Good cheap reverbs? Old rackmounts?

english_bob

So I find myself wanting to step up from the Behringer RV-600 that's currently providing me with my 'verbs. It sounds OK but I just don't trust the cheap, wobbly feeling of that thing for gigging. I'd like something that sounds good- great even- but I don't fancy paying Strymon money for it.

I'm aware of most of the current stuff from the likes of BOSS, Digitech, TC etc, but wondered if folks are aware of any older, under-the-radar stuff. Open to rackmount gear if it's as good or better than anything you can get in a pedal, which I suspect it may be if we're talking about older gear.

I need a fairly big, "old" sounding spring or plate 'verb sound for my lap steel because that's how they're supposed to sound, but the ability to do big, ambient verbs is also high on my list. It'll live in the effects loop of my Lionheart (modded to series), so would be good to know if there's  any chance it won't play nice.

What say you, Fretboarders?

@heartfeltdawn, I have a feeling you might know a thing or two about this sort of thing...

Danny1969

Yamaha rev 5 is nice and cheap when they come up

octatonic

Older lexicon units are worth checking out.

You can pick them up pretty cheap these days.

lasermonkey

The older Lexicon reverbs are gorgeous, even the cheapies such as the LXP-1, Alex and Reflex sound very nice indeed. There's a three-dimensional quality to their reverbs I just don't hear anywhere else, apart from maybe the Strymon stuff.

steamabacus

Yes, I'd second (third?) the recommendation for Lexicon. I have an MPX200 that I found lying in the street in an old rack flightcase (no kidding!) - lovely lush reverbs in that thing, in a different league to the Alesis units I'd been using before.

english_bob

steamabacus said:

Yes, I'd second (third?) the recommendation for Lexicon. I have an MPX200 that I found lying in the street in an old rack flightcase (no kidding!) - lovely lush reverbs in that thing, in a different league to the Alesis units I'd been using before.

Now why does crap like that never happen to me? I found a fiver once when I was eight or nine...

digitalscream

Why not just get a Zoom MS70CDR? Cheap, easy to find and they sound great.

Gassage

Boss RVV10 half rack....wonderful things, cheap as.

benmurray85

I vote in defence of keeping the Behringer. I gigged one if those for years. They get a bad rep but the sounds in the rv600 are Bob on. I'm proper heavy footed and mine stood up to a heavy gigging schedule

steamabacus

english_bob said:

steamabacus said:

Yes, I'd second (third?) the recommendation for Lexicon. I have an MPX200 that I found lying in the street in an old rack flightcase (no kidding!) - lovely lush reverbs in that thing, in a different league to the Alesis units I'd been using before.

Now why does crap like that never happen to me? I found a fiver once when I was eight or nine...

I considered it 'good karma'. The rack case was too big for my uses (it was one of the deep ones for amps, etc) but I have a mate who runs a sound system who I thought might be able to use it. Before lugging it all the way home I thought I'd better check all the butterfly catches, etc were functional (it had probably been chucked out for a reason). Not only did the catches work but there was a rack unit inside! Bound to be broken, though, wasn't it? When I got it home, everything worked perfectly.

Good karma for looking out for a mate, I reckon.

My mate stuck some CD decks in the case.

ChrisMusic

steamabacus said:

Yes, I'd second (third?) the recommendation for Lexicon. I have an MPX200 that I found lying in the street in an old rack flightcase (no kidding!) - lovely lush reverbs in that thing, in a different league to the Alesis units I'd been using before.

I had wondered what happened to that..

thanks for looking after it  

just kidding    :P

Heartfeltdawn

Me? A dispenser of information? Why, thank you sir!

Lexicon: stuff like the LXP racks are very nice but personally I think the s/h price on Ebay is a bit inflated for what they do. Ignore the MPX100 and the modern stuff and keep watching out for an MPX550 or MPX1. The MPX1 is quite complex until you get your head around it. Ebay prices are anything from £87 to £150. If this is too much then hit the Lexicon Reflex. More tweakable (from memory) than the Alex, loads of lovely reverbs, and a bit cheaper usually, although they do seem to have gone up in price a bit as they aren't as common as the Alex or MPX1/550. 

Yamaha: a mixed bag. If you're looking for natural reverb then I wouldn't pick Yamaha. Even on stuff like the SPX90 for the MBV fanboys like me, none of the reverbs are particularly realistic. They're great for big effectsy moments, perhaps why the early reflections/reverse gate shit works so well for MBV sounds, but big natural reverb units they aren't. The best bargain of the lot is the SPX50D which is a slightly more guitar orientated version of the SPX90. It goes for peanuts, as little as £45 shipped, has virtually all of the SPX90 algos and offers much fun for the money. Excellent chorus/modulation options. 

Roland: I'll separate this out from Boss. The SRV330 is a good reverb box. You'll find a lot of people online who prefer this to the MPX1. Quite hard to get hold of now compared to the SRV3030 which is noisier and doesn't sound anywhere near as good. 

Boss: Gassage mentioned the RRV10. They're cheap, they sound OK, the reverse offers up some weird sounds. Mr Gas will be able to tell you that Bonamassa likes them when they're essentially in between the RV2 and RV3 rather than being potent breeding grounds of hidden mojo... it's a fun unit for trashy reverbs.

