Awesome old multi-fx/rack stuff

[Moustache_Bash]

What are some awesome old multi-fx/rack stuff that I can score for cheap? I want to make weird. New stuff is cool, too, so don't be afraid to recommend that.

[karmablock]

Boss SE-50 you can find them on ebay for about $40

[bob the r0bot]

While I can't speak from experience (yet anyway), I've heard good things about the yamaha fx-500. All the ones I've seen on ebay come in at around $100
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB_B0t84DEQ[/youtube]

They allegedly have distortion, comp, reverb, and modulation on every preset, but I can only seem to find demos for the verbs.

[psychedelicrelic]

Boss SE-50 you can find them on ebay for about $40

SE70>SE50. My SE70 is my go to for all weirdness. You get cool interesting distortion if you play with the verbs. I figured out a setting on mine for studders similar to a HEXE revolver(after an hour of getting settigs just right. AND analog distortion and fuzz. Is it an fz-2 inside? I dunno. Maaaybe. I fucking love mine and won't ever get rid of it. When my current gas cured, ill buy a second one. Still need a foot controller for it.

[psychedelicrelic]

I read somewhere that Prodigy uses/used 10 of them.

[kaeth]

Don't know if it's cheap enough, but the Electrix Mo'FX is awesome, analog, and knobby. It's like having 4 stompboxes in a rack: distortion, tremolo, delay, and flanger. Syncable tap-tempo, and in stereo. No presets. They go for somewhere between $100 and $200 when they show up on the bay. There's also a matching analog multimode filter (Filter Factory), and vocoder (Warp Factory) which go for about the same price. I have 'em all. and they get pretty weird, especially when used together.

[John Matrix]

I have one of these guys:



They can be found SUPER cheap. It's not the best, the user interface is awkward and it is completely plastic. Anyway, I was about to sell the thing but some of the effects on there are pretty fun so I decided to hold on to it. Most noteworthy being the "DRONE" effect, which makes your guitar sound like a sitar. The random filter is pretty cool as well, kinda just makes a bunch of sparkly space noises behind whatever you're playing.

[fiddelerselbow]

While I can't speak from experience (yet anyway), I've heard good things about the yamaha fx-500. All the ones I've seen on ebay come in at around $100
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB_B0t84DEQ[/youtube]

They allegedly have distortion, comp, reverb, and modulation on every preset, but I can only seem to find demos for the verbs.

Didn't Slowdive use 'em? Also paging robertfurkamp (I totally spelled that wrong), he's way into this kinda of stuff.

[Gone Fission]

The FX500 is roughly a continuation of the SPX-90/GEP-50 stuff. I can't remember if the Slowdive "Soft Focus" and such (was the "Symphonic" chorus patch an element?) were new to the FX-500. The Magic Stomp has all those sounds.

[rfurtkamp]

Yea, let's see, past the Lexicon Vortex (which is an amazing ball of fun):

- Digitech RDS series delays. You're not buying it for the delay, but because the LFO section is amazing and inappropriate and post-delay - so you can use "Flange" settings with a max delay time not in milliseconds but in ugly. Post-delay LFO also means you can use the sample and hold (and it's just sample and hold, nothing fancy, one shot of whatever is in the buffer) to mangle your sample non-destructively. I'm partial to the 3.6s, they have capacity and fun the 1900s don't quite have and you can tweak internal trimpots (photograph/mark the original settings before you go to town) to further mangle stuff.
-Boss GL-100 "Guitar Driver" : rackmount preamp that's a marvelous combo of all the old Boss analog dirt boxes, with huge added EQ options and voicing choices, on two footswitchable channels. Cheap, cheap, cheap, distortion goes HM2 and beyond into crackling mean.
- ART SGE/SGX. Buy the SGE Mach/Mark II if you can, the thing on these is knowing *what* you're buying - the later models have almost no user control past selecting which stock patch you're on. They're marred by early 90s programming but once you hate it once you're done and it makes sense, in a "been up too long drinking" way.
- Boss ME-6B. Big, black, yellow, and mean. The synth filters are why you're buying this, but the distortion and other effects are surprisingly usable (in particular the delay does a horrible wonderful ambient near eternal hold that never goes into excessive volume). Synth filters though are why you want it - you can make it track guitar if you're patient and have hot pickups, but the fun is learning how to make it mistrack and sputter for life itself.

All these are under a hundred bucks if you're patient, some a ton less.

Also if you want a Yahama SPX-series thing, and form factor doesn't matter, look for a REX-50, it's the tabletop version, I don't know why it's designed that way but it just sits on the amp head or whatever with a LCD display and has all the SPX goodness for cheap.

[pktrono]

yes

[psychedelicrelic]

yes

[futuresailors]

The FX500 is roughly a continuation of the SPX-90/GEP-50 stuff. I can't remember if the Slowdive "Soft Focus" and such (was the "Symphonic" chorus patch an element?) were new to the FX-500. The Magic Stomp has all those sounds.

I think the FX500 was the only one with the symphonic chorus.
But yeah, those things are fun. Each of the little green buttons is comp, dist, mod, verb, delay, and the verb and delay are in switchable order.

The distortion patches are your standard digital affair. The verb and delay are dece. That comp is what makes the slowdive swells. Dime that shit and you have no attack, and sustain for almost forever.

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

[space6oy]

the alesis akira & ineko are pretty sweet too. haven't messed with it yet but recently picked up a boss VF-1 which i've heard is a goodie.