Urei LA3A #NA (Vintage)

Optical solid state version of the classic LA2A, with discrete circuitry, the T4 el-op module, and balanced ins and outs. Adjustable input gain and threshold. This unit has a replaced opto cell.

Sounding like a cross between the LA2A and the 1176 LN, the LA3A is excellent for vocals, guitars, and the mix bus. It’s got a great mid-range presence that engineers love, and can be very invisible, or more pronounced, due to continuously variable rotary controls. 'Peak Reduction' increases the sidechain gain - lowering the threshold and increasing compression - while 'Gain' is used to adjust the makeup gain.

The LA-3A was first made public at the 1969 AES show in New York. The earliest versions of the LA-3A had the Teletronix name on them, which was later changed to Universal Audio. After a little over a decade of production, the LA-3A was discontinued in 1981. Other than faceplate nomenclature, no serious changes were made to the design of this model.

The LA-3A is a favorite of top mix engineer Michael Brauer, (Dylan, Stones, Aretha, etc.) who tells the following tale about working with Steve Jordan and John Mayer and looking for a certain sound: "There's a tune on the album called, 'Who Says?' that I first tried mixing using my multi-buss compression technique. When John heard it...he thought that track needed to sound more honest...I went back and [used] one stereo compressor [a Neve 33609], going into a couple Pultec EQ's, and [put] the vocals through my hardware UREI LA-3 which is just a great-sounding simple compressor. When John came back in a half hour later, he said, 'That's it.' We were done."