The BritStrip by Heritage Audio — 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 equalizer, a discrete Class-A DI, and the infamous diode bridge compressor from our Successor. The closest equivalent of the BritStrip would be chaining together a 73JR, 73EQJR and mono Successor — a $3000 value pack in itself, with added routing flexibility.
A Successor-like compressor
The diode bridge bus compressor needs little introduction, as it’s the same compressor found in the multi award-nominated Successor. Diode bridge compression, a 60 year old patent, took on a whole new life with the expanded features and incredible fast attack/release times of the Successor. With BritStrip, this powerful compressor design is perfect to use for tracking, thanks to it’s blend control and elaborate sidechain filter. This gives you plenty of tracking potential, as you can give instruments that “record-ready” dynamics 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, and an external sidechain input. And if that weren’t enough flexibility, 2 BritStrips can have their compressors linked for the ultimate stereo tracking solution.
The BritStrip allows for compression and equalizer routing. Eq’ing pre-compression makes the compression detector more sensitive to the boosted frequencies and less sensitive to those cut. Inversely, eqing post compression makes the detector insensitive to the eq settings.
The mic preamp that meets the demands
The BritStrip starts with the same preamp as our 73JR, 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 it’s all discrete, Class-A, 3-gain stage design. The preamp features 80 dB of gain, 20dB pad, phase reversal and an impedance switch for 1200 or 300 ohm input.
The DI is also taken from the highly acclaimed design found in the 73JR, 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.
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 or looses headroom in extreme settings. The inductor-based low-pass filter, directly taken from the 73 design, lets you control 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.
