Pultec DS-201
A model number that turns up everywhere in studio paperwork and nowhere in Pultec's own records - which is the whole story.
Overview
The Archive cannot confirm that a Pultec DS-201 ever existed. It has dug through decades of studio inventories, classified ads, and rack lists. No manual, no schematic, no specification sheet, no price list. Nothing bearing the Pultec name and that model number has surfaced in the surviving record. What the documentation does show is that "DS-201" was a real, working piece of studio hardware in the 1980s and '90s. It just wasn't made by Pultec.
The designation belongs to Drawmer. Studio gear lists from the period routinely name the Drawmer DS-201 as a dual-channel noise gate, racked alongside the compressors and equalizers that filled a working control room's outboard bay. A classified ad in Mix (June 1995, p.214) priced Drawmer DS 201 noise gates at $450 apiece. It also listed Pultec equalizers in the same breath, an EQP-1A at $3,000 and an EQH-2 at $2,000. That proximity is almost certainly how the confusion started: a Pultec EQ and a Drawmer gate sharing a rack, a patch sheet, or a studio inventory, and somewhere down the line the two names got welded onto the wrong box.
So what does that mean for anyone who finds a listing or a piece of gear labeled "Pultec DS-201"? The label is unverified. The DS-201 is documented as a Drawmer noise gate, and its Pultec identity rests on this page alone, with nothing in the primary record behind it. That doesn't rule out a rebadge, a one-off, or a mislabeled unit sitting in some studio's rack for thirty years. No evidence has turned up to support any of those stories.
The Archive will not manufacture a spec sheet to fill the gap. There are no confirmed frequency response figures, no dimensions, no weight, no original price, no production years, and no circuit details for a Pultec DS-201, because no such document exists in the research. Collectors chasing this model number may be chasing a clerical ghost, a name that migrated from one manufacturer's product to another's in the fog of studio paperwork.
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