Rich bottom end sprang forth, making the bass spread across the bottom of the track-just where it belonged. I chose 60 Hz and cranked up the LF Boost knob. Again I patched the Pro Tools output of my bass track into the left channel of the Bettermaker, then out into a Dangerous 2 Bus for monitoring. Once I moved the EQ502P to slots 1 and 2, all was well. The Radial slots are rated at 150mA if power is distributed evenly across all eight slots, but I believe units in place before the Bettermaker were sucking the power that this beast needed. I patched a bass across the left channel but heard a loud pop each time I cycled through the controls and bypass. I installed the unit into slots 7 and 8 of my Radial Workhorse 500 Series rack. The hardware has one level of undo in case you accidentally clear the unit or recall another preset. Made a mistake and zotzed your setting? Rotate the knob to 400 and recall it by tapping once. Recall and zeroing the unit is just as easy-you just tap the knob once to recall a setting and twice to return the controls to zero. When you see No, rotate the knob to Yes and tap the button once to store it. To save a setting, push and hold the rotary control for two seconds. The interface is simple and easy to get your head around. The rotary knob on the front of the unit allows you to store and recall 399 user presets. Unlike the Pultec, however, with the EQ502P, if you find something you love you can recall it with laser-like accuracy by storing a setting in the hardware or in the plug-in. This is versatility defined in a simple set of controls and is why the Pultec design from the 1950s is coveted and used to this day. This last bit is great for boosting using the HF control but cutting the absolute top, or high-mid range or vice versa. You get four LF choices and seven HF, plus a basic four-level HF bandwidth control (1 narrow to 4 wide), and extra Atten at 5, 10 and 20 KCS. The unit is broken into HF and LF sections with separate Boost and Atten controls for each frequency (☑4 units based on Pultec measurements). With a free plug-in, you can control the unit via USB and even write automation. It steps up the 500 Series workflow by adding digital control. This beefy and shiny doublewide 500 Series unit created in Poland by Marek Walaszek and the Bettermaker team takes a design cue from Pultec’s EQP-1A and Bettermaker’s own rackmount EQ232P. Both have their strengths and unique features that put them in the best-in-class category. The two units reviewed here offer a unique look at EQ for the format and will ring the bell of those looking to step beyond plug-ins into hardware solutions. Processors such as the Empirical Labs DocDerr, Elysia nvelope and xfilter have set the bar high, and others have answered the call. Over the past two years, 500 Series preamps and processors have matured in design sophistication and sonics.
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