Sound on Sound has a feature called Mix Rescue, where the SOS editors go to someone's house, fix their mix, then write about what the problems were and how they were solved. There's a story Paul White tells that apparently has happened more than once.
 
When Paul walks in, his host usually offers to go get tea or whatever. The first thing Paul does is bypass all the plug-ins so he can hear what's happening with the source tracks. Once he did that when his host was in the kitchen. When the host came back from the kitchen and heard the song, the first thing he said was "Wow, that sounds fantastic!! What did you do?!?"

Yup...I've had my share of that as well. Stuff so over produced you can barely tell the singin from the playin. And don't get me started on eleventy jillion track counts. That ol computer has caused as many or more problems as it's solved.

Starise
Thanks for the pointers. I need enough data to make an educated choice but too much data might just push me into medication territory :) But the question is....can a person own too many EQ's???

I don't think there's a reason to own more than one general-purpose "clean" EQ of the type epitomized by Pro-Q.  It's good to have a go-to for fixing problems, general filtering, and precision surgical work. 
 
OTOH, it's not a bad idea to have a selection of "character" EQs that are well-suited for shaping the sound of various tracks you work on.  Some plugins sound especially good on guitars, some are great on drums, some on buses and full mixes, etc.  These are usually modeled on vintage gear like Pultec, Neve, SSL, API, and the like.  I think the newer T-Racks EQs are great examples of these, and with the current group buy (is it still on?), they're a great value.  Other vendors like UAD, Slate, Softube, and Waves make good ones, too.  Happy demoing!
 
Cheers,
Eddie
 

Word.

Years ago (late 90's) a friend used to make downbeat breakbeat tunes, he was pretty good at finding little loops from his record collection. He had the same spirit folio mixer as me. He played me a mix, and I looked at his gain structure and asked If I could have a go at setting up the mix. He left me to it, when he came back he exclaimed 'what did you do' and I couldn't tell if he meant in a good way or not. I asked him how he meant 'where did the noise go?' he asked. He didn't appreciate the effect of setting his gains accumilating ofer 12 tracks so much. He was chuffed to bits to find out his equipment was much better than he'd realised.

 
 

Eddie TX

Starise
Thanks for the pointers. I need enough data to make an educated choice but too much data might just push me into medication territory :) But the question is....can a person own too many EQ's???

I don't think there's a reason to own more than one general-purpose "clean" EQ of the type epitomized by Pro-Q.  It's good to have a go-to for fixing problems, general filtering, and precision surgical work. 
 
OTOH, it's not a bad idea to have a selection of "character" EQs that are well-suited for shaping the sound of various tracks you work on.  Some plugins sound especially good on guitars, some are great on drums, some on buses and full mixes, etc.  These are usually modeled on vintage gear like Pultec, Neve, SSL, API, and the like.  I think the newer T-Racks EQs are great examples of these, and with the current group buy (is it still on?), they're a great value.  Other vendors like UAD, Slate, Softube, and Waves make good ones, too.  Happy demoing!
 
Cheers,
Eddie
 

Absolutely!
 
Dan
 
 

Anderton
I think the emotional impact of any given track is 85% the person playing it, 10% the sound of the instrument itself, and 5% the processing. That's not at all to diminish the importance of that 5%, but I'm just trying to put things in perspective. 

Well said, Craig. The ratios may shift around (I know I've had more than a few barely-salvageable tracks where the processing component was the 85%) but as a general rule, the performance usually trumps everything. But until Celine Dion answers my emails, most of the vocal tracks I deal with will continue to require all the spit 'n polish I can throw at them.
 
I'd also point out that whenever a "sow's ear" has required a makeover, it's never been the choice of equalizer that made the difference. No, that's all about which compressor you use! 
 
(No, ol' pal, I am not a hypocrite...note the winky face)

fwiw, i think the emotional impact has more weight in more "traditional" (fwoabw) style songs, but in modern pop (diplo, avicii, etc) the processing is more important/has more weight

and oh yeah, i use dmg equality for precision eq

FWIW,
i'm very fond of Waves Linear Phase EQ