Yeah Nick & I like the MBP so much, we bought two of 'em.
Been using it everyday for a month or so.
Perfect complement to our Manley Vari Mu's.
Wide range of control sounds great from subtle to "hammered".
The core compressor section sounds pristine, with musical clarity.
Standard compression controls; Attack, Release, Threshold, Ratio, Make-Up Gain, Link and In/Out Switch. Laid out in a logical, readable arrangement with medium size knobs on detented pots for easy recall.
Coupled with the generous makeup gain and intelligent limiter, it's easy to get program loud and yet "clean" without the "brick" effect.
Then there's the whistles and bells. At first I kinda shrugged, but have gotten deeper into those.
The Blend adds back a touch of transient detail ala parallel compression.
The side chain HPF is good for letting more LF punch through, although I would prefer a lower corner freq than 250Hz... Like 125Hz instead. May mod it, or build another circuit to plug into the other SC jacks instead.
The Texture Silk is nice for adding a touch of output transformer saturation "color" in the HF or LF range, hearkens back to Rupert's classic designs.
oh yeah, the RMS/Peak switch let you use it as a peak compressor if desired.
The FF/FB switch. Feed Forward for more aggressive compression, Feed Back is more laid back, like I'm accustomed to.
The there's the SFE stereo field editor. Actually comes first in the MBP signal path. A first I scoffed! Now I love it. Basically M/S Depth and Width level controls. But there's more! They can be used for M/S EQ, I've found a little HMF in the width can be useful for panoramic enhancement :-). But I was able to pull a female vocal to the front of the "soundstage" on a track last week with the Depth HMF EQ control. There's also M/S compression available, but haven't been there yet.
Hutch told us that it's an all new Class A design with 72 volt topology, Not based on the Masterpiece unit from a few years back. The transformers are Rupert's custom design.
Thats it, my review in a nutshell.
Best, JT
