T-Bone is an overall track or mix-bus tone-shaping EQ that boosts and cuts simultaneously, enabling you to brighten dull tracks or tame harsh tracks without an increase in amplitude or unwanted frequency-based artifacts.
T-Bone is a slant or tilt equalizer that enables tracks to fit easily in a mix, often with just the turn of a single control. The advantage of a slant EQ is that it enables you to make quick tonal changes to a track or mix without throwing off its gain staging. Say for example you have a stereo drum track that has too much bass in the kick and toms and not enough sparkle in the cymbals. Simply turn T-Bone’s main knob clockwise and the highs will go up while the lows are cut. Naturally, Boz wouldn’t leave it at that. There are additional features designed to handle the shortcomings and acoustic byproducts that can occur with a single tone control, making T-Bone far more versatile and powerful than just a simple tilt EQ—while also remaining highly musical and super easy to use.
What is a slant EQ?
If you’ve ever worked with a Pultec EQ (hardware or plug-in), you’re aware of the boost and attenuation controls on both the low- and high-frequency bands. One of the attributes that made the Pultec an essential studio tool was the ability to boost and cut bass simultaneously. Rather than working at cross purposes, the combination of these two controls created a similar EQ curve to the slant EQ, with a boost at the bass center frequency followed by a cut. The result was a separation between kick drum and bass that made low-end management a breeze.
It’s easiest to think of a slant EQ like a see-saw; one side goes up (boost) while the other goes down (attenuates), based on a central pivot point. With your standard see-saw, that pivot point is fixed. However, T-Bone lets you select the center frequency around which T-Bone boosts and attenuates. The benefit of a slant EQ is that it gives you the ability to brighten or darken a track very quickly, often with the slight twist of a single knob. As a bonus, it doesn’t increase gain like traditional equalizers. This not only preserves headroom, but also doesn’t fool your ear into thinking your tweaks are improvements, since we perceive louder as better. As such, you immediately know if your adjustments are working without the time-consuming hassle of level-matching.
Boz Fun Fact: The slant or tilt EQ can trace its origins to the 1950s. Peter Baxandall (arguably the real father of British EQ) invented the design, which he entered into a contest and netted a $25 watch as a prize. Subsequently, his circuit appeared in thousands of stereos. (Had Baxandall received any royalties, he’d have been a 1-percenter before we had 1-percenters.) In essence, Baxandall’s tone control was a single knob that increased treble when turned clockwise and conversely bass when turned counterclockwise—each without affecting the another. This circuit also inspired the Tilt EQ designed by Paul Wolff, former owner and principal designer of API and Tonelux. Tilt EQ offered a very inexpensive way to equalize channels with a single-knob. However, Tilt EQ often required some help in the form of high- and low-pass filters, which among other highly useful controls, are included in T-Bone.
T-Bone on its face
While T-Bone at its most basic is a very powerful tool, certain unwanted artifacts can occur with extreme boosting. Slanting too far to the left (bass), you can end up with a lot of low-end buildup. Slant too far to the right and harsh high-end may ensue. It goes without saying that Boz wouldn’t leave you twisting knobs in the wind. Hence, the creation of the Boom and Harsh controls. These controls let you add massive amounts of slant without the nasty side effects associated with boosting either side of the frequency spectrum. Boom and Harsh are essential to T-Bone’s ease of use and consistent musically useful results.
Boz Digital T Bone Features
- Low CPU
- Slant EQ simultaneously boosts and attenuates for quick tone shaping without gain increase
- High- and low-pass filters with resonance control
- Boom and Harsh controls tame unwanted side effects
- Wet/dry mix control
- Clean filters up to Nyquist limit