The VC2 comprises a Microphone amplifier, a Compressor, an Enhancer, and an Output stage with gain make-up.
It is not only the paintwork which makes the appearance endearing. There is a lovely big old-fashioned looking VU meter with a particularly attractive metallic strip on its scale. The knobs are black, and look like they came free on the cover of Electronics Today. There are handles for pulling it out of the rack. And all the pushbuttons are bright red. On the back there are XLRs for Mic and Line Input, and Output and -40dB Output for connection to an external Mic amp (though I have no idea why you would want to do this!) There are jack sockets for an Insert point, a mix input and TRS balanced output. There is also a mysterious shiny gold-plated unlabelled phono socket. No don't be daft - it's not a digital output! It is for stereo linking two units together. The manual waffles away about 1960's and 1970's technology, and boasts about such features as an unusually high overload margin. Reading it, you feel more and more like Ted has revived some long lost ancient British craft, and you can almost imagine him hand-building these in some chaotic workshop full of ancient test equipment and components.