Cat's Cradle...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
The H8000 comes with a little utility to route all the inputs and outputs, and that image above is a screenshot of what I ended up with last night. The rub: I’m able to use the H8000FW as the Hub of my Digital Lifestyle. I will say that I can’t squeeze quite as low a latency out of it as I can from the Lynx AES16, but that’s to be expected, as FW isn’t (in real life, at least) as fast as the PCI buss.
Still, a 21ms round trip is fine, and not noticeable, really. I got it to 10ms on the Lynx, and that isn’t noticeable at all, and truthfully is well within the general noise of the universe. But I have to make a 11ms sacrifice in order to switch to the supremely convenient method I have going on now.
All that aside, another interesting thing happened yesterday. I’ve wanted a Lexicon 300 since they originally came up with the damn thing. I’ve used them in the Studio many times, and had somehow managed to convince myself that having one at home would Increase my Productivity and make my shit Better.
I went over to Tidepool yesterday to get an AES DSUB cable to hook my Mytek convertor to the H8000, and come to find out he had a Lexi 300 going for a reasonable price. I fawned over it, and he talked me in to taking it home to try out. (Truthfully, he didn’t have to talk too hard.)
So, after getting it home, getting the above-mentioned routing nightmare behind me, and getting it in my rig, I settled down to a couple hours of comparison. Let me just say this: either the H8000FW wipes the floor with the Lexi 300 vis-a-vis reverbs, or the 300 doesn’t sound as good as I remember it sounding. Well, the former is true either way, I guess.
Now, having said that, I would still very much like to have the 300. There’s a certain grainy character to it that works really well for synth pads and vocals and other mid-rangy stuff, but it would be supremely irresponsible of me, financially speaking, to keep it. I already used my gear budget (’til, like, 2011) on this H8000FW, so I have to control the monkey on my back and take this fucker back to TidePool.
This, in a meandering fashion, brings us to our subject for today. What’s the One That Got Away for you? Have you ever had a piece of gear in your possession that you dearly wanted to keep, but had to give back for personal or financial reasons?
10 comments
I sold my Kyma Capybara 320 to fund building my architectural glass fusing kiln. Until now, I had not been able to justify the cost of getting a new piece of hardware from '95 to replace it. I hope to replace it with the new Pacarana sometime soon.
My biggest regret is not picking up that pair of Korg MS-20's I saw in a music shop back in the day for $600 each; I'm still kicking myself, although I probably couldn't really afford them at the time anyway. I also regretted passing on a used lemur a while back, but that's turned out ok since they've dropped the prices to little more than what it was going for.
Hey CR-- im curious of 2 things:
1.) Is the eclipse really one (stereo) 8th of the 8000? all the algo's etc?
2.) You said earlier you print effects, i wonder how you are going to practically use this in your setup?
for me, ive always had a KDFX in my Kurzweil which is an 8 channel effects unit. it has/d a crap interface and it rearranges the synth outputs (WTF!?) and so it always frustrated me, thus i didnt use it and relied on external hardware. i just dont know if i would use it as a 4 stereo channel device that much?
1. No, it's not. The Eclipse is kind of its own thing. Eclipse is to 7500 as H3000 is to the DSP4500, essentially. It's not as programmable, and you can't make your own algorithms, and it only has stereo in and out. That said, it's generally the same net effect divided by 4, because really, how much effecting can you do to any individual signal?
Wait, don't answer that.
2. The same way.
-CR
Let's see, there was the 6+ cabinet Roland System 700 I could have had for a trade with a jv2080, but arranged the whole thing a couple days too late...
As for actually in my possession, I miss my 2600 a lot, but that was a practical decision rather than a financial one. I simply didn't have the time and energy to maintain it, and I didn't want such a cool piece dying in my arms, as it were.
I have sold so little of the gear I've acquired, there's not much that has gotten away. I still have the first MIDI synth I bought, a Casio CZ-1.
I do wish I'd hung onto the Maestro Echoplex, though. I sold it to Brendan from Ectomorph, because I was afraid of it breaking down, and there was some other shiny I wanted. Silly me -- Brendan's taken all over the world and used it in 100s of shows, and last I heard it was still going strong.
The only other things I miss are the Roland TR707 and the Casio RZ-1. At the time I got rid of the 707, I thought it sounded weak, but over time the sounds have really grown on me. The RZ-1 was fun to program, and built like a tank. It's the machine that built "Work This Motherfucker" -- one word per pitifully small sample slot.
But honestly, your gear lust involves things with way more zeros in the price.
I once had a Jupiter 6 that I sold after buying an MKS-80. I mostly sold it for space reasons since I lived in a 400ish sq ft apt. in NYC at the time. Having to pay law school tuition was a minor incentive to sell too.
tidepool is great. i've done a fair amount of business w/him and he's generous w/the try before you buy policy and rewards return business.
CR- for grainy synth verb you should just get an ensoniq dp4 or dp2. the verbs in there sit so perfectly w/synths it's scary. match made in heaven and a very 90's 'tri-repatae' type delay verb feel. if that is what you have in mind then you won't be disappointed.
enjoy the H8000FW. be careful though... it can put you in a trance. i've found myself lying the floor listening to patterns going through it until i forgot what i was doing.
oh- and two that got away.. i had to sell my mint MS-20 and an FR-777 to pay the rent years ago. i don't miss the MS-20 anymore but the 777 was captain weird beard of acid bass and all kinds of cross mod synth sounds.
A Franken-Strat made from late 50s / early 60s parts for $4k back in '98. I remember it being the best guitar I've ever played but then the other day I played a Tele that might be better...
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