The Rupert Neve Designs Shelford 5051 Inductor EQ and Compressor combines the classic 3-band EQ from Rupert Neve's vintage circuit designs with the flexibility and power of the Portico II compressor. Using a fully discrete class-A signal path combined with high-performance input and output transformers, the combination EQ and compressor upholds the world renown reputation of the master circuit designer.

The EQ section of the module uses a custom-tapped inductor with selected capacitors to form the mid-range equalizer band and the shelf curves are based on Neve's vintage Modules. Each of the EQ sections uses a low feedback class-A discrete electronics to prevent low-level artifacts from distracting from the tonal shaping of your signal.

The high and low bands can be switched from shelf to peak curves and both offer 15 dB of boost or cut. The high band can be switched from 8,000 to 16,000 Hz and the low band can be set to 35, 60, 100, or 220 Hz. The mid band offers six center frequencies at 200, 350, 700, 1500, 3000, and 6000 Hz. The mid band also features a high peak switch to narrow the bandwidth or increase the Q of the filter. An 18 dB/octave high-pass filter with two corner frequencies that can be toggled between Off, 60, and 120 Hz.

The EQ can be switched to pre or post compressor in the signal chain. It also allows for the two XLR balanced inputs on the back of the unit to be switched from the front panel which allows setups such as having a mic preamplifier and a line input from a DAW to be pre-patched and selected at will.

The compressor section of the module uses a discrete class-A signal path from the Portico Series of signal processors with individual control over threshold, attack, release, make up gain, ratio, side chain HPF, Feed-Forward/Feed-back selection and Peak/RMS detection modes. If you deactivate the compressor the unit can be used as a transformer-coupled high-performance line amplifier.

The compressor has the ability to switch between feed-forward and feed-back operation, and two modules can be linked together for stereo operation. The unit is intended for use with 5088 consoles or with 5285 vertical frames. There are two ±24V power supply options. One 5-way power supply can be placed at the bottom of the rack or a separate 25-way power supply in a 2U enclosure may be used. Using the external module provides clean power with less heat build-up within the modules associated with the DC to DC up-conversion.