the place where new Lightning Boy ideas are developed.  There's a vast array of one-offs at LBA Studios that get pretty regular use at the studio, but will probably never see the light of production due to their over complexity or other factors.  There are a few things that exist as prototypes that will certainly be future LBA products.  Of those marvelous trinkets is an upcoming EQ, but there's something even bigger coming very soon and I promise not to spill the beans.  This one's going to be very special :)

Available today only.  There will be just 10 pedals made (first 2 already sold). Each of the LE Opti-Mu Prime pedals will have a new feature... an LED that indicates how much compression is going on.  The LED will be off if no compression is occurring and will glow brighter with more compression.  To further differentiate the LE Opti-Mu Prime from the original version, the LE version will be painted black.  

Now, to make things more interesting... if all 10 Opti-Mu Prime pedals sell today it'll convince me there's enough reason for me to consider building pedals again.  If I do decide to build pedals again I will not build any of the previous designs, such as Soul Drive, The Lightning Boy, Opti-Mu Prime, Bolt Bender, Olympus, etc.  I have something very special in mind instead, but lets first see how things go today.  Stay tuned on Facebook or Twitter for updates :)

Back from the grave!  The much revered, Opti-Mu Prime compressor pedal is back for just one day only.  Its a very limited edition run of just 10 pedals.  First come first serve.  Only 1 per customer.  I put building pedals to the side back in March, but there has been a significant number of people asking if I would build this pedal again.  Well, if you missed out before hopefully you won't miss out this time!  Hurry while they last:  http://www.lightningboyaudio.com/opti-mu-prime.html

On Black Friday, November 28th, Lightning Boy Audio will be offering an insane deal on the new Flux Bender equalizer.  Regular price is $5000 USD, but for 24hrs (EST) on Black Friday the price will be a startlingly low $3700!  A whopping 25% off for one day only... and believe me this will not happen again. Please remember, to keep our prices low we sell direct, with no middle man or expensive advertising.  To order your Flux Bender stereo EQ on Black Friday, visit the Flux Bender page by clicking this link.  Please share with your friends to help us get the word out!

Recently we had trouble directly accessing our twitter account and our email system was down.  Yesterday was a long day spent on the phone mostly, but we got it all under control now.  Back in business!

I couldn't be more happy to finally announce the availability of the Flux Bender EQ today.  Stop by and check out more Flux Bender content on the Flux Bender page, as well as direct ordering and product details.

About 6 years ago I had some NOS vacuum tubes cryo-treated as an experiment to determine if the cryogenic process had any effect on the performance of audio tubes.  I was very scientific about the experiment, which spanned 5 years.  Initially, I passed a pre-recorded bit of audio through the originally, untreated tubes (installed in an amplifier) and recorded that passage directly out of the preamp back into the computer.  I sent the tubes off and when they came back a couple weeks later I ran the exact same passage through the same preamp with the same settings.  The audio would sound identical if the treatment process did nothing.  The passages actually sounded quite different.  The tubes exhibited a lower noise floor, crisper high frequencies and a cleaner sound.   None of these audible differences were huge, but they were enough to justify the $5 per tube price of cryogenic processing.  BTW, thats what the price works out to be when I send 30 tubes out for treatment.     


Fast forward 5 years.  Vacuum tubes definitely don't last forever.  Modern tubes really don't last very long at all when compared to the good old vintage tubes, but even those awesome old school tubes don't last forever.  Biggest problem is the dwindling world-wide supply of quality NOS vacuum tubes.  With my tube tester I'm able to see if a tube has been used via the "life test."  Typically, after about 1 year of regular use a tube will show signs of usage or in the case of modern tubes it could be on its way out.  I tested the cryo-treated tubes from 5 years earlier, which had seen daily use (30-40hrs per week) for that 5 year period.  One would expect the tubes to show some signs of usage on the tester, but the cryo-treated tubes actually tested the same as brand new tubes.  

Fast forward to today.  I have finally decided its worth cryo-treating ALL tubes used by Lightning Boy Audio.  This week I'm sending out the first batch of Lightning Boy tested and approved premium NOS vacuum tubes for cryogenic processing.  All equipment manufactured by Lightning Boy Audio will not only feature NOS vacuum tubes, but those tubes will also be cryo-treated to ensure they last the rest of your life.

Last night I put the finishing touches on the Flux Bender prototype.  For those unfamiliar with the name, The Flux Bender is a stereo, passive, 100% vacuum tube powered equalizer (that means no DC powered heater filaments, no silicon rectifiers, no IC's, no solid state voltage regulators, no silicon bullshit period).  The EQ filter topology is based somewhat on the Pultec EQP-1A, but its definitely not the same.  The amplifier design is a Lightning Boy original.

My goals for the Flux Bender were to create a stereo EQ that offered a higher degree of sonic fidelity and a lower noise floor than Manley's Massive Passive. I wanted to create an equalizer that not only out performs the MP in terms of technical specs, but also in terms of sound quality.  I wanted to do all this without the modern solid state trickery used by my competitors... just to prove to the world that solid state components are not needed for great performance, but rather the greatest sound quality and performance can come from a carefully crafted all-tube design.  While the Flux Bender won't offer quite as many controls as the Massive Passive, it will offer a lower price tag along with superior specs.  On Monday the Flux Bender prototype will undergo extensive testing, but initial tests this morning showed a noise floor of -90.1 dB, which completely blew my mind.  First of all, I've only recently broken the -80dB noise floor barrier with revision A of the 1401 stereo preamp.  My goal was to match Manley's -85dB noise floor, which seemed to be a serious challenge.  I was extremely surprised and overjoyed to see such great S/N performance from the prototype, because the production model will be more carefully constructed to reduce the noise floor even further.  This morning I only confirmed the controls and operation of the Flux Bender to be in order.  More extensive testing and results on Monday, followed by a complete disassembly in preparation for the first production build of the Flux Bender.