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Posted by: Vaialation1232 Mar 15 2009, 12:16 PM

Hey everyone, just wanted to know what you guys thought about it...i'm basically saving up for a new amp and need some effects as well...not much of a pedal board guy so i dont mind if its hard to change this on the fly, just wondering if anyone can vouch for eventide products or has played with this/others?

Posted by: sted Mar 15 2009, 12:29 PM

not played it myself mate, but eventide is meant to be a top make, if you you want something awesome, expensive and rack mounted check out the fractal Axe Fx ultra, its blowing the competition into the weeds atm!
Retails around 2k here, ouch!

http://www.fractalaudio.com/products-fa-axefx.html

Posted by: tonymiro Mar 15 2009, 01:02 PM

I have and use an Eclipse.

Eventide produce some of the best pro end time and harmoniser orientated effects on the market imo. You do however pay for it. I think an eclipse is roughly about twice the price of most rack effects - a new Eclipse is probably about 1800 UK pounds compared with say a TC G-Force which covers a similar area and retails for about 1/2 of that.

The Eclipse is built like a tank and looks and feels like it costs a lot (which it does). It is a quality piece of engineering - the big rotary encoder knob is excellent. The front panel is uncluttered and easy to read and understand. Although the main display is a bit dated it's sufficient.

What you do get with the Eclipse are some of the best algorithms on the market. I'd argue that the harmoniser in the eclipse is the best there is, the reverb is as good as the pro end Lexicons and the other time based effects are as good as or better then the competition. Where it is weak is the amp emulations - not good at all but I doubt that anyone gets an Eclipse for them.

The Eclipse comes with a lot of very good and usable presets (if you install the V4 patch there are 500 )- most of which also are very guitar friendly (unlike some of the bigger Eventide harmonisers). It is also pretty easy to program and you can add a midi floor controller. (I haven't tried that as mine is a studio rack set up.) It isn't however particularly fast at switching between sounds. Not an issue in a studio but if you want to use one live be aware that it can take a few seconds for it to load a new patch.

I/O on the Eclipse is what you'd expect from a pro end bit of kit - S'PDIF, AES and Adat all to 96kHz.

To me it's an excellent piece of pro end kit that justifies the price. Not cheap but worth the extra cash.

Posted by: David Wallimann Mar 15 2009, 02:50 PM

QUOTE (sted @ Mar 15 2009, 07:29 AM)

Posted by: tonymiro Mar 15 2009, 03:49 PM

The Fractal Ultra is certainly well worth looking at particularly if you want it for a live set up rather than studio. The Eclipse isn't perfect for live because of the slight delay in switching patches. Fractal is very good at amp modeling - something that the Eclipse isn't really for and indeed the Eclipse isn't a modeler at all. My Eclipse is hooked up to an Engl pre and a Matchless so I'm not concerned with the amp modeling here.

For studio I'd say the Eclipse is the better of the two since it allows for 96kHz/24 Bit (Eventide isn't fixed to a single frequency I/O) whereas I think the Fractal Ultra is fixed at 48kHz/24 bit I/O. I've never heard any studio or live effect that is all round as good as Eventide are in a studio environment. High end Lexicon are as good for reverb yes and Kurzweil similarly are good for some time delay and filters but not all across the board. Fractal effects are very good - lots of depth and and space but to me (and this is subjective) the Eventide has a little more sparkle at 48kHz and really sparkles at 96. Apart from this for a studio I just prefer to have as much flexibility about sample rates/frequencies/Ins and Outs, and so as possible - probably just me

However if you do want to set up a live rig from scratch I think the Fractal would be a very good place to start. Maybe even for all those of you looking to spend over 1500 dollars on a new amp as well . Also the Fractal is, to me, more guitar player friendly - with the Eclipse you do need to spend some time getting to know it to really get a take on how much you can do with it beyond using the pre-sets. In this price range though a lot of this is subjective and also down to what the individual prioritises and wants.

I believe there is quite a long waiting list - something like 3-4 months - to get a Fractal since they aren't made in some large faceless factory but pretty much by hand. But if you can wait check them out.

Posted by: Vaialation1232 Mar 15 2009, 09:43 PM

Thanks everyone, yeah i wasn't gonna use it live cause for the moment i don't really play live at all...would be also buying a new amp along with it so amp models wouldn't be used