Rupert neve design Shelford 5051 Inductor EQ / Compressor

The Rupert Neve Designs Shelford 5051 EQ/Compressor combines a vintage design inspired 3-band equaliser with the highly popular RND Portico II compressor offering tone-shaping Eq and transparent compression.

The Rupert Neve Designs Shelford 5051, uses a fully discrete Class-A signal path with high-performance input and output transformers delivering the musicality and sound associated with Rupert Neve’s designs.

The Equaliser section hints towards some of Rupert Neve’s legendary classic EQs with custom tapped inductors with carefully selected capacitors in the mid-band and carefully selected shelf curves and frequencies based on Rupert’s earlier designs. Using a feedback class-A discrete electronics avoids unwanted low-level artefacts and harshness while providing powerful tonal shaping capabilities. Despite its evocation of classic designs of the past, the EQ circuit is undoubtedly modern and offers superior performance with improvements in electronic components and techniques.

High and Low band can be used as Shelf or Peak at the simple switch of a button and provides up to 15dB boost or cut. LF offers a choice of four frequencies (35Hz, 60Hz, 100Hz and 220Hz) while the HF band offers a choice between 8kHz and 16kHz. The Mid Band offers a choice of 6 carefully selected frequencies; 200Hz, 350Hz, 700Hz, 1.5kHz, 3kHz and 6kHz. A High Peak switch narrows increases the Q for narrower bands. Finally the EQ on the 5051 uses an 18dB/octave High Pass Filter with a choice between 60Hz and 120Hz corner frequency.

The Shelford 5051 module features a compressor found in the Rupert Neve Designs Portico Series. The Compressor uses a discrete class-A signal path with controllable threshold, attack and release, makeup gain, ratio, side-chain HPF, feed-forward and feedback modes as well as Peak and RMS detection. Such level of control allows for incredible flexibility. In addition, two 5051 may be linked together for stereo operation.

At the heart of the Shelford 5051’s compressor lies a very accurate, low-noise and low-distortion VCA for ultra-transparent behaviour. By combining its attack time and release, as well as its Feed-forward/Feedback mode will add some degree of colouration as well as affecting the compression curves.

With a huge Threshold range covering -30dB to +22dBu the Shelford while the ratio ranges from a 1:1 ratio up to 40:1 ratio for extreme limiting. The Compressor can be set pre or post EQ easily by engaging the EQ Pre/Post switch.

The Rupert Neve Shelford 5051 is designed to work inside the 5088 consoles and 5285 vertical frames and can be powered either from the 5-way supply designed to site in the bottom of a rack and 25-way supply, a 2U rack enclosure.