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Mercury Recording Equipment Continues with ‘New Vintage’ Gear: Unveils “The Mercury Custom Shop”

At AES 2010 on Company’s 12th Anniversary owner David Marquette continues to offer the highest standard of Tube and Solid State Mic Pres, EQs and Compressor for Discerning Engineers

Mercury 66 Limiting Amplifier

AES (Booth 635)— San Francisco, CA – November 5, 2010 – Mercury Recording Equipment Company has announced its 12-year anniversary milestone for building their ‘New Vintage” studio recording equipment and unveils a new venture, ‘The Mercury Custom Shop.’ Owner David Marquette, a self proclaimed ‘Tone-ologist’ continues to offer the highest standard in ‘Vintage inspired’ recording equipment for today’s discerning engineers and adds new options and twists on old favorites with addition of ‘The Mercury Custom Shop’- all proudly hand-built in the USA.

Mercury’s range of Studio Microphone Amplifiers and Equalizers, along with their seminal tube Limiting Amplifier, offer the best of what a vintage recreation of gear from the 50s, 60s and 70s can offer, along with useful modern feature additions. The company’s

recording products are inspired by sought after classics such as Fairchild, Pultec, Telefunken / Siemens, Vintage Langevin and British-designed gear. Mercury products are sold direct as well as through a select group of knowledgeable and dedicated recording equipment dealers around the world.

“In 2010, the Mercury Custom Shop was started as an additional avenue to bring new Mercury products to the marketplace on a smaller scale,” says Marquette, “and a way to introduce some Mercury limited editions from time to time.” The Mercury Custom Shop will also be a source to keep some of the company’s original versions available while lowering user cost on some of their standard product line, like the Mercury M72s and M76m. The first new offerings from the Mercury Custom Shop are the Mercury EQP2, Mercury EQH2, dual channel versions of Mercury’s popular tube program Equalizers and two ‘Mercury Studio Channels’ – the Mercury MSC-72 and Mercury MSC-76, which have a Mic amplifier and Program Equalizer in the same package. There are also plans for Mastering versions of some Mercury products in the near future as well, which would be special order through the new Mercury Custom Shop.

For the past 12 years Mercury owner David Marquette has worked to create the product line of truly professional recording equipment built for professional engineers to make the very best possible records. “I have used vintage gear for many years and came to appreciate and respect the quality in both its tone and craftsmanship” said Marquette. “When I started Mercury I wanted to bring those classic sounds into today’s modern studio environment. The only way to do it was through working with others who understood what makes vintage gear sound good, hand-building each piece and never stopping until it sounded right regardless of build cost. We spent the past 12 years perfecting a focused selection of Microphone Amplifiers, Equalizers and our version of the renowned Fairchild 660 limiting amplifier. But we have more product ideas for the future too. Our plan is that in 50 years Mercury’s gear will be the ‘vintage equipment’ that engineers not even born yet will want to use.”

Mercury’s product line includes: the Mercury 66 Studio Limiting Amplifier, based on the coveted Fairchild 660, the Studio Program Equalizers Mercury EQ-H1 and Mercury EQ-P1 inspired by tube Pultec EQs. The Mercury Studio Microphone Amplifiers are offered in stereo or mono versions: the Mercury M72s, and Mercury M76m are tube microphone amplifiers that trace their descent from Telefunken / Siemens era equipment. The discrete line of Studio Microphone Amplifiers, the Mercury AM16 is a transistor type mic pre modeled after the 1960s ‘Vintage Langevin’ AM16, The Mercury Grand Pre (or GP2) is a solid-state model inspired by 1970’s British microphone amplifiers, both offered in stereo versions only along with the new Mercury GPQ15s a mono, Studio Microphone Amplifier with 3 band Equalizer and High / Low filters.

Mercury Recording Equipment has its roots in the past, building on a ‘vintage’ sound, but adds their own “new vintage” touches to make them useful in today’s studio environment. A few examples are: The Mercury EQ-P1 has an I.S.T. switch which gives the option of engaging or disengaging the inter-stage transformer from the circuit; This creates a more open and airy sound to give more choices while mixing or tracking, the Mercury EQP1 and EQP2 are the only Program Equalizers to have this feature. Many Engineers have told us that this simple feature is so useful while mixing and really like having two different ‘Program EQs’ with a flick of a switch. The Mercury M76m was created to be the benchmark of valve Studio Microphone Amplifiers. The two-stage amplifier with 70dB of gain has a level control, output attenuator and High and Low impedance that the original ‘vintage V76m modules’ never had, even in custom racks. Each Mercury mic pre includes the Mercury FDI (FET Direct Input), a proprietary J-Fet circuit, based on a class-A tube topology. The Mercury FDI is designed to reproduce every nuance of a direct recording, while the circuit lets the tube or solid-state character of the amplifier determine the overall tone. The instrument DI signal is sent through the entire microphone preamp circuitry, including Mercury’s custom, massive input transformers, so that the individual character of each preamp comes through.

About Mercury Recording Equipment Co.
Mercury Recording Equipment Co. was planned in 1999, debuted that year at the NYC AES convention and started shipping in 2000. The Mercury products are very labor intensive, assembled by hand, and proudly built in the United States of America. Each product’s integrity is driven by the passion for vintage equipment that has inspired the company. Quality craftsmanship always comes first as Mercury’s goal is to build superior recording equipment. Marquette adds, “Manufacturing equipment is not easy, if it was, everyone would do it… So I like to build the things I would want to have and hear as a engineer, producer or artist: Focusing on the overall sound and how instrumentation or tracks react or are effected by the musicality of a amplifier, equalizer or limiter. Then building it ‘like they would’ – when people made things to last a lifetime – and not be part of the disposable, made offshore world we now live in. This lets me sleep soundly and have pride in what we are doing, making all the hard work more than worth while. Because helping people make music is very rewarding.”

Product pricing: Mercury 66 limiting amplifier (list price $7,495.US); Mercury EQ-H1 program equalizer (list price $2,250.US); Mercury EQ-P1 program equalizer (list price $2,595.US); Tube amplifiers Mercury M72s (stereo list price $3,695.US, mono $1,995.US); and Mercury M76 (stereo list price $5,250.US, mono $2,295.US). Please visit www.mercuryrecordingequipment.com or call (510) 581-3817 for more product or dealer information.

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