experience with aphex 661 in your live rig?

[double_stop2584]

Hey guys,
I've been looking around at compressors (thanks for your gigantic pile of information, Bongo!), and I think, from what I've read/seen/etc., that the Aphex 661 is what I'm interested in checking out.

However, I'd like a compressor for my live rig, and Bongo's review says it runs very hot, and that he'd be wary of putting it in a live rig.

So, I was just wondering if anybody has used it that way, and what you think, does it melt everything in a five-mile radius, etc....

Thanks for the help!

[double_stop2584]

guess that answers my question :-P

[Jorgemele894]

Hello:

I recently acquired one 661 (ebay, great deal) and have been pleased with it so far. As Bongo said, it runs hotter that any other conventional (no tube) rack unit, but it is not so hot that might melt or damage something. If the temperature worries you, buy a bigger rack and leave a space between the compressor and your amp. Mine’s resides in my rack on top of my RBI and below my rack tuner, I have an EA iamp 800 (fanless) and everything has been working problem free so far. The dynamics of this compressor are to die for and it imparts some subtle warmness to the tone without changing your bass character. The Easyrider function adjust the compression, attack and release automatically and gives you great tone, however, you can bypass it and adjust these parameters manually (I adjust the parameters manually since I prefer more attack). It has a controllable high frequency expander which adds highs to the mix after the compression in order to compensate for high end lost (I don’t use it since it doesn’t take too much highs off your tone). It is virtually noise free (on most settings) and its input stage is adjustable (threshold, input gain and output gain). I have a dbx 160X but in my opinion there is no contest, the Aphex 661 it in another league, much superior, flexible and great sounding (well figuratively… since it doesn’t color your sound much). You can go for the heavy squash, but I believe that the design intent of this unit was to go unnoticed. The downer is that it is costly (almost 600.00 USD new) but they sometimes show used for cheap on ebay. If any TBer wants more info or need advice don’t hesitate to PM me.

George