Vintage Neve
Vintage Neves come in lots of variety, but the overall vibe is a hushed high end, a smooth long ringing midrange and a wide, slow-moving wall of vague but warm low end. Works wonderfully for smoothing out harsh and thin sounds. It does not get any warmer than vintage Neve.
Modern Neve
Modern Neve, like the 88 has the signature slow-moving low end of Neve but with a much more open, unfiltered high frequency response. Great for slow and mid-tempo HD modern sounding productions, but still very warm and smooth.
API
Tight and bright, with a smooth but not very dynamic low end response. The signature Jensen transformers compress the low end and the high end in a very musical and clear way. Clarity is a characteristic of API. A wonderful console for pop, rock and film.
SSL E
Expensive, classey British crunch with excellent low-frequency dynamics. The SSL E console is bright, with a pleasant mid-range crunch, and a full, dynamic low end. A goto console for dance and electronic music with a very radio-friendly sound.
Harrison
Extremely smooth and clear. No crunch at all, no long ringing harmonics. Tight and smooth, and very, very warm due to its hushed almost LPF high frequency character. Dynamically it sort falls in between API (very tight) and Neve (very loose)
Trident
Sort of a specialty item for me. Noisy, bright and on the thin side - i like this console for vocals and acoustic guitars, indy rock, and retro projects.