Best EQ VST Plugin Emulations (Inc. a Free EQ VST)

Best EQ VST Plugin Emulations (Including a Free EQ VST)

Are you looking for EQ VST plugins that get a little bit more old-school than today’s all-singing all-dancing best EQ VSTs? If analogue is what you need, we’ve got five recommendations that’ll get you that dusty vibe when you’re cutting your frequencies.

Modern EQ VSTs today boast features like dynamic EQ, frequency matching and visual spectrograms, but old units get you the classic tones of the world’s finest and most legendary recordings. Here we’ve got a choice of Neve, Chandler and Pultec EQ VST plugins, among many others.

We’ve also got one entry for no money, so you can bag a free EQ VST plugin – and not just any: it’s possibly the best EQ VST for free.

5. PSP Audioware PSP NobleQ

If you’re looking for a Pultec EQ VST, PSP have got you covered, and then some, with this one. The original Pultec unit was a valve-based passive EQ with separate boost and cut circuits, which meant you could pull off some crazy complementary scoops by cutting and boosting the same regions at the same time – also known as the Pultec Low End Trick.

NobleQ goes above and beyond a simple emulation, giving you 13 frequency settings for the low and high bands, cut for the high bell filter, and PSP have also made the valve emulation optional. This is a thoroughly modern Pultec with new-school features and an old-school character.

4. Softube Chandler Curve Bender

In your hunt for hardware-emulating EQ VSTs, you might have forgotten to check out mastering-focused options. The original Chandler Curve Bender hardware has some of the most revered circuits in any studio anywhere, and it’s brought to you here in plugin form by the kings of effects modelling, Softube.

So what do you get? Each side has eight main bands – that’s Bass, Treble two bells plus low and high shelves and low and high cut filters. You can emphasise the Q for each of the four bells, and there’s input and output gain in there as well.

Mid/side processing and stereo linking have been added by Softube to bring the Chandler a little more up-to-date with today’s mastering practices.

3. Kuassa EVE-AT Bundle

This collection of two EQ VSTs – EVE-AT-1 and EVE AT-4 – model the Neve 1081 and 1084 hardware EQs, giving you a no-nonsense take on their classic sounds.

On the AT-1 you get low and high shelves and two bell bands, plus high-cut and low-cut filters. The AT-4 takes away one of those mid bell bands, but the difference in tonal quality and the filtering, which uses a unique circuit to get things done. That AT-1, meanwhile, is a more flexible, workhorse EQ to use.

2. Ignite Amps PTEq-X

This EQ plugin isn’t available on Plugin Boutique, but it is free. Modelling both the main Pultec EQP-1A circuit, and a couple of other Pultec EQs: the HLF:3C high/low filter combo and the MEQ-5 midrange unit – all in a free EQ VST.

When it comes to the main Pultec unit, PTEq-X adds new frequency selections to both low and high setups, and has the sound down almost perfectly.

So if you’re looking for the best EQ VST freebie, and you’re after a classic analogue tone, this one’s got to be one of your first ports of call.

1. Tone Empire Black Q

If you’re on the hunt for the best EQ VST, let us introduce you to BlackQ. When Tone Empire rebuilt an old vintage EQ unit, they ended up creating a whole new beast. With choice transformers, valves and other circuits, the result was so good, they had to bring it into the software as an EQ VST plugin.

BlackQ captures the sound of that custom EQunit, with three main bands each housing frequency, gain and Q controls, plus a silky-smooth air band and a low-cut filter. There’s also a Drive circuit with two types of saturation, which can be added into the signal path both pre or post EQ.

For something a little special – but still very analogue, you’ve got to check out the demo of this precision tube EQ.