Ok, 3630, the best comp ever made......

G

g string

New member
Yeah I know you would all use it as a door stop, boat anchor, book end, drink coaster, paper weight, gun target, frisbee, stick it under an uneven table leg, or maybe even as a compressor, blah blah, but....why has it been on the market for so long if it is such an inferior piece of equipment? You would think that if a piece of gear was sooooo bad that it would be taken off the market, or at least up graded or improved if nothing else. I'm sure Alesis hears all the great reviews that the 3630 gets. Wuts up. :o
 
Anyone here tried any of the 3630 mods and heard the results? I bought one on the cheap recently and plan to mod it in the next couple months. I am going to try to do some before and after tests. Any recommendations on the most practical way to do reasonably accurate before and after. I was planning on running some prerecorded material through it and laying out the settings both before and after. Any better suggestions?


Randy
 
g string said:
Yeah I know you would all use it as a door stop, boat anchor, book end, drink coaster, paper weight, gun target, frisbee, stick it under an uneven table leg, or maybe even as a compressor, blah blah, but....why has it been on the market for so long if it is such an inferior piece of equipment? You would think that if a piece of gear was sooooo bad that it would be taken off the market, or at least up graded or improved if nothing else. I'm sure Alesis hears all the great reviews that the 3630 gets. Wuts up. :o
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They're inexpensive.
 
The $100 price tag suckered me in when I first set out to get outboard gear. I used it for a week maybe then took the 100 dollar loss and upgraded. It does exactly what it's advertised to do... it compresses, but at a cost.
 
http://www.phoenixlightandsound.com/Audio/SkyBlueMind/

Almost every bass track, and MANY acoustic guitar tracks in these recordings used the 3630, sometimes with up to 12dB of gain reduction, but usually around 4-6dB!

Like any other piece of gear in the studio, you gotta use them for what they are good for. I personally don't mind the 3630 on things where I don't mind the sound getting a bit "beefy". It BLOWS AWAY the RNC on bass guitars and kick drums! ;)
 
Ford Van said:
Like any other piece of gear in the studio, you gotta use them for what they are good for. It BLOWS AWAY the RNC on bass guitars and kick drums! ;)
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It was the 3630's noise gate chatter that drove me crazy.
 
Harvey Gerst said:
It was the 3630's noise gate chatter that drove me crazy.
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Yeah I had one for a long time and the gates were terrible. The Tapeop mod was simply to cut the wire that connected the gates, and it was supposed to improve the sound of the compression noticeably. The BLA mod did this and more I understand.
 
Harvey Gerst said:
It was the 3630's noise gate chatter that drove me crazy.
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Errrrrrrrrr...why were you using the noise gate? I have not found ANY of those "dumb gates" that work with a crap anyway!

If I need a noise gate, I use a dedicated noisegate!
 
The 3630 sounds great on dance tracks where you want to hear the compressor pumping. Think Daft Punk's early stuff.
 
Ford Van said:
http://www.phoenixlightandsound.com/Audio/SkyBlueMind/

Almost every bass track, and MANY acoustic guitar tracks in these recordings used the 3630, sometimes with up to 12dB of gain reduction, but usually around 4-6dB!

Like any other piece of gear in the studio, you gotta use them for what they are good for. I personally don't mind the 3630 on things where I don't mind the sound getting a bit "beefy". It BLOWS AWAY the RNC on bass guitars and kick drums! ;)
Click to expand...

Cool sounding stuff!
 
Randy5235 said:
Anyone here tried any of the 3630 mods and heard the results? I bought one on the cheap recently and plan to mod it in the next couple months. I am going to try to do some before and after tests. Any recommendations on the most practical way to do reasonably accurate before and after. I was planning on running some prerecorded material through it and laying out the settings both before and after. Any better suggestions?


Randy
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I did a search and read up a little on some of the mods that have been done to the 3630. A lot of people claim a big improvement in sound, tho most of the mods don't seem too easy, at least for someone who doesn't know circuitry like me, but on the other hand it's hard to justify paying more for a mod than the original cost of the unit. Dunno, it just seems more practical to put that money towards a better unit that is known to work in the first place. But unless you like to tinker with things like that, someone might have a totally different outlook on the matter.
 
So if the mods make it sound so much better, that puts its quality at about the Behringer range it seems like.
 
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