Neve 2264ALB
A 500-series compressor built in the image of a classic, and sold to a generation that will never touch the original.
Overview
The 2264ALB is a 500-series compressor/limiter from AMS Neve. The company's own catalog copy is blunt about it: a module made "in the image of the classic early 70s-era Neve 2264A limiter/comp." So it's a deliberate callback, not a continuation. It's a modern-format reissue of a circuit lineage that predates the 500-series rack standard by decades.
There is no published spec sheet for the 2264ALB, at least in any documentation available here. No frequency response figures, no stated ratio ranges, no attack and release times, no THD numbers, no price, no production years. Anyone shopping this module from a datasheet is shopping the wrong way. It trades on reputation and lineage, not on a column of measurements.
The reputation is loud, though. Dealer roundups repeatedly call the 2264ALB the "highly sought-after 'desert island' compressor." That's marketing language, not an independent verdict, and it should be read as such. But the claim shows up consistently across multiple dealer placements. Mix (May 2013, p.61) ran Vintage King dealer pages positioning Neve modules within their 500-series selection. It was never pitched as a utility comp. It was pitched as the one you'd keep if you could only keep one.
The original 2264A is a Neve limiter/compressor from the early 1970s, and the 2264ALB exists to put that character into a 500-series slot. Collectors and engineers who know the vintage Neve compressor circuits tend to describe them in terms of weight and authority rather than transparency. The module is a color piece, not a clean gain-control tool. Buyers should expect to hear it, not to hear through it.
For anyone building a 500-series rack: the 2264ALB is a single-module compressor/limiter, and it appears in dealer listings alongside the wider 500-series ecosystem - mic pres, EQs, and other dynamics modules from a long list of manufacturers. It is not a standalone unit and does not work outside a 500-series chassis. That's true of every 500-series module, but it trips up first-time buyers who assume a compressor is a box you plug into the wall.
The 2264ALB is a modern-format Neve compressor with a strong reputation and almost no published hard data behind it. This page can't give its attack time, because no available documentation says. It's for engineers who want a Neve-flavored limiter/compressor in a 500-series rack and are willing to trust the lineage over the datasheet.
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