Sometimes you need a cheap piece of gear.

Han

New member
I was mixing a bluesband and the drummer wasn't very consistent, but I wasn't liking the Behringer Composer C/L on kick and snare, nor was the DBX any good, or the Alesis 3630, or a number of other C/L's.

So I plugged an old Alesis Microlimiter in and there it was, a very tight kick and an awesome snare.

These older Microlimiters suffer a little from hiss, but this cheap little thingie can do a great job sometimes.

The Microlimiter (from the late eighties) is a stereo compressor/limiter and cannot cost more than between 10 and 50 bucks
 
I just picked one up off ebay. There was a thread over at the TapeOp board before it went down discussing how cool those things are.
 
well, next week my "dual channel" dbx163x compressor will arrive,
so i can compare it with a dbx 166a and XL,
one of the compressors will get sold after the test...

if i can believe the gossip the cheap 163x might kick the 166a in the ass when used on kick and snare,

lets hope so !

long live cheap ! :D
 
I love my microlimiter. No matter what anyone says, cheap and good are not mutually exclusive.

As for those other comps you tried, you can mod the 3630. www.blacklionaudio.com

Since I modded my 3630 I use it on kick and snare, and its amazing.
 
I have a couple of 163x - very basic but I think they work great. I've used them on snare & kick for a long time.
 
"Sometimes you need a cheap piece of gear..." Amen, brother, sometimes you need a cheap setup altogether, as in my humble case. Yeah, yeah, I'm working on it though :)
 
AlexW said:
I just picked one up off ebay. There was a thread over at the TapeOp board before it went down discussing how cool those things are.
I would check out the thread for myself at TO, but....

What did they say about it?
 
We used to strap one of those onto the output of our mixer at live gigs...it wasn't bad from what I remember.

War
 
Those micro limiters have alot of devotees, I almost picked one up for myself the otherday but ended up with a dbx 117 instead.
 
Hey R-J-X, unfortunately the TapeOp board is down, maybe for good this time. If it resurfaces I'll link it here.
 
Han said:
Yo thanks for the link, here's another link: http://www.recording.org/e-mag/article_81.shtml

Nice. The mods in that article are covered by the BLA mod, as well as some other cool features like user selectable feedback/feedfoward. It's hard to express how this alters the behavior of the comp, but it definitely makes it a more flexible box.

As for the microlimiter, there's good reason for all the praise. It does something unique and costs a pittance compared to anything else that serves this purpose.
 
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