Re: Micro-reviews of Gear You Just Bought
1021I bought a boss GE-7. Pretty cool! Boost those mids, yo.
Re: Micro-reviews of Gear You Just Bought
1022LBx wrote: Sat May 17, 2025 11:44 am Big city Canada find for real:
Rebadged Squier Jazzmaster with Fender USA hardware swapped in, bridge is a Classic Player TOM I think, is super fucking comfortable with a flatter radius than I'm used too and sanded down neck. Pickups (assumed stock) are shockingly decent. Cheap heat for the win...
Might have to re-radius my 90s CIJ now.
The narrower string spacing and flatter neck on this cheapie Squier is kind of mind blowing. 100% re-radiusing the other. TOM is pretty buzz-y so new bridges for both...
Re: Micro-reviews of Gear You Just Bought
1023Grabbed a very cheap Garnet Revolution I off of marketplace this afternoon. $250CAD, which is about half what they usually list for. The reverb isn’t working, hence the steep discount - hopefully just a driver tube or something similar.
Sounds quite good! This is a later version of the Rev1 so it’s a ~40w 2x6L6 amp with a master volume rather than the more common 6V6 ish amp. It took me a minute to realise that it has a pull switch on the MV which I think must turn on a cathode bypass cap or something like that. Gets louder and gainier with it engaged.
Sounds quite good! This is a later version of the Rev1 so it’s a ~40w 2x6L6 amp with a master volume rather than the more common 6V6 ish amp. It took me a minute to realise that it has a pull switch on the MV which I think must turn on a cathode bypass cap or something like that. Gets louder and gainier with it engaged.
Re: Micro-reviews of Gear You Just Bought
1024Cheaper and better resale to swap the neck out, unless there's some killer feature like matching headstock.LBx wrote: Mon May 26, 2025 6:29 pm100% re-radiusing the other. TOM is pretty buzz-y so new bridges for both...
You should also investigate a little loctite or even clear nail varnish on the bridges, a classic JM hack.
Re: Micro-reviews of Gear You Just Bought
1025niiiice - The revs are greatmdc wrote: Thu May 29, 2025 5:50 pm Grabbed a very cheap Garnet Revolution I off of marketplace this afternoon. $250CAD, which is about half what they usually list for. The reverb isn’t working, hence the steep discount - hopefully just a driver tube or something similar.
Sounds quite good! This is a later version of the Rev1 so it’s a ~40w 2x6L6 amp with a master volume rather than the more common 6V6 ish amp. It took me a minute to realise that it has a pull switch on the MV which I think must turn on a cathode bypass cap or something like that. Gets louder and gainier with it engaged.
Re: Micro-reviews of Gear You Just Bought
1026Ya I spoke with a lutherie the other day and he dropped a much higher number than I was expecting for the job and offered the same idea. Thinking a MIM Classic Player neck my be the way to go or maybe an Allparts thing without breaking the bank...matttkkkk wrote: Thu May 29, 2025 7:48 pmCheaper and better resale to swap the neck out, unless there's some killer feature like matching headstock.LBx wrote: Mon May 26, 2025 6:29 pm100% re-radiusing the other. TOM is pretty buzz-y so new bridges for both...
You should also investigate a little loctite or even clear nail varnish on the bridges, a classic JM hack.
Re: Micro-reviews of Gear You Just Bought
1027The Spectra C610- I’m not that familiar with their history, which seems pretty vast, but Spectrasonic gear had some part in early ZZ Top lead guitar sounds and was the desk used on at least one Big Star record. I was always kind of interested after first hearing about them in an interview with the drummer for Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Timothy Herzog, who is also some kind of Bill Dilley studio gear tech specialist not associated with the revived company, and there’s a good interview with him on the Truth About Recording podcast if you’re interested, and it starts with nerdy stuff about impedence.
I gambled on the C610 as it was listed new for cheaper than any had ever sold online. I’m not sure how close it is or isn’t to an original 610, but I’m not that interested because I will never own one or have a chance to use it. Thankfully the C610 isn’t all hyped up on certain pro audio forums but I was getting the impression some people complained about them because isn’t sufficiently Tchad Blake-y enough, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, though I was not interested in a $1000 color box. Of course there aren’t a whole ton of threads about the C610, so you start to see the same names talking about them over the years, and it turns out that a lot of the people writing about them have never actually touched one, just got rubbed the wrong way by a youtube video or something somebody said. Lucky for me, everyone on the internet is an asshole because this thing is great.
I once saw them compared them to an 1176 purely because it has input gain, but I think the similarities end there as this thing is much different from the Audioscape version I have. The C610 starts compressing at -40, which is mic level, so you can run a mic, guitar, synth, or line level track straight through it. It also has a preamp with a lot of range, so you can also use it as a mic amp, though you would have to use external phantom power. I haven’t had it for very long, so I was still using DI and reamp boxes when not sending it instrument level tracks because I wasn’t sure how the impedance shook out, and I haven’t had a lot of time to test.
It has peak limiting and compression modes - with output gain at 0, you feed your source to the input w/ ratio and release at 0 and slowly bring up the input level until the peak limit light starts blinking without the GR needle moving - I’ve been putting that on everything and it works wonderfully. The sound seems to change though its not compression as I’m used to hearing it. It just kind of levels off the peaks so that you can crank the tracks more. I guess it makes the dynamic range more musical, is the best way to describe it? It’s not a loudness wars type of effect at all - I understand that recording to tape has a similar effect, and I’d certainly run everything through this box if I could, if only to see what happens. Apparently the C610 is so fast that the 100 nanosecond attack speeds are capable of going in between samples but all that is over my head. You can crank processed tracks louder since headroom is being increased though. .
