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.
My first ever piece of "outboard" (hehe) was an SPX50D - the REX50 is simply the rackmount SPX50D in tabletop guise.
ReplyDeleteAnd 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. :)
Don't forget the gate! This thing has the nastiest, most brutal gate of all time. Turn the parameters to the extreme, and enjoy!
ReplyDeleteMine got lost in moving somewhere....
There's one of these puppies at my local music store now for $75. I'm thinking of getting it
ReplyDeleteI have two, the "Symphonic" doubling chorus is great on vox, if somewhat lo-fi. These are great toys for drum effects as well.
ReplyDeleteYou didn't even mention the 99 second reverb!
ReplyDeletehad two, threw em both
ReplyDeleteJUNK
this proves people will call just about any old shit 'classic'
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.
ReplyDeleteThe 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~
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...
ReplyDelete