Vintagetools VT N95 PE

What if someone were to lavish money, time and considerable engineering know‑how on improving Neumann’s highly revered cutting‑lathe EQs — could they really be improved? The answer is a resounding “yes!”

For decades, an equaliser was seen less as a creative tool and more as a means of technical control: if you desired a different sound, you’d either alter the source itself, or put your microphone somewhere else. For the best audio quality, though, a crucial stage in the chain from the microphone to the consumer’s ear was the vinyl cutting process — carving the perfect groove helped record companies compete for the highest market share, and when it came to cutting equipment, there was one company that stood head and shoulders above all others: Neumann. And this brings us back to the subject of equalisation, because an integral part of Neumann’s VMS cutting machines was an ultra‑precise equaliser, the W495 (and its predecessors PEa and OEV). Needless to say that cost was not really a consideration when those machines and their equalisers were being developed...

vintagetools-vt-n95-pe-audio.zip

More Than A Clone

Today, there’s a small company in South Hesse, Germany, called Vintagetools, who have decades of experience in racking, servicing and repairing notoriously well‑built old German recording and broadcast equipment, and now make their own recreations. Amongst those products are the famous V72 and V76 preamps but also, you guessed it, Neumann equalisers.

Vintagetools are not simply a ‘cloning’ business, though. They set out to create the definitive German precision equaliser, with no compromise whatsoever. Yes, “no compromise” is one of those overused marketing terms, but when it comes to Vintagetools’ VT N95 PE, its use is entirely justified. This EQ contains over 800 components, most of which, due to the tight tolerances needed, cannot be bought off the shelf — so testing and selecting involves lots of labour, long before the company’s soldering irons are warmed up! The design employs input and output transformers made by Haufe, and even the manufacture of the front plate involves a time‑consuming and expensive dye‑sublimation printing process, with several different colours in use (it looks really classy and three‑dimensional!). The control knobs are from the original manufacturer, although they are bigger than the original models; Neumann’s cassettes were fairly small, and so too were the knobs.

Unlike the Neumann originals, the Vintagetools VT N95 PE features a four‑band design (instead of three) with six selectable frequencies (instead of three) in the shelving filters.

Nowadays, it’s possible to obtain much better technical figures than when those cutting machine EQs were built, and Vintagetools’ aim in designing the N95 was to surpass the original specifications and bring them to the absolute cutting edge. Accordingly, the frequency response is 20Hz to 120kHz (±1dB), which helps transients to pass through the EQ unaltered. THD+N is less than 0.004% — so there’s almost zero distortion. A left‑right channel separation of greater than 96dB means crosstalk is vanishingly low, and so too is the noise level, which, at ‑99dBA (without the A‑weighting, the figure would look even better), allows for high boosts even of highly dynamic material.

Vintagetools have also widened the usability of Neumann’s RC design not only by adding frequencies, but also a second mid...