Black Lion Audio Seventeen

The Black Lion of FET Compressors

The Black Lion Audio Seventeen is not your father's FET compressor. It's not even a remake, but rather Black Lion's take on what the classic '76 limiting amplifier could have been, given the benefit of today's technology. Designed in collaboration with pro audio and plug-in guru Tobias Lindell and featuring an improved and redesigned IC-based front end, the Seventeen delivers profound detail and nuance never before heard with this type of compressor. The new front-end circuit is combined with Black Lion's custom-designed, made-in-Chicago output transformer, designed to give Seventeen a massive low end that beautifully balances its open, airy top end. Seventeen also features Black Lion's proprietary power decoupling for an impressively low noise floor and employs high-grade Nichicon signal capacitors, widely considered among the highest quality caps on the market.

Amazing versatility and value

As an outfit that cut its teeth doing acclaimed mods, Black Lion unsurprisingly never settles for "good enough." That's why the Seventeen benefits from added features that are normally considered custom upgrades. These include a frequency-adjustable sidechain, separate selectable highpass and lowpass filters, and a wet/dry mix knob that lets you blend dry signal in with your compressed signal. With all this flexibility, the Seventeen serves up a banquet of tones we at Sweetwater have found difficult to re-create with other dynamics hardware. Of course, Seventeen also includes stereo link functionality for linking two units together. And seriously: at this price, why wouldn't you get two?

What the Seventeen can do for you

Every studio needs a good limiter, and the Black Lion Audio Seventeen is inspired by the mother of all FET limiters. With its lightning-fast response time and pristine, all-discrete signal path, the Seventeen is your go-to device for everything from subtle, transparent dynamics control to full-on brickwall limiting. It's fabulous on bass, kick drum, guitars, pianos, vocals, you name it. It's a must-have for punchy parallel processing on drums, and if you have two of them, the possibilities become even greater.

About Black Lion Audio

Founded in Chicago in 2006, Black Lion Audio has made their mark on the audio industry by hot rodding audio equipment and upgrading the sound quality of popular music production gear, elevating industry-standard products to new levels of sonic quality. Though they started off modding gear from other manufacturers, they've utilized their cumulative expertise to design their own line of boutique mic preamps and word clocks. BLA gear and modded gear can be found in studios from LA to New York to Nashville and heard on projects from artists like Maroon 5, Alison Krauss, Metallica, T-Pain, George Strait, MGMT, Beyonce, George Duke, Slayer, Erykah Badu, Rod Stewart, and more.