Balcony Left Little Sir Rekko

We check out a new FET compressor emulation based on producer Greg Wells’ favourite vintage unit.

You might not have heard of Balcony Left or Little Sir Rekko before, but you’ve almost certainly heard of some of the names behind this plug‑in: A‑list producer, engineer, musician and... (well, a lot of things!) Greg Wells is behind the project, and invited me to review it, and the presets have been created by Greg and a handful of other reputable and respected engineers. Little Sir Rekko runs on Mac and Windows machines in VST3, AU or AAX plug‑in hosts, and is activated on your machine using your Balcony Left online account: you get three ‘seats’ per licence, and seats can be deactivated to allow transfer to different machines.

Overview

Plainly, this plug‑in sets out to model one of the world’s best‑known compressors but, specifically, this is an emulation of Wells’ own vintage hardware unit. Perhaps inevitably in 2026, its creation involved machine‑learning techniques but, as I understand it, these were used as part of a hybrid process to measure and analyse the hardware’s behaviour, largely to identify aspects of the specific unit that might be overlooked with traditional component‑level modelling, and the resulting plug‑in was carefully tweaked until extensive listening tests confirmed that Wells was happy with the sound and behaviour. I have to say: what a result it is! I’ve used countless 1176 and 1178 emulations over the years, and this has to be up there with the best I’ve heard. A statement that, by the way, applies equally to the sound, the compression action, and the ease of operation.

In terms of controls, it’s pretty conventional. A skeuomorphic GUI facilitates the usual 1176/1178 operational approach: an input gain knob sets the signal level relative to an internal fixed threshold, while an output level knob determines the level feeding whatever’s next in the chain. Smaller attack and release knobs adhere to the UREI/Universal Audio paradigm of clockwise for faster/more aggressive, rather than ‘more milliseconds’. The expected four‑button stack selects the ratio (4, 8, 12 and 20:1), while a dedicated button engages the famous ‘all buttons in’ mode, and another simulates pressing in just the 4 and 8:1 buttons. Nearby, another nice touch is the Off button, which bypasses the gain reduction, turning the plug‑in into a line amp, or...