Thermionic CULTURE Phoenix Review
Reviewed by Jurgen Cremonese for Monitor

Almost fifty years ago EMI sent George Martin to the USA to carry out industrial espionage. His task was to find out how the Americans managed to make their recordings sound so damned good. The answer was compressors. EMI procured an Altec 436 and allowed their technicians at Abbey Road to imitate and experiment. English valve culture was born.

At the same time, a young Vic Keary was sitting at home in Hampshire and was listening to Lonnie Donegan, presumably like everybody else. The strange thing was that he never dreamt of being on stage, but of becoming a recording technician. With the help of his family, a tiny studio was built in the barn loft. Perfect conditions for recording, apart from at milking time….

The interest developed into a business and at the beginning of the sixties Keary was ensconced in London’s soldered inner world of recording. By that time he had already developed a philosophy which influenced everything he did 120%, namely that the transistor’s entry into the studio was a step backwards sonically and that the valve sounded so much better. Having distinguished himself by using his brains and an Altec 436 to build a compressor for Pete Townshend (a touch of history) and building The Workhouse that Manfred Mann bought, Vic Keary became one of the many who followed in the footsteps of Orams and Meeks – very clever sound technicians and even better producers. A couple of years later his own studio, Chiswick Farm, gained a reputation for having a mellow and rich sound and he became very popular among reggae artists.

During the decades that followed the working environment changed radically and at the beginning of the eighties Keary decided to leave the studio world and devote himself to selling old gear and collecting and renovating old valve equipment. This was something which came in handy in 1990. A small studio at Chalk Hill was broken into. Everything was taken and Keary was questioned about his collection of valve equipment, which at this time was starting to reach cult status. The trend at this time (when I was taking my first tentative steps in the Music-a-Matic Studio in Gothenburg) was just to combine modern music with the old valve technology. None of this could be seen on the open market, but the giants in that sector continued their sound-destroying mass-production. There was room for alternatives, particularly for those who demanded good sound and had full wallets. Vic Keary installed his collection at Chalk Hill and then built a pair of Thermionic Cultures, mainly for renovation but also for building exciting valve equipment in the good old-fashioned style.

The Phoenix

I mentioned Pete Townshend’s compressor earlier. The Phoenix is so much like the original because it is a real retro compressor. Of the worst kind! The height of three rack units, with two reliable VU-indicators and the two compression channels give at a glance more than just a subtle hint of what this piece of kit sounds like. The price is in the enthusiasts’ bracket at 29,000 kronor plus VAT. Who in his right mind would buy such a thing? I contacted the supplier and posed the question. Contrary to what you might believe, I was told that after you had heard it compress a trumpet sound for several minutes and without going deaf, you would want to supply it. The price was definitely not of secondary importance. Yes, it was specialist, but fortunately, for us mere mortals, we can at least all now hire a decent valve compressor with lots of character.

The Phoenix shines when all around is dark. There are two control channels on the front for input level, attack, release and threshold. Both channels have thru switches, as well as a Link-function and Presets. Behind the large VU-gauges, which only show gain reduction, there are two voltage dividers and a bias adjustment for valve-change, which is for controlling minimum distortion.

As you can see for yourself the machine passes any visual inspection you like without complaint. It is nearly an understatement to talk of clear and intuitive design. And it is a similar story when we turn the machine round. Input/output one and two, a fuse and mains connection. Nothing else. Will that lead to faults? No. You should read between the lines of the second philosophy at Thermionic Culture: no frills!

The machine itself can be seen under a perforated, Gosta Backstrom-inspired cover, where there are two reliable inputs, no fewer than six ordinary valves, two big resistors and an enormous mains connection. Last but not least there are two voltage dividers for calibrating the VU-gauges, easily accessible with a long flat screwdriver and at a safe distance from the mains connectin. Simple isn’t it?

