HHB Fat Man Tube Compressor


HHB Fat Man Tube Compressor
by Ted Blaisdell
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When I agreed to review the HHB Radius Fat Man, I wondered how physically big is this baby going to be? As big as an old Fairchild 670 compressor? So huge it wouldn't fit in the trunk of my car?

Well fortunately, my fears were unsubstantiated. It's actually a cute little guy about eight and half inches long and five inches high that fits on your desktop. It's not going to fit inside your studio rack however, unless you buy the optional rack mounting kit that can hold two Fat Men side by side or one Fat Man in the middle. There are two sets of very handy 1/4 inch balanced inputs and outputs on Fat Man's rear and also two front panel 1/4 inch instrument inputs for plugging guitars or synthesizers directly in...without the need of a direct box. A bypass switch lets you A/B or compare sounds processed to unprocessed while a vintage-style VU meter monitors either output level or gain reduction amount.

Not two discrete mono compressors, the Fat Man is a full stereo compressor set to always work in stereo mode but there is no harm in using just one side for any mono sound. There are 15 presets labeled for all the usual suspects in a rhythm section: bass, guitars, drums, keyboards and vocals as well as three presets for fattening up overall mixes. The presets greatly simplify the compression process and work well for quickly recalling that guitar or vocal sound you got last week.

The presets however, disable the front panel attack, release, threshold, ratio and hard knee/soft knee controls. So after selecting a preset, you simply control the compression with the input gain control. Only in Manual mode do the aforementioned controls become active letting you precisely tweak the Fat Man. Now since I'm a tweaker, I'm always playing with the ratio setting as well as the attack and release times of my compressors. I find I can really change the characteristics of an instrument and still precisely control dynamics as much as needed.

I brought the Fat Man to three different studios and tried its girth on a number of instrument and vocal sources. It worked well on bass guitar, but I ended up using the Vocal 1 preset. It also did a nice job mellowing out a bright piccolo trumpet using the Electric Guitar 2 preset. Only thing was I found myself constantly reaching to tweak the attack and release controls, which of course were disabled in these preset modes. When I did switch to manual mode I found that I lost whatever sound I had going with the preset and had to go fishing for it again with a combination of the manual controls. I started to consult the manual where all the presets are listed with their equivalent front panel settings. When I liked a certain preset but wanted (or knew I was going) to tweak, I would copy the preset manually and build from there.

The Fat Man is perfect for the project studio engineer or musician/songwriter or anyone who is not into tweaking much and more interested in quickly getting their dynamics under control with a resetable tube compression sound. The Fat Man, at $469 MSRP, is the right unit to do the job without breaking the bank. For much more contact: HHB Communications USA Inc 743 Cochran Street, Buildings E and F, Simi Valley, CA 93065-1976 Phone: 310-319-1111 Fax: 310-319-1311. Web to: Web site: www.hhb.co.uk or Email: sales@hhbusa.com

Ted Blaisdell is an LA-based recording engineer.

Edited by: Barry Rudolph

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