TC Electronic: the most love them or hate them effects in the world. People who love them love them hard. People like me go meh instantly. The cheaper racks like the M-One XL and the M300 all stupidly hamstrung operationally. It's a TC trait. How they made the Nova system so stupid is beyond me (no piece of guitar gear has ever puzzled me like this. Give me old Boss GT units and racks instead). Stuff like the 4000 reverb rack are £300 to £500, you might get lucky with an M2000 at under £150 if bidding went your way. 

Alesis: Quadraverb. Everyone should own an original Quadraverb at some point. Yes it's noisy. Yes the bypass is not great. Yes it is coloured and imparts its own tone on your sound. 

It's awesome though. When I bought my first one, I plugged it straight into the power amps of a JC-120. Totally clean, no EQ, just me into a Diamond compressor, a Quadraverb, and a JC-120. Flicked through the settings, dialled in some presets and started playing Jeff Buckley. 'Grace' is a Quadraverb album. Forget Verve in the good days, Grace is the Quadraverb is excelsis. 

First Quadraverb, Midiverb II for me. MVII is the MBV reverb unit. 

I've seen a couple of chaps on other forums say they dumped their Midiverb in favour of the MS70CDR. I haven't used one of these, it's on the list to try out so this could be worth considering. 

Heartfeltdawn

Other options: Ensoniq rack units offer up good algos. Sometimes the Sony racks come up for absurd prices. Very high quality sound at often superb prices. 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SONY-R7-digital-reverb-DPS-R7-reverberator-/201307819831?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item2edee18f37&nma=true&si=xwvRJ3DBxtb8a7pfW8LHo%2BqwpSY%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

english_bob

digitalscream said:

Why not just get a Zoom MS70CDR? Cheap, easy to find and they sound great.

I'm not saying I won't. Just finding out what my options are.

ThePrettyDamned

There is a lexicon reflex on ebay I was going to buy until I accidentally bought a new jazzmaster bridge and some strat saddles...

Supposed to be nice sounding.

english_bob

Heartfeltdawn said:

Me? A dispenser of information? Why, thank you sir!

 

You're welcome @heartfeltdawn, and thanks for the information. I knew from previous posts that this was kind of your thing. Now I'm annoyed that I didn't grab the SPX50D in my local Crack Convertors a few months back.

Any opinion on Digitech's stuff? There seems to be a fair bit of Digitech rack gear on 'teeBay for small beer.

Re: the Quadraverb- if the bypass is poop, is it best to bang it in a TB loop? Any reason that wouldn't work?

Heartfeltdawn

No reason why the Quadraverb won't work in a bypass loop. For me it's similar to what people say about Space Echoes, that all the flaws and quirks are worth it for the sound. 

Digitech isn't bad gear. Something like the Studio Quad can be found for naff all cash. I know witht he RP floor units they didn't have the flexibility I wanted compared to Boss GT units. 

 

octatonic

Heartfeltdawn said:

Digitech isn't bad gear. Something like the Studio Quad can be found for naff all cash. I know witht he RP floor units they didn't have the flexibility I wanted compared to Boss GT units. 

The Studio Quad has one of the best software architectures of that generation of device.

It was extraordinarily flexible in terms of its routing.

You could combine multiple instances of the same effect in series or parallel, provided you had the system resources.

I don't think we saw anything quite so good again until the Axe FX (although Eventide does so very good routing as well).

The problem with the Studio Quad was the converters they used and some of the circuitry around that.

It didn't sound amazing in isolation- but it worked well in a mix.

english_bob

octatonic said:

The Studio Quad has one of the best software architectures of that generation of device.

It was extraordinarily flexible in terms of its routing.

You could combine multiple instances of the same effect in series or parallel, provided you had the system resources.

I don't think we saw anything quite so good again until the Axe FX (although Eventide does so very good routing as well).

The problem with the Studio Quad was the converters they used and some of the circuitry around that.

It didn't sound amazing in isolation- but it worked well in a mix.

I've been looking at the Studio Quad. I get the system resource limitations, but excluding that, does it allow you to put any four effects in any order? Being a numpty and all, I'm struggling to get my head around whether some of the parallel effects and stuff will actually make any difference in a mono live guitar rig, or whether I'd need to be running in stereo to make it worthwhile...

...and does it really mean octal pitch shift?

octatonic

english_bob said:

octatonic said:

The Studio Quad has one of the best software architectures of that generation of device.

It was extraordinarily flexible in terms of its routing.

You could combine multiple instances of the same effect in series or parallel, provided you had the system resources.

I don't think we saw anything quite so good again until the Axe FX (although Eventide does so very good routing as well).

The problem with the Studio Quad was the converters they used and some of the circuitry around that.

It didn't sound amazing in isolation- but it worked well in a mix.

I've been looking at the Studio Quad. I get the system resource limitations, but excluding that, does it allow you to put any four effects in any order? Being a numpty and all, I'm struggling to get my head around whether some of the parallel effects and stuff will actually make any difference in a mono live guitar rig, or whether I'd need to be running in stereo to make it worthwhile...

...and does it really mean octal pitch shift?

I'd need to refresh my memory by actually using one.

I haven't owned one for about 7 years.

I do remember being able to put 4 mono delays in series, and some in a mixture of series/parallel.

wayneirie

You can pick up spx900 for sensible money also consider yamaha Rev 5 and 7.