I mentioned the valves earlier. In the Phoenix there are six unusual valves, an RCA 6BQ7A in the input of the test version, a Brimar 33A/101K in the output and a Mullard CV4007 as sidechain detector. Channel two has the same arrangement. Oh my goodness! Try to buy these valves at your local music dealer if you can. Well, in the output you can connect a 12AT7 and in the sidechain a 6AL5. Both of these are available on overnight delivery. The entry valve 6BQ7A can be changed for a PCC85, and I can only wish you good luck.

The whole design looks vintage. It has not been built using printed circuit cards; all the components are soldered by hand, point-to-point, and Thermionic Culture has modernised the inwards only as far as the hiss level is concerned, which Thermionic Culture maintains is 95 dB under MOL which seems nearly too good to be true.

The straightforward manual gives a simple introduction to The Phoenix. To start with, the machine gives you a soft knee-compression between 1.2:1 and 5:1 at 15 dB compression. There we are, but you can’t compare the compressor with plug-ins on the same day or with anything else either, for that matter.

Test

I felt almost threatened by the Phoenix. It arrived at Studiomega in Varberg, large and reassuringly heavy. The guinea pigs were Orebro residents The Spitts. The singer has a strong voice with very sharp consonants. “S” stands out noticeably, especially in a microphone like the U87. We connected everything in/out and adjusted the controls to a very modest setting, they are set at eleven, by the way – Spinal Tap in the control room. Attack and release were set at half speed and the compression at zero and we listened. And it sounded very odd. It transpired that Threshold was going in reverse, and it was only after a mild heart attack and a thorough read-through of the manual that I realised what was going on. This is unusual but totally in line with Thermionic Culture’s third philosophy: if you don’t know what you’re doing you won’t be able to use this machine.

When I finally got going, I came right down to earth with the overwhelming character. The Phoenix has a feel totally of its own. To start with, input gain starts to distort slightly at level five, to increase nicely like an old Disa at eleven. One to three gives a totally clean input and is used by line signals. The gain occurs unbelievably effectively over the whole frequency range, depending on the song style, to finish in a lovely tight sound full of white noise.

We set it on four again, quick attack and release and set the compression on six, right up therefore, and set it on zero dB. Jeepers, then it just happens! It sounds completely brilliant. EQ is totally unnecessary! The sharpness and unpleasantness in U87 is no longer there. It sounds rich and coherent. The dynamic is enormous and we go from quiet withdrawn singing to Arthur Brown-like shouting and The Phoenix copes with everything effortlessly. The feel of the compressor is quite outstanding. The sound reminds me of any expensive make. I would compare it with the U47 and Neve 1071 through to the fresh Fairchild 670 about ten years ago, and that is no bad comparison.

Keep turning and the attack-release-relationship does much more for the character of the sound than the compression alone. With minimum attack and release, at 4 and 60 ms respectively, The Phoenix really draws on the sound source. If you have high compression at the same time, the compressor starts to cut in to your sound source in a classical way. If you turn down the controls a bit, you do well even with high compression. The distortion works its way in when you put the machine through its paces and it makes vocals fill out at the bottom of the middle register. It is great for thin and sharp vocals.

Guitar

I sang a number of phrases and had to move over to the top of the middle register as I had a marked hump at 220-240 Hz. But it sounded absolutely lovely and The Phoenix reproduced my voice in a way I have never heard before. NB: with the voice knobs you can change the position of the microphone a bit here and there between the different phrases, quite simply to create slightly different feel and dynamic. The Phoenix keeps it together over the whole register and fills out the song so that in fact it sounds like “…on a record...”!

I changed to acoustic guitar and left the settings the same. But the sound I was after needed more attack and so I turned the control down to six. The release rumbles when it is on a high setting and I put it up a couple of notches. That’s how it should sound!

After the first day of testing, The Phoenix not only sounded good as a whole, but was also easy to use. It is like riding a strong fast horse; you can really feel the power when you make your adjustments and it is good enough for you to let it do its own thing.

