Blonder Tongue Audio Baton

The sound of the Blonder Tongue?Audio Baton compares very favourably with that of the other great equalizers from this era. Think of a combination of the rare Altec 9073A “Motown” graphic equalizer and the famous Pultec valve-amplified make-up gain stage.

The unit features seven separate amplifiers tuned to different frequencies, followed by high-pass and low-pass filters running in parallel, with their outputs routed to separate level controls. The selected frequencies correspond to the actual notes and octaves on the keyboard, which explains their placement above the red and white vertical stripes. They move up and down with the rotary controls, where boosts and cuts are conveniently visualised. In this way, a frequency response curve is graphically overlaid on top of the colourful stripes, with each frequency region clearly colour-coded.

Antelope Audio's recreation of this collector’s item has preserved its unique character and added only a small workflow improvement – a Magic Eye peak meter in the top right-hand corner of the plugin, which matches both this unique EQ’s late-’50s aesthetics and its functionality by providing useful visual feedback.