a west australian client Ronan Charles is awaiting delivery of this fine pair of FAT LADY varimu limiting amplifiers. i built these two (and three others) in melbourne 1998. they’ve been in my recording mixing rig since about 2004 and have just received plenty TLC ready for their new situation. of course i got a new set underway, a dual chassis this time (because i have several emptied ones) . heres the design and a panel layout. i have most/all the electronic parts here too. the studio is quite busy coming up to christmas so i got next to no time to make my new twin fatlady.

meanwhile.. back on the w.a ranch… Ronan’s fat ladys arrived fed ex friday afternoon. and his first response . “Seriously – WOOWOO-F-ING-HOOHOO.They are here and blowing my head off! Been running a drum machine as a test for the fast transients and trying all the positions. So much power in these babes – huge huge. Subtle and smooth as well.They blow my drawmer out of the water for depth and range – and pure sex appeal.They seem to love attitude – do lovely things to a distorted signal. Bass is massive – nice and clear if you wanna or dirty it up. so good! Can’t wait to track real drums with them and plug in the moog.” (and the next day) “Just can’t stop playing with ’em.I’m drunk with sonic pleasure- jeez the distortion is so juicy on NO and especially NO out to GO just sounds amazing.Thanks again for such an inspiring piece of gear with so much to offer.” i cant (dont want to) shut this guy up. heres more enthuising a few days later “Those big juicy dials just help a lot in general exploration and zeroing in what sounds good. I tracked some drums over the weekend to experiment with them a bit more. Found some great bass drum sounds with the NO setting – which of course kinda compresses anyway.  GO is plenty fast and made for snare.  Definitely my new GO-to chain for vox as well. I really love it. what a bloody magnificent beauty. I hope I do them justice. Metering is excellent. I can really see what is going on at the different attack and release speeds. “