Fairchild Tube Limiter Collection Black Friday Deal 2026: $79, 46% off

Fairchild Tube Limiter Collection Black Friday pricing is 46% off, $79, until Nov 30, 2026, on Universal Audio's plugin version of the Fairchild 660 and 670 tube limiters.

The collection is a set of limiter plugins for vocals, drums and full mixes. Universal Audio says it adds the same analog "glow" heard on records by The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Motown artists.

What is the Fairchild Tube Limiter Collection?

The originals are 20-tube, 14-transformer, 67-pound studio units. Universal Audio says the first Fairchild limiter was built by Rein Narma on Les Paul's kitchen table.

Two hardware designs are covered. The 670 is a full stereo compressor, and the maker says it can add color to tracks or put a final touch on a mix. The 660 is a stereo/mono version of the original mono unit, which the maker describes as aggressive on piano, bass and guitar.

The maker says top mixers sometimes use a 670 just for the glow it adds, even with no compression happening.

How is it modeled?

Universal Audio first released a Fairchild 670 Legacy plugin in 2004. For this collection, its DSP team reworked the time constants and gain reduction curves.

The maker says the complete tube amplifier and transformer sections are modeled for the first time. It also says the circuit models are based on the "golden-reference" units at Ocean Way Studios.

What controls does it add?

Beyond the vintage behavior, the plugins carry three controls for modern workflows:

• Wet/Dry Mix: a parallel control that blends your unprocessed signal with the compressed one, usable on a drum bus or mix bus.
• Sidechain Filter: lets you punch up a drum bus without the kick triggering the compressor's threshold.
• Headroom (HR): raise it to lift the gain reduction threshold and lower distortion, or lower it for more distortion and grit on vocals, drums, guitar and bass.

The maker positions the collection as the third piece of a compression "Triple Crown" with its LA-2A (electro-optical) and 1176 (FET-based) plugins.

Formats and requirements

Both versions come with your purchase:

• UAD Native: runs on a Mac or PC with no UA hardware, on any audio interface.
• Apollo Realtime and UAD-2: runs accelerated on Apollo interfaces and UAD-2 hardware.

If you track through Apollo hardware, the Realtime version lets you print the tube limiter on the way in. Everyone else can insert the Native version on a track or bus in the box.