From there you can add compression to the limiting or compression only by changing the ratio and release until the peak light is always on and the GR needle is moving. It might sound a little more complicated than it is, but there isn’t a limit/compress switch. It sounds pretty great and can get into what I imagine is Omnipressor territory - reverse sounds, room sounds obliterating the attack, all sorts of stuff. It’s kind of hilarious to me that people are describing this version as being “boring” - I even saw one guy compare this unit to a RNC, which is hilarious. I wish. It’s got input and output transformers, but its a vintage styled item that isn’t supposed to be a plugin style color box. So no relic option. But the regular compression does sound good and not like a fuzz box, though there is the potential there.
The crazy effects are fun, but it’s basically outside of its intended use and I think Spectra is trying to play that aspect down. You can use the 3 position pad and juggle hot signals for minimal compression or peak limiting or whatever you want, and it always sounds good once you get used to using it unless you’re just messing around, which is easy to do on a deep box with sort of minimal controls. It does sort of feel like some kind of scientific instrument, and its capable of broadcast levels of output, so much that they also recommended using a inline pad after the compressor to push the amp into peak clipping for additional limiting in the manual. It’s also very light and isn’t supposed to consume that much power, which is says something about its efficient design.
It’s worked great on guitars, bass, and percussion, but I haven’t tried it on vocals yet, though I plan to. I also haven’t recorded with it as a mic preamp, but it’s intended to work cleanly on that end, which the input gain adding character as its increased.
Anyways, I’m sold on this stuff, so much that I’m going to get rid of a bunch of stuff I like and use in order to offset the purchase. Depending on how I like it as a mic pre I see my use of it being mostly as a badass front end with a lot of utility for further processing down the line. My dream has to run hardware sorta console style with essentially the same type of preamp used for everything, so I hope I can manage something like that with this.
I gambled on the C610 as it was listed new for cheaper than any had ever sold online. I’m not sure how close it is or isn’t to an original 610, but I’m not that interested because I will never own one or have a chance to use it. Thankfully the C610 isn’t all hyped up on certain pro audio forums but I was getting the impression some people complained about them because isn’t sufficiently Tchad Blake-y enough, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, though I was not interested in a $1000 color box. Of course there aren’t a whole ton of threads about the C610, so you start to see the same names talking about them over the years, and it turns out that a lot of the people writing about them have never actually touched one, just got rubbed the wrong way by a youtube video or something somebody said. Lucky for me, everyone on the internet is an asshole because this thing is great.
I once saw them compared them to an 1176 purely because it has input gain, but I think the similarities end there as this thing is much different from the Audioscape version I have. The C610 starts compressing at -40, which is mic level, so you can run a mic, guitar, synth, or line level track straight through it. It also has a preamp with a lot of range, so you can also use it as a mic amp, though you would have to use external phantom power. I haven’t had it for very long, so I was still using DI and reamp boxes when not sending it instrument level tracks because I wasn’t sure how the impedance shook out, and I haven’t had a lot of time to test.
It has peak limiting and compression modes - with output gain at 0, you feed your source to the input w/ ratio and release at 0 and slowly bring up the input level until the peak limit light starts blinking without the GR needle moving - I’ve been putting that on everything and it works wonderfully. The sound seems to change though its not compression as I’m used to hearing it. It just kind of levels off the peaks so that you can crank the tracks more. I guess it makes the dynamic range more musical, is the best way to describe it? It’s not a loudness wars type of effect at all - I understand that recording to tape has a similar effect, and I’d certainly run everything through this box if I could, if only to see what happens. Apparently the C610 is so fast that the 100 nanosecond attack speeds are capable of going in between samples but all that is over my head. You can crank processed tracks louder since headroom is being increased though. .
From there you can add compression to the limiting or compression only by changing the ratio and release until the peak light is always on and the GR needle is moving. It might sound a little more complicated than it is, but there isn’t a limit/compress switch. It sounds pretty great and can get into what I imagine is Omnipressor territory - reverse sounds, room sounds obliterating the attack, all sorts of stuff. It’s kind of hilarious to me that people are describing this version as being “boring” - I even saw one guy compare this unit to a RNC, which is hilarious. I wish. It’s got input and output transformers, but its a vintage styled item that isn’t supposed to be a plugin style color box. So no relic option. But the regular compression does sound good and not like a fuzz box, though there is the potential there.
The crazy effects are fun, but it’s basically outside of its intended use and I think Spectra is trying to play that aspect down. You can use the 3 position pad and juggle hot signals for minimal compression or peak limiting or whatever you want, and it always sounds good once you get used to using it unless you’re just messing around, which is easy to do on a deep box with sort of minimal controls. It does sort of feel like some kind of scientific instrument, and its capable of broadcast levels of output, so much that they also recommended using a inline pad after the compressor to push the amp into peak clipping for additional limiting in the manual. It’s also very light and isn’t supposed to consume that much power, which is says something about its efficient design.
It’s worked great on guitars, bass, and percussion, but I haven’t tried it on vocals yet, though I plan to. I also haven’t recorded with it as a mic preamp, but it’s intended to work cleanly on that end, which the input gain adding character as its increased.
Anyways, I’m sold on this stuff, so much that I’m going to get rid of a bunch of stuff I like and use in order to offset the purchase. Depending on how I like it as a mic pre I see my use of it being mostly as a badass front end with a lot of utility for further processing down the line. My dream has to run hardware sorta console style with essentially the same type of preamp used for everything, so I hope I can manage something like that with this.