Heritage Audio

HA-81A

Channel Strip with 73-Style Mic Preamp & 81-Style EQ

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HA-81A line art

The best of both worlds.

Introducing Heritage Audio’s HA-81A: a new mix of 2 classic console´s circuits.

The HA-81A Elite is a channel strip that combines an all discrete, Class-A 73-style mic preamp with an extremely versatile and musical console style equalizer — arguably the trick for obtaining instant classic sound for all recording engineers.

The mic preamp that meets the demands.

The HA-81A’s preamp section is an 80 dB, all discrete Class-A design with Carnhill/St. Ives input and output transformers, exactly the same one found in the other Elite Series modules.

The preamp features gain, output trim, -20db pad, polarity reverse, and +48v phantom power.

The best console´s style equalizer ever made.

The HA-81’s equalizer section is an exceptionally musical 4 band, inductor-based equalizer with high and low pass filters. Where 3 band equalizers such as the typical 73-style exceed at musicality but may get short of features, the HA-81A EQ equally excels on both. Extreme control over Shelf or Bell response curves on the high and lows, dual Q on both mid bands, with dedicated high and low mid ones, and a range of 40 frequency selections to choose from.

Hybrid design. Heritage quality.

The Heritage HA-81A utilizes only rotary switches and precision, concentric potentiometers. And like all of the products in our Elite range, the HA-81A is built with the most cutting edge methods in manufacturing and design, without ever compromising audio quality or cutting corners — all at the Heritage headquarters in Spain.

Microphone input impedance: HI, 1200 Ohm minimum, LO, 300 Ohm minimum. Higher gain positions gradually have greater impedances, optimum for low gain ribbon mics. Input is transformer balanced and floating.

Specifications

  • Classic European console design, inspired by the best master-console-sections
  • No insertion loss, for the most transparent passive-design that’s available
  • Perfect stereo imaging, thanks to a 24-step rotary switch for a sub-tenth of a dB precision on every single attenuation position
  • Fully passive, meaning no power supply is needed
  • Two stereo-pair inputs and outputs, all balanced and ground free (unbalanced compatible) on gold plated TRS Jacks
  • MUTE, DIM and MONO controls