Warm Audio WA76

Great compressor

I use this on recording vocals , acoustic guitars and bass every day. It sounds great . 100% better than plugins

The ‘76

Early use only… urgent and present. I sold my UA76 years ago when I up and moved from Euroe to Los Angeles (major error) and rather than spent a fortune I took a chance on a cheaper version. Scoring one less than 5 across the board is because the Warm copies of all the classics can not be judged equal to the originals. I wasn’t disappointed with my UA stuff or Api racks over the years apart from how expensive they were. However the Warm gear is a welcome substitute without losing much at all sonically.

love it

solid knobs, fat and controlled sound. gives a certain warmth and saturation to my signal. a huge upgrade from using software plugins. highly recommended. i mainly using for kick and snare, as well as vocals and pair two of them to crush some room/overhead drum mics to get some extra character

WOW!

I bought this unit in combination with the WA73 preamp and no matter what source i put trough it it sounds great.

You can use it subtlety and level the peaks of say a vocal or utterly destroy a source and smash it, for example a drum crush mic, and everything in between.

I have tried a lot of plugin versions of this compressor but non of them sound as good as the real thing, the plugin versions always seem to take away some of the top hi frequencies, this unit does not.

I especially like it on vocals because it is really fast and nicely takes away the peaks on my wildly dynamic vocal .

Oh and it looks awesome :-)

It does the job

I've found vocals can start sounding a little thin through it but on most instrumental sources it does a decent job.

The WA76 sounds very "warm" and full when used on anything, really. The only downside is it comes with a little bit of noise.. otherwise, great unit for the price! Can't go wrong having one in your studio.

Decent 1176 for those on a budget.

Not the 'best' 1176 but does have a lot of the character and sonic capability of much more expensive gear. With careful tweaking the source comes alive. Great on electric bass, drum percussion, and vocal.

My unit has been totally reliable for several years; good purchase.

Great product

Love the WA76, paired it with WA73-EQ and it sounds amazing!

There is no downside to this comp,

Definitely would recommend..

Never again

Never buying stuff from warm audio again. Every time i buy something it has some pot wrong or smthing. Prefer Klark teknik any day of the week.

WA76 - A comp that doesn't ruin your marriage

This is more than just a good looking unit, that features the vintage styling of the original 1176 but also is a very affordable copy of that unit that is versatile, easy to use, and able to give great compression on bass, vocals, guitar and according to many reviews drums. According to a lot of reviews and comparisons, the WA76 does sound similar to the 1176. This I cant confirm however, never having owned the original.

I have read a lot of complaints about noise issues, which I think depends more on what is being fed into the WA76 however, my only issue with the unit is the GR dial and Output dial that in real life, look and feel not as high quality as the images may suggest. When adjusting these dials there is also a static noise, however it hasn't hindered anything, and according to forums, a lot of people had the same experience.

So in all, good unit for the price, I guess those who have the cash to splash would probably be better off getting higher quality gear, but I think to be honest as a beginner (Like me) or someone who wants a 1176 without wanting to jeopardize their marriage and mortgage, I think this is a good compromise.