Earlier in his career, Narma had constructed mixing consoles for the likes of Rudy Van Gelder and Les Paul, and history has it that the latter, the famous guitarist and inventor, may have provided the impetus to design the compressor. The original Fairchild was developed in the early ‘50s by Rein Narma, an American engineer with Estonian roots. Perhaps we’ll bust a myth or two along the way. The aim of this article is to separate the fact from the fiction, which I’ll do by taking a closer look at the Fairchild’s origins, explaining some technical details and describing the typical sonic attributes of this most classic of processors. A well-maintained Fairchild sounds fantastic, even by modern standards, and if you know how to use it - or one of its many software or hardware imitators - it remains a very useful and great-sounding studio tool today. In short, despite its age and scarcity, this behemoth limiter would not be so desirable if we didn’t also love its special sound character. Its relative scarcity has also made it an expensive collector’s item and, despite all the maintenance issues, the asking price for vintage specimens keeps rising (at the time of writing, originals are fetching prices upwards of £20,000).īut there are plenty of rare old processors which lack the Fairchild’s fame and desirability. Its age certainly plays a role its decades of deployment in control rooms across the globe, and on such a range of commercial material, have contributed to its mystique. In common with other ‘legends’, it’s fair to say that a number of factors are responsible for the Fairchild’s enviable status, and as with all legends, the truth becomes a little distorted. But why? Just what is it that has bestowed such an enviable reputation on this legendary processor? There are also, in current production, quite a few hardware units that are inspired in some way by these legendary limiters, and a few manufacturers even offer precise clones of the original circuitry.

A decent plug-in emulation can now be considered pretty much a standard tool, and there are quite a few to choose from. The Fairchild 660/670 compressor-limiter is arguably the most iconic of all dynamics processors. But what is it that makes them so special? These 1950s compressors are probably the most revered - and imitated - processors in the world.

Fairchild 670 compressor uad