Heritage Audio Britstrip Channel Strip with Diode Bridge Compressor

50 Years of Analog Design in One Rack Space

Introducing the Heritage Audio BritStrip – the culmination of 50 years of analog design in a single rack unit. Britstrip nails the sound of yesterday’s iconic recordings for today’s demanding engineers.

The BritStrip combines a real-deal 73 mic preamplifier, an expanded 73 style equalizer, a discrete Class A DI, and the infamous diode bridge compressor from Heritage Audio’s popular Successor. The closest equivalent of the BritStrip would be chaining together a 73 JR II, a 73 EQ JR and mono Successor – a $3,000 value pack in itself, but with added features and routing flexibility.

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The Mic Preamp that Meets All the Demands

The BritStrip starts with the same preamp as our 73 JR II, with a new custom input transformer co-designed with Carnhill and exclusively made for HA in the St Ives factory. The preamp also features a custom Carnhill St Ives output transformer, which completes its all discrete, Class A, 3-gain stage design. The preamp features 80 dB of gain, a 20 dB pad, phase reversal and an impedance switch for 1200 Ω or 300 Ω input.

The Discrete Class-A DI

The DI is also taken from the highly acclaimed design found in the Heritage Audio 73 JR II, an all-discrete Class A JFET circuit in front of the microphone transformer, giving you all of the color and weight you could ask for.

The DI also includes a passive thru output to feed a separate amplifier simultaneously.

An Expanded 73 Equalizer

The BritStrip EQ features 3 Vinkor pot core inductors in the mid band and high pass filter sections. The impact is hard to believe with extreme boosts being exceptionally musical.

The mid band is great for sculpting fat and punchy snare, kick, guitars, vocals – you name it! No need to be subtle like you would with most eqs – BritStrip doesn’t sound phasey and doesn’t lose headroom at extreme settings.

The inductor-based low-pass filter, directly taken from the 73 design, lets you control excessive out of range low end – without affecting the quality of your desired frequencies.

The high and low shelves have been extended to include a bell mode – making them more versatile than ever before.

A Successor-Like Compressor

The diode bridge bus compressor needs little introduction, as its the same compressor found in the multi award-nominated Heritage Audio Successor. Diode bridge compression, a 60 year old patent, took on a whole new life with the expanded features and incredibly fast attack & release times of the Successor.

With the BritStrip, this powerful compressor design is perfect to use for tracking, thanks to its blend control and elaborate sidechain filter. This gives you plenty of tracking potential, as you can give instruments that “record-ready” vibe as performers monitor – giving them a finished “real-time feel” as they perform.

The compressor section provides plenty of sidechain flexibility, with 5 frequency options as well as an external sidechain input. And if that weren’t enough flexibility, 2 BritStrips can have their compressors linked for the ultimate stereo tracking solution.

Routing Flexibility

The BritStrip allows for compression and equalizer routing. Equalising pre-compression makes the compression detector more sensitive to the boosted frequencies and less sensitive to those cut. Inversely, equalising post compression makes the detector insensitive to the EQ settings.

Features

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Mic Amp Section:

• Carnhill based, transformer coupled balanced inputs and outputs for added character and vintage vibe
• 73 style Class A output stages bring the desired 73 sound to your mix
• Microphone input impedance: HI=1200 Ω minimum, LO=300 Ω minimum. Higher gain positions gradually have greater impedances, optimum for lo gain ribbon mics. Input is transformer balanced and floating
• Line input impedance: 10 KΩ bridging, transformer balanced and floating
• DI input impedance: Greater than 2 MΩ, unbalanced
• Output impedance: Less than 75 Ω, transformer balanced and floating, to drive a load of 600 Ω (factory terminated)
• Maximum output: Greater than +26 dBu into 600 Ω
• THD: Less than 0.025 % at 1 kHz, less than 0.05 % at 100 Hz
• Frequency response: 20 Hz (+0.3 dB) to 20 kHz (-0.2 dB)
• Maximum gain: Slightly greater than 80dB
• Noise: Less than -125 dBu EIN

Equalizer Section:

• 73 High and low shelving bands with additional bell-like response
• 73 dual Vinkor inductor based mid band with extended Q functions
• 73 inductor based low pass filter

Compression Section:

• Diode-bridge based compression excels in bringing 2nd order harmonic distortion characteristics and true vintage tone while eliminating nasty odd harmonic content
• Ultra-fast attack and release time options never found in vintage designs allows for far more flexible settings, including FET like sounds and volume maximizing without transient artifacts
• Complex sidechain filtering options work with the already common high pass filters, introducing mid band peak type filters and high-frequency compression, allowing bus correction not possible before
• Sidechain SEND and RETURN connections allow for external sidechain signals or further external processing of the internal one
• Blend control offers built-in parallel compression without any external equipment. Blend ON/OFF button allows for instant comparison between WET and DRY signals
• Stepped controls for easy recall of settings