http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=190051190938

I've read how the 163x is the thing on bass. I'm always willing to try something new for bass. However, the cool thing, at least I think so, is that when coupled with the 463x, you end up with a stereo 163x or a stereo 463x depending on what you're wanting. I'd never heard of such a thing but I thought as long as they are in the same rack and it's not going to cost me all that much more then I'll go for it.

The 163x appears to be going for about $65 now. I believe they were $35 or so a year ago. I got the pair for around $90 plus shipping.

So linking both, you can use one as the other? Weird.

The 163 has obtained cult status at the T-O boards. Cheap (used, even w/ current prices). easy, works, so I can see it. Lack of control is a complaint, but simplified control can be a virtue - it works quickly or you move on instead of tweaking until the spark is gone. You can always act on the threshold by working your gainstaging feeding the unit - I do this approach with the comp on my Fostex MN mini mixer which just has a release time slider.

Bear

I'd never heard of such a thing where you got two different pieces of gear but one can be slaved to the other to make a stereo compressor and vice versa to make a stereo gate. I want to try it.

My good friend, Steve Beckett, bought the DBX 160x for about $75 or so from a local pawn shop. It's a decent compressor for snare.

I've never tried the dbx 163x, or the 463x. At the time dbx was making these, I just didn't know what to
make of them, since they were half rack units, with very little adjustability. dbx seemed to be marketing
their higher end compressors and gates more for recording studios, so I just figured the half rack units were
easy to adjust on the fly units for PA and broadcast engineers.

The dbx 160x is more familiar to me. It did enjoy the status as a popular industry standard workhorse
compressor for a while during the early 80's. I think this was mostly by default, because there weren't too
many other companies making decent affordable outboard compressors at the time. Most demo studios
were lucky if they even had one 1176. The auto attack and release function, switchable hard and soft knee
curves, plus the cool and accurate LED metering, were pretty damn cutting edge back then.

From my local perspective, it seems like everyone gravitated to the Drawmer compressors pretty quickly
once they hit the scene. It would be fun to hear more about what other vintage compressors people were
using during the eighties.