It handles pretty much anything you throw at it with poise and authority - while never lacking in spirit or vitality. On the other hand, the UBK FATSO, which is Gregory Scott’s modification of the FATSO, is an incredible compressor that you can use for tracking and mixing. And I never process an already-recorded track through the FATSO while mixing. Instead, if I need to actually affect the character and dynamics of a track beyond making it sound FATSO-style analog, I patch in one of my many other compressors ahead of the FATSO.
Even with a simple gain stage patched into the unit’s sidechain insert to control the compression threshold, I can never seem to find the perfect preset and levels for the job at hand.
Although it’s a “preset” compressor with four settings (and three more which are combinations of the last setting with the first three), I find it too finicky to set up, despite (or perhaps because of) its abridged set of controls. But I rarely use the FATSO as a compressor in itself. Used in this manner on individual tracks, I find that the instruments start to coalesce into a mix before I finish overdubbing.
Harmonic distortion, high-frequency saturation, transformer-induced density, and several types of compression all contribute to a consolidating texture across everything I track, and I believe this is one of the reasons why I’ve been told by a number of mix engineers that my tracks combine together very easily.Īdmittedly, I use the FATSO with a very light hand, and I rarely depart from the Buss setting of the compressor, with at most 3 dB of gain reduction (GR) and Warmth in the middle settings. I love how the four processors in each of the FATSO’s two channels add all sorts of analog goodness to my digital recordings. Since then, I’ve purchased four more FATSOs, and I do almost all of my tracking through them. I bought my first Empirical Labs FATSO Jr (Tape Op #24) almost ten years ago, soon after purchasing my first digital multitrack recorder, a TASCAM MX–2424, (#22).
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