If you're compressing by about 3dB, use a really really gentle high shelf to boost by about 3dB. The amount of HF boost increases as gain reduction increases, which seems to help the compression to sound more transparent on transients it also helps a lot on a vocal track. It has an interesting gain-reduction-dependent HF boost from about 6kHz upwards. If you're going down the route of simulating the LA-2A with another compressor, something that may help is simulating what it does to high frequencies. I don't want to spark a big row here, as sound is always what you make it). I'm begining to wonder if some 'vintage' plugins *way* overdo the added harmonic profile of some of these devices to sound initially 'vintage' and 'analog' but just end up adding some more problems of their own. So for me, I now prefer it over the UAD version, but if the hardware la2 is available and properly working (!!) then that just about rules. Major Tom doesn't do that smearing - your signal is nice and clean, but with the compression behaviour very much like the LA2. I find the UAD plugin is way 'warmer' than any hardware LA2 i've used, smearing the mid-band quite a bit as a result, which when i put up against the actual device on a project i was recording last year, I just didnt get. Personally, I find UAD's LA2 to be actually not very accurate in this respect.
![vst cla 2a vst cla 2a](https://img.wavescdn.com/1lib/images/products/plugins/preview/cla-vocals.png)
This way, it sounds like the hardware LA2 without some of the 'cream' if you know what i mean. The Major Tom makes a wonderful vocal compressor.