Rupert Neve Designs Master Bus Transformer Shop all Rupert Neve Designs

For over six decades, audio transformers have been the bedrock of Mr. Rupert Neve’s audio circuit design philosophy – and Rupert Neve Designs’ bespoke transformers are an integral part of virtually every RND product. Packed with these transformers, the MBT provides an incredible array of flavorful options designed to sweeten, enhance, drive, widen, and utterly transform source material, making it the ultimate tool for musical coloration.

High-Pass Filter & Shelf EQ

First in line is a smooth high pass filter with a fully variable frequency selection control, extending from 100Hz all the way down to 15Hz. Next up is the 2-band Shelf EQ section - with 3 octave ranges, gentle slopes and minimal phase shifts. Each band has +/- 9dB of gain control, with the LF EQ corner frequency variable from 30Hz to 240Hz and
the HF EQ corner frequency variable from 3kHz to 24kHz.

Optical Color Comp

With an all-new optical compressor design, the Color Comp excels at accentuating the non-linear distortion and “colorful” characteristics of the Opto cell to bring source material a new sense of life and depth. With switchable 2:1 and 5:1 compression ratios for subtle or dramatic behaviours, the variable high pass side chain filter will allow you to leave the low end intact while taming or squashing the rest of the source material. The Color Comp also contains a Blend control, making it easy to use the compression circuit in parallel with the uncompressed source material.

Increase Stereo with Width

Inspired by the Buss Processor, the width control on the MBT is
additive only, with a greater range for more extreme operation. The HPF varies from
50Hz to 800Hz to adjust the width content so that low frequencies remain more centered in the mix as the mids and highs are spread out to create more space.

Super Silk

Super Silk features independent Red, Blue, Harmonics and Zener Drive controls. Silk Red accentuates harmonics in the upper mid and high frequencies, adding sparkle and sheen. Silk Blue accentuates harmonics in the low & low mid frequencies, creating more depth and weight. The Harmonics control increases the overall musical harmonic content by saturating the MBT’s custom interstage transformers, which will interact with the settings for both Silk Blue and Silk Red.
Lastly, the switchable Zener Drive is a diode-based asymmetrical soft clip circuit that introduces mostly odd order harmonic content as the signal approaches the edge of the MBT’s headroom to achieve a more aggressive tonality.

I/O Amplifiers

the MBT includes Class-A input and output amplifiers to manage all levels. The output amplifiers feed Rupert Neve Designs’ custom output transformers for line balancing and isolation.