In the continuing effort to faithfully recreate classic Motown audio products for today’s recording studios, Acme Audio is proud to announce the highly anticipated release of our Motown EQ. An absolute legend among audio engineers and producers, only 48 of the original Motown EQs were ever produced – and it’s considered one of Chief Engineer Mike McLean’s pinnacle achievements at Motown Studios. With its transformer balance audio path and gain makeup amplifier section, this 7-band graphic equalizer was a vast improvement to the products that were commercially available in the Motown era. Acme Audio had the honor of spending several weeks with the late Mike McLean reverse engineering an original Motown EQ and had his ongoing guidance to faithfully recreate and reintroduce this classic piece of equipment to the recording world. No components were compromised in this reproduction… every inductor, capacitor, and transformer was either sourced from original manufacturers or painstakingly recreated to match the performance and sonic quality of the original Motown EQ. In essence, this is the closest you will ever come to owning this essential piece of recording history.

The year is 1966. Deep in the heart and soul of Detroit, a young, ambitious chief Motown engineer is tasked by legendary producer Berry Gordy to design a better way to record multiple guitar and bass instruments at once, with minimal bleed and no isolation.  His solution:  the 5-channel Motown input box – dubbed the “Motown guitar amp” by its creator.  James Jamerson’s magnificent performances, as well as Dennis Coffey, Bob Babbit, Robert White, Joe Messina and many more, were captured through this circuit from 1966 to 1972, and now, the MTP-66 Motown Tube Preamp is available now from all our dealers.

Newest in the series of Acme Audio Manufacturing’s line of faithful recreations of legendary Motown gear, this single-channel lunchbox preamp has been exactingly reborn using the original 1966 engineering schematics, and features an all-tube signal path, with hand selected tubes that drive a Cinamag output transformer.  Besides being an instrument-to-line-level all-tube preamp, Acme Audio has added a microphone amp section that is also based on Motown Engineering’s original designs, featuring a fixed gain pentode with the Acme Audio/Triad input transformer. Other key features include adjustable input and output controls (not made available on the original,) giving you the ability to adjust your sound to the desired amount of drive and compression.

The Opticom XLA-3 is an all-tube optical limiter inspired by the classic Teletronix LA2A. Loving the la2a’s smooth natural compression characteristics but seeking to improve upon its single compression speed inspired us to develop the XLA-3. The heart of the XLA-3 is a unique triple optoelectronic circuit that combines the best characteristics of 3 separate compression curves into a single unit. The result: a high-speed optical limiter with tones that range from ‘clean’ to ‘harmonically rich’ to ‘dirty.’

Acme Audio Mfg. Co. is proud to introduce the OPTICOM XLA-500.   Taking inspiration from the acclaimed XLA-3, Acme Audio has painstakingly squeezed the XLA-3’s topology into a convenient two space 500 series module.  The XLA-500 is a tube optical audio limiter designed to produce a full range of non-linear, dynamic audio effects.

The heart of the XLA-500 is a unique triple optoelectronic circuit that combines the best characteristics of three separate compression curves into a single unit. Combined with Cinemag input and output transformer and a class-A gain stage,  the result is a high-speed optical limiter with tones that range from ‘clean’ to ‘harmonically rich’ to ‘dirty’; and compression curves that range from subtle and slow to very fast and aggressive.

The Opticom XLA-500 is the most versatile 500 series optical limiter on the market.  Whether trying to gently control dynamic range on vocals, adding weight to a bass track, or even crushing a drum track – the XLA-500 can perform all of these tasks effortlessly and with great satisfaction to the user, and, ultimately, to the listener.