Golden Age Project Comp 54 Compressor

I loved this as soon as I saw it. A true old-school compressor, built the old-fashioned way before integrated circuits took over, with proper resistors and transformer balanced line input and output. You can link two of these together for stereo operation and it even has true relay-switched bypass to completely remove the circuitry from the signal path. It's often the case with vintage equipment that the sound quality delivered is so desirable that prices on the second-hand market are relatively high. With this unit delivering the same kind of qualities as classics like the 2254 yet only costing around $449, that beautiful vintage sound and old-school build quality is at hand without paying a fortune.