Warm Audio WA-2A

I bought this out of curiosity and because I needed a slower compressor for a project. I used it for the first time three months after it arrived, because I never had problems with gear bought from Thomann (I’m never doing this again). Long story short, when I did plugged it in, I experienced sound dropouts every now and then, especially when the unit warmed up. Since my project was moving forward I had no time to send it back to Thomann for replacement so I went to a gear tech. He opened up the compressor and found missing solder on a few condensers on one of the tubes input (the parts were never soldered to the pcb) He fixed it, I finished my project and I sold it. Meanwhile I wrote to Warm Audio support and their response was this: “ Thanks for the photo. I will definitely use this for training purposes.” So I don’t recommend this product even if it was just bad luck or the Friday 4 P.M. unit. The way they handled QC and support made me never buy a warm product again.

Now, with all that out of the way, the sound of the unit itself is not bad, but don’t expect an LA-2A. Actually, the opto cell seems to react a lot slower then the original (the release is slower) and it seems to have less headroom. If you gain stage correctly, noise is not an issue. Other thing I dislike about it is the thin front plate - thinner then every rack piece I own.