Warm Audio WA76

I bought this because it was cheap. I didn't expect that this would be providing me with many reasons to sell my 2 vintage 1176s but it has. Simply put..my vintage units will be going on ebay as soon as my second WA76 arrives. They do everything as well and on some sources they sound more open than the originals. There is also a stereo linking kit available that will be useful for some people. It was very well packaged by Thomann and I have put the handling as 'good' for the very first time for a Thomann product because these are hand-made one at a time...so not really Thomann's fault that I had to wait longer than I wanted!

The quality is very good and the little 'splash of orange' looks well in the rack. The knobs had anti-scratch plastic on and it's little touches like this that impress me. The input know however was a bit stiff but easing it off a little bit from the housing has made it perfect. The knobs are indented for attack and release and this makes fine tuning a little easier.

It has all the bite and aggression of the original units but I wont have to worry about getting this serviced any time soon!

This will be in your top 3 'pound for pound purchases of the year.

I bought this unit in combination with the WA73 preamp and no matter what source i put trough it it sounds great.
You can use it subtlety and level the peaks of say a vocal or utterly destroy a source and smash it, for example a drum crush mic, and everything in between.

I have tried a lot of plugin versions of this compressor but non of them sound as good as the real thing, the plugin versions always seem to take away some of the top hi frequencies, this unit does not.

I especially like it on vocals because it is really fast and nicely takes away the peaks on my wildly dynamic vocal .

Oh and it looks awesome :-)

After thinking for a while about getting an analog 1176 compressor, I finally decided to try this product and it did not disappoint me. The quality is great and the unit gives the source material a great edgy and 'warm' sound that I immediately miss if I bypass the unit. Great for tracking or mixing alike, I tend to use it on kicks, snares, bass and vocals - great for adding pleasant analog saturation and compressing the signal for more punch and clarity. Certainly worth the price. I recommend using the 'send' function within your DAW to control the precise amount of signal going into the unit, because by merely using the input knob it might be difficult to get the nitty gritty details right as the knob operates in stepped amounts - just a slight piece of advice ;)

My experience wasn't the best at first because of 2 things:

1) There was a loud noise turning the input/output knobs. Not the usual "analog" whisper but very loud. Contacted the manufacturer directly (Chris) and he recon some units have had this issue, and if I was willing to receive and assemble a new board - no transformers tho :) - free of charge. I said yes.

2) At least 2 screws on the unit were stuck and had to be grinded off to access the interior, making the repair even worst.

OTHER THAN THAT! lol, unit sounds great. Love the sweet spot you can achieve on many things. Use it mainly on Kicks, Bass, Vocals. Love it and even after all the hassle still recommend it 100%.

I'm a huge fan of the 1176, and have used them many times, however have never been able to afford one of my own. I was very excited when I bought my first WA76, and I loved it so much that I bought another one almost immediately!

Warm Audio's WA76 is an amazing recreation of the revision D model of the original 1176 - and in my experience it sounds just as good the original!

The build quality of the units is great. They are placed in a tough housing and all the knobs and buttons have a satisfying weight to them.

All the features of the original units are there too - the VU, all buttons in mode, and the back to front attack / release!

Warm Audio's WA76 is 100% worth checking out if you're in the market for some classic compression!