Six Equalisers, One Plugin
Each with its own controls, its own layout and its own sound
Hybrid
If you learn one, learn this
Seven bands wide enough to fix almost anything, each able to work on the whole picture or on just the middle or just the edges. A Character switch decides whether the EQ stays invisible or becomes part of the sound.
Passive
Makes things sound bigger
Turn the bass boost and the bass cut up at the same time and the low end grows without turning to mud. Only this kind of circuit does that, and it is why this mode is very hard to make sound bad.
Air
It can only ever add
Two controls, both aimed at the top end. One finds the frequency where a sound speaks and lifts around it. The other opens the space above. There is no cut here, so nothing in this mode can dull a sound.
Surgical
Takes the problem out
Four bands you can point anywhere, narrow enough to find one ringing frequency and pull it down without disturbing anything either side. The quietest and most precise of the six.
Inductor
Push it and it pushes back
Transformers and a valve stage in the signal path, so the harder you drive it the more it colours. Boosts tighten as you push them and soften as you back off, so even a big move still sounds deliberate.
Bus
It works before you touch it
Put it across your finished mix and it is already doing something: valve and transformer weight running at all times, with every band still flat. The bands are then deliberately gentle, sized for the small moves that help a finished mix rather than the big ones that wreck it.
Two instances of fEq in series, each in the mode that suits its job, is a completely reasonable way to work.
