Legendary Baxandall Tone Shaping in a Single-Slot 500-Series EQ
The Most Musical 500-Series EQ
The Dangerous Music BAX500 brings the legendary, ultra-musical Baxandall curves to a single-slot 500-series module. Broad shelves shape several octaves at once, so each small move delivers a big result: open top, solid bottom, and a polished, expensive sense of dimension that helps your mix feel finished—not EQ’d.
Built for tracking, mixing, and mastering, BAX500 delivers the classic Dangerous BAX tone-shaping workflow in a compact format, with High and Low shelves plus High Cut and Low Cut filters to control the frequency extremes that steal headroom and cloud translation. Use one for single sources or run a pair for stereo buses when you need that audiophilia BAX high-fidelity sweetening on your mix.
What Makes the BAX500 EQ so Special?
Dangerous Music didn’t bring BAX to the 500-series until it could be done with zero compromise. BAX500 follows the same core design principles as the rackmount BAX EQ, using identical exacting components selected for both performance and sound, and tested to draconian tolerances to ensure consistency, reliability, and long-term stability.
The Broad BAX500 shelves shape several octaves at once, allowing small adjustments to unlock depth, sheen, and weight without pinching the sound or introducing phase incoherence or harshness. Where narrow, surgical EQs excel at solving problems, BAX500 is designed to make musical decisions—revealing what’s already there rather than imposing a new character.
High Cut and Low Cut filters with smooth, natural slopes remove infrasonic rumble and ultrasonic interference that quietly eat headroom, smear transients, and reduce clarity. By cleaning up the extremes before further processing, BAX500 helps mixes translate more easily while preserving openness and punch.
The signal path is DC-coupled up to the Low Cut filter and features a relay-controlled hard-wired bypass that physically removes the circuit from the signal path for true A/B comparisons. The steel enclosure is fully shielded to protect against unwanted electromagnetic interference, and the laser-etched, paint-filled faceplate is designed to remain legible and durable over decades of use.
Each BAX500 is hand assembled in the USA using Mogami point-to-point wiring, delivering exceptionally low failure rates and the kind of build quality expected from Dangerous Music hardware.
Why Cut?
Infrasonic rumble and ultrasonic interference don’t just live at the edges of your audio—they quietly devour headroom, blur transients, and force converters and compressors to work harder than they should.
Clear the extremes and you’ll feel it immediately: tighter lows, cleaner mids, more stable imaging, and mixes that translate with less effort. Combine the cuts with the shelves for instantly musical sculpting—clean, controlled, and never clinical.
FEATURES
Reimagines the common Baxandall circuit with the purity of design from one of the last great analog designers. It broadly unlocks the depth, sheen, and gravitas to help you stop mixing and finish it.
Broad shelving shapes several octaves at once, so each small move delivers a big result with open top, solid bottom, and a polished, expensive sense of dimension.
High Cut and Low Cut filters help remove infrasonic rumble and ultrasonic interference that quietly eat headroom, smear transients, and cloud translation.
Wide-band shelving behavior shapes broad ranges smoothly and naturally, minimizing phase incoherence and harshness that can appear with narrow, surgical EQ moves.
Musical 12 dB-per-octave filter slopes deliver smooth, natural results that sound clean and artifact-free while controlling frequency extremes.
Gentle ±5 dB gain range encourages musical decisions instead of destructive moves, with small boosts or cuts often delivering surprisingly large results.
Relay-controlled hard-wired bypass completely removes the filters or entire circuit from the signal path for true A/B comparisons with no buffering or coloration.
Mastering-grade components are selected for both performance and sound, delivering stunning imaging, headroom, punch, and detail.
DC-coupled signal path avoids transformers and electrolytic capacitors, preserving transparency, low-end clarity, and phase accuracy.
Built the Dangerous Way
Custom components selected for both performance and sound are tested to draconian tolerances to deliver stunning imaging, headroom, punch, and detail. The signal path is DC-coupled up to the Low Cut filter, with relay-controlled hard-wired bypass for true A/B comparisons.
Hand assembled in the USA, BAX500 avoids unnecessary complexity, unnecessary coloration, and unnecessary compromise.
Audio Integrity: Non-Negotiable
From Chris Muth’s 20+ years of custom black-box design wizardry for facilities like Hit Factory, Masterdisk, and Sterling Sound, to golden-eared validation by world-class engineers, Dangerous Music builds tools that resurrect dynamic range, punch, intelligibility, and emotion.
BAX500 carries that legacy into the 500-series—without compromise.
Applications
The ultimate velvet vocal tracking and mixing EQ
Cut guitars, bass, kick, synths and instrumentation through it
Mix bus and stem polishing and sweetening (in pairs)
Mastering EQ (in pairs)
Clean up infrasonic rumble before it hits compression or your DAW
Reduce ultrasonic noise during tracking and mixing
Add air, sheen, and weight without harshness or glare
SPECS
Format:
500-series module (single-slot)
EQ Type:
Baxandall high and low shelving EQ
Shelving Gain Range:
±5 dB
Shelving Behavior:
Broad bandwidth shelves shaping several octaves
Filters:
High Cut and Low Cut frequency filters
Filter Slope:
12 dB per octave
Bypass:
Relay-controlled hard-wired bypass (filters and full circuit)
Signal Path:
DC-coupled up to the Low Cut filter
Components:
Mastering-grade custom components
Assembly:
Hand assembled in the USA
WARRANTY
Free 2 year extended warranty with online registration.
Standard Warranty:
90 days parts and labor, subject to inspection. Does not include damage incurred through abusive operation or modifications/attempted repair by unauthorized technicians.
Mix Different.
Transparent. Musical. Sophisticated.