Warhead
Jai guru deva om
Fraserhutch, I thought it would be better to start a fresh thread here on the 7602 since the last one was (my fault) sort of pulled off topic.
The 7602 is heavy and well built. All of the wiring etc is neatly laid out in there, and the handy work looks good to me (I'm admittedly not real techy!).
The switches seem well built and turn with a solid "chunk", they used a gold contact ELMA switch for the mic/line selector (which would see the most use). Neutrik XLR, the D.I. jack is a Switchcraft. The cards are completely interchangeable with NEVE 1073 cards, of course vice versa. Having said that, there isn't one original part used by NEVE inside of this box.
The St. Ives transformers were reverse engineered and reproduced (to what extent I am not certain) in China, and so goes the rest of the list of parts in this box. Before anyone decides to hint that these guys are doing something evil here, remember that dozens of other companies are doing the same thing and making claims of "same spirit as Neve". The biggest difference with this company being they had the boxes built in China and they cost about 1/3 of competitors. OK maybe a little less than that.
I do NOT own a 1073 strip, and my friend (who bought 2 of these from us) has some NEVE preamps but I haven't bothered to do a side by side comparison as his were mainly broadcasting type of preamps. I do want to rent a 1073 strip and do a direct comparison in the near future, only to be able to hear for myself how close they got it. Until then I can only testify to what I hear as it stands on its own.
The preamp is very nice with a real vibe to it. I would say it is more all purpose than many of the sort of slower (and darker, mushier) response NEVE stuff I've been able to use in the past (very limited experience with NEVE). Concerning the mic pre, I've used it on vocals and drums so far, and can't wait to do some electric guitar work with it. The midrange is on the more aggressive side, with a seemingly small bump in the upper mids. Transients are well represented by the preamp as well, drums sound punchy with plenty of snap. The transformers don't seem to be overly distorting things either. The low end is full but not overly exaggerated.
The D.I. is smooth, think 70's bass guitar sound. The low end is quite full with well defined mids again. Turning the output down and the input up I was able to get some slightly pushed sounds and a nice range to work with before distorting noticeably. It really seemed to open up the initial attack of the bass by pushing it like this.
The EQ on the 7602 is very, very useful. This thing has balls, really the only way I can find to describe the sound. The high end (shelving) has 5 frequencies to choose from and unlike many EQ's sounds good when pushed! You can just slam an acoustic guitar tracks high end and it will open up beautifully without adding any harshness. The higher freq's can add some air up there, but it will be a more aggressive sort of sound still.
The mids have a fixed Q with 6 frequencies to select from, the Q is pretty wide and when it comes to the midrange adjustment I have found that a little bit goes a long way. You can get quite effective control with small amounts of cut or boost here, and of course radical if you really push it to + or - 18dB. You can completely gut a track or push it aggressively with an in your face sound as well. Very effective control, I found it nice especially on electric guitars, toms, acoustic guitars and more. On the cut side of things, the 360hZ can be just the trick for cutting some boxiness out of damn near anything.
The low end (shelving) has 4 frequencies to select from, and is again capable of + or - 18dB of control. You can flat out carve the low end off of anything with this, or boost it enormously as well. Again, think aggressive although of the 3 bands the low end remains the smoothest sounding of them all. Thick when pushed, not just louder, thick.
The low end filter does just what it says and is quite steep.
***********
Things I Like:
First and foremost, the sound. It is a very good sounding box and has tons of vibe. It's not a super clean preamp (although the noise floor seems very low), but it's not dirty enough to where you'd say it changes the sound of the original source drastically either. Good vibe with some bite.
Tons of gain! (+80dB)
Line level use.
That EQ is so full of character though it's silly good, you can pump some real flavor in your sound.
I like being able to drop the output and push the inputs as it will open up the sound. It also acts as a fader for riding vocals during tracking.
I like the fact that it has a real power supply.
I like the sturdy feeling of the switches, and the fact that (aside from individual EQ band gain stages) it's fully recallable.
***********
Things I Do Not Like:
It's made in China. Now, it is bringing this preamp / eq to the home and project studio market which is great but I'm never excited when anything is built in China because I personally wish everything could be built in the good ol' USA. But, wish in one hand...
The markings are little dots and are essentially meaningless. This is a NEVE characteristic and all of the cloners seem hip to this. When I'm writing down settings and I have to write "acoustic guitar, 3.4k shelf at +2.5 dots" I feel
strange! I wish they would have laid it out in actual dB increments.
The layout is virtually identical to the Chandler LTD1. This was pointed out to us by a Chandler dealer, and we not being familiar with the Chandler line looked it up and damn there it was. I called the folks at Chameleon Labs who said as far as keeping it at a 1RU design that style of layout made sense but they made no claims to borrowing from Chandler in particular. Having looked around a bit more the Aurora NEVE clones are laid out very very similar as well, the Vintech X73 being similar in a reverse sort of fashion, and so on. Which begs the questions about the chicken or the egg, or the clone or the clone resembling another clone, and also that they are not the same devices. Chandler is using many actual original parts and are not manufacturing in China.
It could have been prettier. I don't think it's ugly, but it could have been jazzed up more! At least they didn't use the red chicken head switches like
most other cloners!
All of the calls I'm getting about "does it sound just like a 1073" when I haven't compared them yet. OK nothing to do with the unit, but there's an awful lot of conversation being had about it being identical and even if they're not identical in sound...this is a great sounding box! Chameleon Labs isn't making any actual claims on their site or anything of it being a 1073 but it's certainly implied and it's what they're comparing it to at trade shows etc. I really do want to get a 1073 in here and spend some time side by side.
***********
So that's what I think in summary. These guys are working on a tube pencil mic that should be out in a month or two (NOT a clone!) that we're interested in hearing as well. So Chameleon is working on other things.