On the second day I tried out playing electric guitar through a Koch Pedaltone feeding directly into the Phoenix and it definitely sounded unbelievably good again. The Phoenix takes care of the whole dynamic and I could play laid back, heavy or aggressively: the sound fills up with heavy playing when laid back the sound rings out really nicely, almost Petty-like. With a completely clean sound, high compression and attack and release on five, you get a round and gritty sound, which resounds for a long time. Think how Dave Gilmour would sound on it.

Mix

I connected up The Phoenix on the main L/R with a raw mix and here the reality was staring us in the face. It all sounded good, apart from everything we had already used the Phoenix on. We had compressed the tracks a lot and when listening individually it appeared to also distort the harmonic a great deal. It was taken care of by playing it through one more time and coming into the mix at an oblique angle. The Phoenix conveys so much feeling during recording that it easily gets out of control if you give it another turn. The truth was that I did not need to do anything further otherwise I would be letting the channels go completely wild in the mix. No EQ, no further compression, apart from a light main L/R with really clear NTP.

At home

As soon as I got home, I rigged up The Phoenix for song recording, and it demonstrated immediately that it was a remarkable improvement. “It sounds just like it’s on a record…”, again! A delicate female voice with a good bottom end was handled extremely well by The Phoenix. On individual listening it sounded almost too fat and I tried to sharpen the voice up at 10 kHz. It soon became clear that the vocal could certainly be too dominant in the music and I got rid of all the EQ. On the whole, the quality of the singing voice was the best I had heard on a recording, and in a digital environment.

The Phoenix is also very quiet; I must say that I have never heard a valve compressor sound this way. Sure, some noise can definitely be detected if you test it thoroughly, depending on what type of classical compression you prefer, but it is notable that it simply produces the sound source with no hiss or crackle.

I sat up for two whole evenings after work until late into the night finding new ways to alter the guitar. The funny thing is that the more I got into The Phoenix, the more I saw it as an instrument in its own right. The guitar more or less took over. Even the slightest adjustment of the pick-up gave new nuances and characteristics that I had never heard before. It was unbelievable fun, and very helpful musically.

Drums

And now to maybe the funniest bit. Just as the dealer said, drums sound totally fantastic in The Phoenix. I started through two pre-amps with the bass drum and snare separately, overhang stereo and ambience stereo. Everything sounded really good. Funniest and best was a mixture between bass drum and overhang – naturally with a slightly quieter sound from the cymbals and genuine tightness on the drums, but also with brushes on jazz. How well The Phoenix handled the sound. A Premierset set-up with 22–turns bass drum in birch with standard A-Zildjian really sounds like on the Pro Tools Le. The Phoenix picks up drum and cymbal sounds that are already at low compression. Bass and snare drum make a soft, very English, strong transient sound which I will definitely keep for my own use. In ambient pieces The Phoenix gathers up the drum set and even with strong compression, the cymbals do not detract from the good sound of the drums themselves. Reduce attack, have a quick release, whack up the input gain and high compression and you have a fantastically good drum sound with is both unbelievably classical and modern.

Summary

There is really nothing else to say except that The Phoenix is really as good as Spike Stent, Edwyn Collins and the late Joe Strummer said. I have no doubt that anyone at all could use it, and would find it useful. Everything that goes into it sounds better when it comes out, even when not compressed! The feel of it is quite outstanding in its own way. Simply put I can say that no matter how I attacked The Phoenix it never went wrong. The distortion that it generates is unbelievably great and sharpens to whatever sound package you want. I think that it fits in well with my idea of classical English single-mindedness: beer, expensive cars and valve technology – as with everything that is special there are those who have never tried it and frown at it, but those who get the chance are convinced by it. I think that The Phoenix is quite clearly one of the best machines in the studio context that I have ever recommended in 15 years. It sounds much better than many of the old original machines I have worked with, such as Fairchild, Disa and EMI. The sound quality, the minimal noise and the user-friendliness makes the 29,000 kr plus VAT that it costs nothing other than a brilliant investment.