# Well, it ain't cheap or anything...

- Site: Analog Industries
- Author: Chris Randall
- Date: 2006-09-11
- URL: https://analogindustries.com/2006/09/well-it-aint-cheap-or-anything/

Some day, when the fairy godmother turns me in to a real boy, I'll have my dream rig. And in pride of place will be a dozen or so of these motherfuckers, just announced by API. Essentially two 550B eqs in a single rack space, with some extra features. These are best explained by API directly:

_The 5500 will be at AES and will ship in quantity shortly thereafter. We will have pricing details at the show as well. The cost will be more than just 2 550B's because as you may have noticed, the 5500 is actually 3 EQ's in one - the range switch lets you reduce the steps in the boost/cut to become a 550D or a 550M. We'll try to keep the pricing less than 3 times the cost of one EQ, however._

By my math, that comes to roughly $3600 a throw. That's a lot of money, when you consider you can buy a pair of 550B carts and have enough left over for a lunchbox, plus a cart of your choice from another company. That said, you know that looks are more important to me than sound, and this looks really fucking nice. There's some marketspeak [here,](http://www.zioshow.com/view.php?id=8645&area=1) but it won't tell you anything beyond what's above.

## Comments (6)

**penzoil washington** (2006-09-12):

start hitting that price point and there are some really painfully wonderful eq's to choose from... ie; massive passive.

**Chris Randall** (2006-09-12):

The Massive Passive is just too Massive for me. I like to grab a knob and have something happen.

You're right about there being a lot to choose from in that price range, though. There's a lot of great EQs at _half_ that price.

-CR

**meeglosh** (2006-09-12):

Great river EQ-2NV
Crane Song IBIS
Summit EQP-200B
Empirical Labs Lil FrEQ (x2)
Neve Portico 5033 (x2)

Suddenly I feel like I have turrets syndrome....I just couldn't help but blurt those out. Sorry bout that.

**Chris Randall** (2006-09-12):

Of course, it's worth mentioning that none of those are an API 550B, the absolute greatest rock EQ ever made, and this is. But then again, like I said, it'd be cheaper to do a lunchbox and carts.

-CR

**retrosynth** (2006-09-13):

$3600 is just way too much bank for what this is. I'd expect $3600 if they went with 24 position switches for the cut/boost controls and had in/out switches per band. Adding a global switch for .5, 1, or 2db cut/boost increments sounds like a hack. More worrisome is how they went about accomplishing this. I'll see if they'll let me take a look under the hood at AES in a couple weeks. Not that I really care to go from lunchbox 550bs to a couple rack mount units.

**penzoil washington** (2006-09-13):

So a fully parametric Pultec with overlapping frequencies and plus/minus 20 db per band (Massive Passive) sounds like nothing's happening when you switch it in? I find that thing is a beast!