Drawmer MX-50

Name: Drawmer MX-50
Brand: Drawmer

A dual de-esser that did its job on problem vocals, and did the same for acoustic guitars, hi-hats, and anything else with a sibilant edge.

Overview

The MX-50 is Drawmer's dedicated de-esser, part of the company's MX Pro Series of 1RU analog processors alongside the MX30 compressor, the MX40 four-channel gate, and the MX60 channel strip. The rest of that family handles level and punch. The MX-50 has one job: taming the sibilant range without gutting the top end. The front panel frequency control sweeps from 800Hz to 8kHz. That covers the full spread of hard-sounding harmonics and related side effects that rise above the average program level - the esses, the tsss, the fret-string twang, the cymbal splash.

The MX-50 is more flexible than a plain de-esser. A front-panel push button switches between full-band and split-band operation. Full-band de-essing pulls the whole signal down when sibilance trips the threshold. Split-band works only on the offending band and leaves the rest of the program intact. There's also an air switch, which restores the relative level of frequencies above the sibilant band during de-essing. That is what lets the box de-ess without the significant loss of high frequency that usually comes with the job.

Input and output can be set for either +4dB or -10dB operation via a rear switch, so the MX-50 drops into a wide range of studios without fussing over level matching. The unit is a single-rack-space analog piece and sits in a rack alongside its MX-series siblings.

The period reception was warm. Sound on Sound (October 1998, p.71) ran a feature on the MX50. Engineer Alan Branch described using it on backing vocals that had turned a little sibilant during comping, and reported that after a few seconds of fiddling they sounded much more natural. Branch called it an excellent tool for recording or mixing, noting that it could reduce anything in the sibilant range, from fret-string noise on acoustic guitar to a hi-hat buried in a loop. His verdict, paraphrased from the same piece: when you're looking for the final polish on problem vocals, this should be in your rack. The same feature also quoted Sound on Sound's Paul White, who called the MX50 a very good dedicated de-esser.

Drawmer's own advertising around the launch leaned on ease of use: "Find problem centre frequency... Turn threshold knob... Hey presto!" as one Sound on Sound (October 1998) dealer page put it. The MX50 was listed at £200 in that same period advertising, as the newest addition to the MX line alongside the MX30 gated compressor/limiter and the MX40 punch gate. Mix (April 1998, p.4) was already teasing the MX50 as "coming soon" in its MX-series roundup, with the MX30 at $449 and the MX40 at $599 in US pricing. The MX50's own US price wasn't yet published at that point.

The MX-50 doesn't try to be a channel strip or a compressor. It's a specialist, and that is both its appeal and its limitation. In a modern DAW-centric studio, a dedicated hardware de-esser is a harder sell than it was in 1998, when tracking to tape or early digital meant you wanted the problem solved on the way in. For anyone tracking vocals, acoustic instruments, or drum overheads through an analog front end, the MX-50 remains a tidy, purpose-built tool. The split-band plus air-switch combination is the reason it holds up better than most one-knob de-essers of the era.