'De-bling' my Exciter...

rogs

New member
I wanted to add an aural exciter to my rack kit, but I couldn't justify the cash for an Aphex - so I thought I'd try a Behringer SX3040, at around 1/4 of the cost.

Seems to work pretty well - it certainly adds some 'punch and sparkle' to my mixes - but there were a couple things I didn't like...

The original knobs are very shiny plastic -- a bit too much 'bling' for my taste - and the positions can be difficult to read.
This picture shows what I mean..

sx3040 bling.jpg


Now these knobs are push fitted to a 6mm 'D' shaft - of which only about 3mm pokes through the front... So the choice of replacement knobs is a bit limited..
I thought these looked OK...

Behringer new pots.jpg

Much easier too read ! Bit too small diameter wise maybe?... but OK apart from that.

The other thing I didn't like was the mains transformer. Obviously Behringer needed to keep the costs down, to make the price point (nothing new there!) and used a cheap E/I transformer -- which works OK, but annoyingly buzzes a bit.....

So I replaced it with a toroid. That works fine and is now totally silent....

Some notes on the bits I used here:

http://www.jp137.com/lts/SX3040.mods.pdf
 
Hi have a really old early 1990's Behringer Ultrafex 2 Enhancer, looks much better than the newer stuff and does work great and very silent. I used to run the mixes through it for more air, you have to be really careful that you don't add too much. I often wonder if the really old Behringer stuff may become collectable, the old stuff was really good, and expensive.

I also have an old Slapback Audio, Scintillator, which does the same kind of thing, used to be on my touring PA and ran the whole mix through that, again not too much. This does not get used much nowadays either.

Alan.
 
Hi have a really old early 1990's Behringer Ultrafex 2 Enhancer, looks much better than the newer stuff and does work great and very silent. I used to run the mixes through it for more air, you have to be really careful that you don't add too much. I often wonder if the really old Behringer stuff may become collectable, the old stuff was really good, and expensive.

I have to agree - the earlier units like the Ultrafex2 do look better -- I think I'm attempting to get my unit to look more like one of the older units!

And the older units had more features for your money... better led metering - genuine power loss fail safe bypass relays - more functions per device....I'm not sure Behringer have really moved forward with these newer units?......

Still, it's all down to marketing, and it's a bit difficult for folk like me to understand the mind set of marketing people who think those original silvery 'bling' knobs look smart?....:)
 
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