TK Audio recording products are made in Sweden – fair priced high end gear with care for minimum environmental impact.
TK Audio – sustainable products from Sweden
TK are Thomas Kristiansson's initials. Thomas Kristiansson lives in Halmstad in western Sweden, where he established his audio company – a family business run by him and his fiancée. If you buy TK Audio, you purchase original products by a European firm that takes much care in not leaving a too big environmental footprint.
The housings and the made around the corner, the circuit boards are being produced in Sweden, not far from TK, the TK workshop and office uses solar power. Thomas Kristiansson is a passionate man with lots of knowledge and experience – and enjoying it!
Many of TK Audio's clever processors are available in two versions: 19“ or Series 500 (Lunchbox). Not all of them are single channel in the 500 format. If you buy TK Audio's 19“ units, all but one are two-channel or stereo ones.
The two-channel 19“ TK Audio T-Komp has a vari-mu curve and character, but has a couple of tricks up his sleeve:
• progressive ratio: increases with the threshold level
• 5 RMS modes
• change circuitry between feed back and feed forward
• blend wet/dry
The TK Audio T-Komp 500 is mono and shares the basic features.
Both the 19“ and the 500 version are stereo bus compressors with a very transparent, but smooth sound. But „grab“ makes the knee of the VCA compression harder, „THD“ adds extra harmonics. There is sidechain high-pass filtering, a sidechain input and a blend control. Your perfect, high-end bus comp for a reasonable price!
Available as a series 500 and 19“ in a two-channel-version, the TK-lizer is a mighty equalizer. It features three bands (two switchable bell/shelf) with a gain range of +/- 8 dB and a 12 dB/oct high pass filter with variable cutoff. There is an M/S matrix built in, so you can seperately equalize left and right or mid and side! Available as a 19“ compressor with M/S, Made in the EU, you would expect a hefty price tag. Good news: It isn't!
TK Audio call the Transceiver 2 the „Universal Insert Station“. And this is exactly what it is: It has XLR inputs and outputs on the back. On the front, there are instrument level send and return, send level, return gain, polarity and dry/wet dials. This makes the unit truly versatile:
• inserting or blending in guitar effects when tracking, mixing or live on stage
• using the return as an active DI
• using the send as a re-amper
• connecting balanced studio gear to a guitar rig
The Transceiver is only available in 19“ and quite reasonably priced. Oh, and the TK Audio Transceiver 2 is a four-channel device!
The TK Audio M/S Blender 500 may look like a simple matrix, but is far more than that: It blends the m/s insert/send from 100% wet to 100% dry. And the unit doubles as a dual mono blender! There is no 19“ version of this product.