Eventide - The kittens mittens?

[Rusty O'Hara]

I've been having a bit of GAS looking into Eventide units of late; and am trying to do some research into them.

 

Most of the stuff I've seen seems to be mainly around guitars; whereas I'll be mainly using it in the studio (Gear list is in the signature); may take it live if I have enough confidence Lets assume that money isn't an issue as far as buying an Eclipse goes; an Orville is what I would like, but kind of pricey; plus there is the case that no one I know has got one, and really can't think of where I could test one at all, so really would be buying sight unseen...

 

Not overly worried about cost, if they really are that awesome.

 

Are they really the kittens mittens as far as FX goes?

 

And is the Eclipse a good idea? Or is one of the older units still worth a look?

 

Someone, somewhere also mentioned an fx unit called a "vortex"; but no joy googling so far.

 

Open to comments, thoughts, redirections to other threads etc.

[simeon]

the vortex was made by lexicon http://members.aol.com/soundfnr/vortex.htm

 

it's not in the same class as the eventide stuff

 

the eclipse is a good buy if you can afford it - you can download a playlist of 30 examples i did here

 

fantastic reverbs and delays...amazing quality...awesome connectivity...beautiful modulations etc etc

 

zachman has an orville, i think...again incredible unit, but it may be too much for what you want and you'll pay for all the extra features!

 

the older units like the H3000 series are still great, but 2u and very heavy. they're more tricky to program than the eclipse and you can only run one algorithm at a time.

 

sim

[IvIark]

I think Eventide offers the best single package of effects you can get. The pitch shifter is what they're famous for so it's about as good as you can get, the modulation is fantastic and the delays have their own unique sound colouration that I personally think is better than anything else.

 

I find the reverb to be good but not the best, but to be honest with so many other boxes ticked it's almost irrelevant.

 

The only downside with the Eclipse is that you're limited in the number of effects you can use in a patch so I wouldn't use it as my only processor. But alongside something like the TC G-Force which allows you to use a multitude of effects in different routings I think it's a perfect pairing.

 

Of course you could always go up a model to the H7600 if you want to use more effects simultaneously, or even pick up a second hand DSP4000.

[gambit]

if you can justify the price and are patient enough to program patches in menu's i doubt there's much better.. i don't think i'd get any guitar playing done with all the tweaking.