Description
Acme Audio Motown D.I. WB-3 THE SOUND THAT MADE HISTORY Motown backing musicians like James Jamerson, Bob Babbitt and Dennis Coffey defined the sound of a generation with their soulful playing and crisply captured sounds. Thanks to the direct in box created by a Detroit area engineer, the musicians plugged straight in and achieved a distinct, colorful distortion that would become recognizable all over the world. Recreated by Acme Audio, the new Motown D.I. WB-3 brings the same type of character as the original, in addition to the low frequency magnetic saturation that has helped to make the device famous. RECREATING A CLASSIC TRANSFORMER Production on the A-11/12J transformers utilized in the original Motown D.I. has stopped since the first run of the box and NOS versions of the product are extremely rare. In order to recreate the sound of Acme Audios Wolf Box III, the Detroit-based brands exact replica of the first Motown D.I., engineers went to work painstakingly replicating the original transformers used. Instead of settling for less, these newly created transformers followed the exact specifications of the initial design. HISTORY OF THE MOTOWN D.I. BOX The story of the direct box begins in the late 1950s, when Dr. Edward Wolfdrum, PhD. began developing the piece of gear using the famed Triad A-11/12J transformers. After selling his first unit to Jack Brown at Fortune Records, a smaller Detroit record label, Edward began distributing his invention to recording studios and television stations all over Southeastern Michigan. In the end, Wolfdrum became an engineer for some of Detroits best known recording studios, including Golden World, Motown and United Sound Studios. These studios and the gear that Wolfdrum worked on would become synonymous with some of the citys greatest musical exports. While its up for debate whether he was the first to create a direct input box, the legacy of Wolfdrums work lives on in the important music it helped to make.