The Rupert Neve Company

With advances in multi-track tape technology in the 1960’s, recording engineers needed the ability to control and mix these signals reliably with the greatest possible fidelity. After building several “one-off” models, Mr. Rupert Neve developed the technologies and systems that revolutionized the manufacture of mixing consoles.

While using his vast electronics knowledge and years of experience as a transformer designer to craft the most robust, flexible consoles in the industry, the subjective aural “quality” decisions demanded an artist’s dedication.

This holistic approach to circuit design; combining industry leading technology, a keen ear to customer desires and an artistic vision led Rupert to the discrete, class-A, transformer balanced designs that became the highest regarded in the World.

As a testament to their workmanship, and the ingenuity of their designs, the “classic” Neve consoles created during these years are still highly sought by professionals 40 years later, and still outperform their many modern “clones”.

Amek

As a respected manufacturer of mixing consoles based in the UK, Amek wanted to raise their industry profile by creating the purest sounding large format mixing console ever made.

With extremely high channel and feature counts, concerns over limited space and excessive cost meant Rupert would need to depend on IC’s instead of the fully discrete, and transformer balanced designs he prefers.

Although IC’s often have very good noise and frequency response performance on the bench, standard implementations can sound harsh and unnatural due to even the smallest amounts of high order distortion. To solve these issues, Rupert spent years fine tuning single-sided IC based topologies, that virtually eliminated the cause of this harshness: crossover distortion.

The results were so astonishing that many still refer to the 9098 as the finest large format console ever built. In addition, the mic pre, eq, and compressor designs were ported to a highly successful range of outboard modules, expanding Amek’s reach into the burgeoning project/home studio market.

Taylor Guitars

Taylor Guitars weren’t satisfied with the 3rd party pickup systems available for their acoustic guitars, so they hired Mr. Rupert Neve to help design a revolutionary new pickup system, internal electronics, and an external equalizer for their guitars.

Traditional piezo pickups have extremely compromised sonic performance, with high levels of distortion, and noise leading to a very unnatural sound. Beyond that, they are extremely sensitive to feedback and only capture the sound around the pickup itself.

With the aid of Mr. Rupert Neve’s expertise, Taylor was able to craft a three sensor system that accurately captures the nuanced harmonic structure and sweetness of Taylor’s guitars, while outputting a balanced line signal.

To further shape the tone of the guitar, Rupert designed the K4 Equalizer. A 3-Band EQ and line amp, that allows guitarists to add studio grade EQ to all of their live performances.

Not only is sound quality of the Expression System with the K4 far beyond anything else on the market, but the shift from a third party pickup actually proved to be more cost effective, and also resolved problems with feedback on stage.

sE RN Series Microphones

Although sE had created numerous well received microphones, they enlisted Rupert Neve Designs to make their newest active ribbon microphone sing like non-other.

While ribbon microphones are potentially very linear and free from distortion or coloration, the ribbon element itself has an extremely low impedance and only a very small signal voltage is developed putting amplifiers at a considerable disadvantage. Because of this, ribbons are associated with a silky smooth mid range, but are particularly lacking in transient and high frequency response.

To overcome these disadvantages, Rupert developed a discrete, class-A “head” amplifier paired with rather special input and output transformers encased in the microphone body. The circuitry of the RNR1 is capable of delivering the extremely natural sound of a ribbon, while also delivering a frequency response that extends comfortably beyond 20Khz.

The end results have produced what by many accounts is the most natural sounding microphone ever. A classic that will be in mic lockers for decades to come.