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Looks like (now berringer owned) Klark Technic has produced an 1176 clone. Priced $600 its in line with other mass produced clone gear.

IMHO it's insulting to both KT and 1176 that this thing is out. Having not heard it or used it I can't comment on its quality or authenticity. To me it's just a way to grab some kids cash.

The only potential upside of all this cloning would be for prices of the real things to come closer to earth, or for some true innovation with reguard to hardware. Lol neither of which has seem to hit the mainstream yet.

Anyway maybe it's actually cool. Who knows.

Comments

DonnyThompson Sat, 11/12/2016 - 02:31

kmetal, post: 443360, member: 37533 wrote: The only potential upside of all this cloning would be for prices of the real things to come closer to earth, or for some true innovation with reguard to hardware

Not an invalid point. Some of these boutique pieces are, IMO, overpriced.

kmetal, post: 443360, member: 37533 wrote: Having not heard it or used it I can't comment on its quality or authenticity.

We'll just have to wait and see...

DonnyThompson Sat, 11/12/2016 - 05:29

WarmAudio generally uses Cinemag XFO's in their stuff... this one from KT is using Midas XFO's. Midas pre's (XFO's) used to be very good-sounding, and they may still be - I don't know anything about Midas since they were picked up by Behringer last year.

I would assume that some corners were cut along the way in order to get it down to the price range that the KT is in; but whether or not those cut corners will be obvious sonically or not, will remain to be seen ( heard) until someone actually tries one out; preferably someone who has experience with a real 1176.

edit: then again, I've worked with real 1176's that didn't sound the same as others. I recall working at a studio in L.A. once many years ago, where there were three 1176's in a rack - two black-faced models, and one blue-stripe model, and one of the black faces sounded more like the blue stripe than it did to the other black face... so go figure... ;)

dvdhawk Sat, 11/12/2016 - 11:48

Maybe relevant, maybe not…. I have several old (pre-Behr##ger) Klark graphic and parametric EQs , and I bought one of the purple, Square One Graphics to evaluate. The SQ1EQ is significantly less expensive ($399), as it should be, and there's a night and day difference between it and the DN series Klarks. Is it good enough to handle monitors for a rock band? Yep. Would it be better than a low-end 2-series dbx 231 ($149), or similar? Probably, yes on all counts. But I'm not sure it would do very well in a shootout with one of my better dbx 20-series, or even 10-series EQs, like a 2231 ($529), or 1231 ($359). And like I said, sonically speaking, it's nowhere near the same league as the real Klarks, or my BSS Opal series.

So I guess the moral of the story here is, you're probably going to get your money's worth. The technology for 1176s, and graphic EQs has been around for decades. It's hard to believe a piece of equipment that has been on the "desirable" list, can suddenly be made without compromising audio-quality / build-quality at a fraction of the cost.

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