The Black Lion Audio Seventeen 500 FET Limiting Amplifier is Black Lion’s unique take on what the classic ’76 limiting amplifier could have been with the benefit of today’s tech. Black Lion didn’t sacrifice one ounce of tone when they shrunk down their classic Seventeen compressor to fit into the portable 500-series format. The Seventeen 500 delivers profound detail and nuance with a ’76-style compressor. It comes with features that weren’t available on the originals, including wet/dry mix control, a stereo-link option, and a frequency-adjustable sidechain high-pass filter.

The Seventeen 500 also features a new IC-based front-end circuit not found in classic ’76 compressors. It provides a clean, punchy, modern sound under light compression and a more colorful vintage character when pushed. That front-end, when coupled with Black Lion Audio’s custom-designed, made-in-Chicago output transformer, is why the Seventeen delivers a huge bottom end that balances out its open top end. The Seventeen 500 is capable of delivering a broader tonal palette than original ’76s.

The Seventeen 500 also features the proprietary Black Lion-style power decoupling for an incredibly low noise floor. It also uses high-grade Nichicon signal capacitors, widely considered some of the highest quality caps available, reducing the noise floor even further.

Other features and upgrades include: a frequency-adjustable sidechain; separate selectable high- and low-pass filters; and a wet/dry mix knob parallel compression straight out of the box. The Seventeen 500 also includes the all-important stereo link function.