War
The 7602 is heavy and well built. All of the wiring etc is neatly laid out in there, and the handy work looks good to me (I'm admittedly not real techy!).
The switches seem well built and turn with a solid "chunk", they used a gold contact ELMA switch for the mic/line selector (which would see the most use). Neutrik XLR, the D.I. jack is a Switchcraft. The cards are completely interchangeable with NEVE 1073 cards, of course vice versa. Having said that, there isn't one original part used by NEVE inside of this box.
The St. Ives transformers were reverse engineered and reproduced (to what extent I am not certain) in China, and so goes the rest of the list of parts in this box. Before anyone decides to hint that these guys are doing something evil here, remember that dozens of other companies are doing the same thing and making claims of "same spirit as Neve". The biggest difference with this company being they had the boxes built in China and they cost about 1/3 of competitors. OK maybe a little less than that.
I do NOT own a 1073 strip, and my friend (who bought 2 of these from us) has some NEVE preamps but I haven't bothered to do a side by side comparison as his were mainly broadcasting type of preamps. I do want to rent a 1073 strip and do a direct comparison in the near future, only to be able to hear for myself how close they got it. Until then I can only testify to what I hear as it stands on its own.
The preamp is very nice with a real vibe to it. I would say it is more all purpose than many of the sort of slower (and darker, mushier) response NEVE stuff I've been able to use in the past (very limited experience with NEVE). Concerning the mic pre, I've used it on vocals and drums so far, and can't wait to do some electric guitar work with it. The midrange is on the more aggressive side, with a seemingly small bump in the upper mids. Transients are well represented by the preamp as well, drums sound punchy with plenty of snap. The transformers don't seem to be overly distorting things either. The low end is full but not overly exaggerated.
The D.I. is smooth, think 70's bass guitar sound. The low end is quite full with well defined mids again. Turning the output down and the input up I was able to get some slightly pushed sounds and a nice range to work with before distorting noticeably. It really seemed to open up the initial attack of the bass by pushing it like this.
The EQ on the 7602 is very, very useful. This thing has balls, really the only way I can find to describe the sound. The high end (shelving) has 5 frequencies to choose from and unlike many EQ's sounds good when pushed! You can just slam an acoustic guitar tracks high end and it will open up beautifully without adding any harshness. The higher freq's can add some air up there, but it will be a more aggressive sort of sound still.
The mids have a fixed Q with 6 frequencies to select from, the Q is pretty wide and when it comes to the midrange adjustment I have found that a little bit goes a long way. You can get quite effective control with small amounts of cut or boost here, and of course radical if you really push it to + or - 18dB. You can completely gut a track or push it aggressively with an in your face sound as well. Very effective control, I found it nice especially on electric guitars, toms, acoustic guitars and more. On the cut side of things, the 360hZ can be just the trick for cutting some boxiness out of damn near anything.
The low end (shelving) has 4 frequencies to select from, and is again capable of + or - 18dB of control. You can flat out carve the low end off of anything with this, or boost it enormously as well. Again, think aggressive although of the 3 bands the low end remains the smoothest sounding of them all. Thick when pushed, not just louder, thick.
The low end filter does just what it says and is quite steep.
***********
Things I Like:
First and foremost, the sound. It is a very good sounding box and has tons of vibe. It's not a super clean preamp (although the noise floor seems very low), but it's not dirty enough to where you'd say it changes the sound of the original source drastically either. Good vibe with some bite.
Tons of gain! (+80dB)
Line level use.
That EQ is so full of character though it's silly good, you can pump some real flavor in your sound.
I like being able to drop the output and push the inputs as it will open up the sound. It also acts as a fader for riding vocals during tracking.
I like the fact that it has a real power supply.
I like the sturdy feeling of the switches, and the fact that (aside from individual EQ band gain stages) it's fully recallable.
***********
Things I Do Not Like:
It's made in China. Now, it is bringing this preamp / eq to the home and project studio market which is great but I'm never excited when anything is built in China because I personally wish everything could be built in the good ol' USA. But, wish in one hand...
The markings are little dots and are essentially meaningless. This is a NEVE characteristic and all of the cloners seem hip to this. When I'm writing down settings and I have to write "acoustic guitar, 3.4k shelf at +2.5 dots" I feel
strange! I wish they would have laid it out in actual dB increments.
The layout is virtually identical to the Chandler LTD1. This was pointed out to us by a Chandler dealer, and we not being familiar with the Chandler line looked it up and damn there it was. I called the folks at Chameleon Labs who said as far as keeping it at a 1RU design that style of layout made sense but they made no claims to borrowing from Chandler in particular. Having looked around a bit more the Aurora NEVE clones are laid out very very similar as well, the Vintech X73 being similar in a reverse sort of fashion, and so on. Which begs the questions about the chicken or the egg, or the clone or the clone resembling another clone, and also that they are not the same devices. Chandler is using many actual original parts and are not manufacturing in China.
It could have been prettier. I don't think it's ugly, but it could have been jazzed up more! At least they didn't use the red chicken head switches like
most other cloners!
All of the calls I'm getting about "does it sound just like a 1073" when I haven't compared them yet. OK nothing to do with the unit, but there's an awful lot of conversation being had about it being identical and even if they're not identical in sound...this is a great sounding box! Chameleon Labs isn't making any actual claims on their site or anything of it being a 1073 but it's certainly implied and it's what they're comparing it to at trade shows etc. I really do want to get a 1073 in here and spend some time side by side.
***********
So that's what I think in summary. These guys are working on a tube pencil mic that should be out in a month or two (NOT a clone!) that we're interested in hearing as well. So Chameleon is working on other things.
War
