My New Thing: Yamaha REX50

My New Thing is a new regular MT feature. If you've bought something interesting and cheap, write in with a pic and some sound samples and a story. I'll start...
What is it:This REX50 was an eBay impulse buy for £21.01. It's a cut down version of the Yamaha SPX90, the first ever digital multi-effects box, which was utterly ubiquitous in the late '80s, and still fetches up to £180 on eBay.
Good Bits:It's got a fantastic cruddy-sounding pitch-shifter with delay, feedback, and tuning via MIDI, so you can play drum loops like this [600k MP3]. There are two types of gated reverb (it was the '80s) and a reverse one. Plus, I'd never been able to get that high-gloss tacky chorused guitar sound like the second bit of this [200k MP3] before.
Bad Bits:It has absolutely the worst interface. Eight buttons and only one knob (an input gain on the back). It takes 15 seconds to scroll from 0ms to 400ms delay.
Should I buy one? You can't go wrong for £21, but some knobs would be nice.

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

My first ever piece of "outboard" (hehe) was an SPX50D - the REX50 is simply the rackmount SPX50D in tabletop guise.

And actually the 12-bit reverbs are still usable for a certain sound, and the subtle pitch doubling is surprisingly nice (-8 cents on the left, +8 cents on the right).

The delays are ok, and everything else is awful though, though that can sometimes be nice. :)

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:55 am

Don't forget the gate! This thing has the nastiest, most brutal gate of all time. Turn the parameters to the extreme, and enjoy!

Mine got lost in moving somewhere....

# posted by

Anonymous : 6:29 am

There's one of these puppies at my local music store now for $75. I'm thinking of getting it

# posted by

Anonymous : 1:45 am

I have two, the "Symphonic" doubling chorus is great on vox, if somewhat lo-fi. These are great toys for drum effects as well.

# posted by

Anonymous : 6:00 pm

You didn't even mention the 99 second reverb!

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:38 pm

had two, threw em both

JUNK

this proves people will call just about any old shit 'classic'

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:41 pm

These were really neat in their day. SURE they sounded bad - Almost EVERYTHING digital at that era sounded bad (well...almost almost). I loved this box because it was SO damn cheap and was actually a MULTI effects processor...the first I could afford.

The guitarist from the Meat Puppets used these quite a lot in the late 80's. Several of the 4 track recordings I made of them live during that era have THICK layers of phasing and flanging from the REX50.

V~

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:51 pm

i still have mine, not that i use it a lot.i like a dry sound but some of my presets were interesting, such as the acid flashback...

# posted by

Anonymous : 8:42 am