Vintage CFC and Repeater first impressions

[Mark <sine@zerocrossing.net>]

Hey boys and girls,

Well, it finally happened.  Last night I high tailed it over to Banana's At
Large and picked up my Repeater.  I must say that Rik my salesman was VERY
knowledgeable about The repeater and looping in general.  We had a nice 
chat
about the Repeater vs. the Echoplex DP and agreed that none of them would 
ever
stand up to what the Againinator will be once they open up stem cell 
research so
R&D can continue.

I zoomed home, had dinner with my hungry wife, and then finally hooked up 
the
Repeater in my rig.  Nothing fancy, just put it at the end of the signal 
path.

This fucker is SWEET.

I did have an initial horror: I DIDN'T GET ONE OF THE VINTAGE UPSIDEDOWN 
LABEL
CFC CARDS FOR THAT SPECIAL DT/SPLATTERCELL SOUND!  The horror!  Don't 
assume the
card goes in with the label on the bottom.  Mine did not.  Putting it in 
with
the label on top was VERY easy and obvious that it was the correct way to 
do it.

One of my MAIN tests of any new gear is whether or not I can "make it go", 
on a
basic level, without reading the manual.  Within moments, I had synched an 
8 bar
stereo loop to my Roland MC-307.  I don't mind having to record a blank 
loop so
that I get seamless ins and outs.  I use that time to build an intro 
anyway.
Before I knew it, I was playing the loop backwards and over dubbing onto 
it,
then re-reversing it to hear my dubs backwards and my original loop 
forward.  I
would say that in terms of usability, that's way more than basic 
operation.  Who
ever designed the interface of this baby did their home work.  Even though 
they
were absent on the day they taught "wet/dry mix." <nelson> ha ha </nelson>

Well, I didn't have any time to dive deeper, as it was getting close to my
bedtime, and I didn't have my studio setup they way I would truly want it 
to
be.  I can see it's going to take a while to find out the best place for 
this in
the signal chain.  One slight criticism is that you don't get both 4 
separate
outputs AND an effects loop.  I knew that before hand and bought it anyway.
Don't think software will fix that one.  No matter, it's plenty versatile, 
and
with an extra macie mixer, I think I shouldn't have any problem with this.

I love the marketing-glib-down-with-da-peeps manual, though my eyeball 
sockets
are sore from excessive eye rolling.  OUCH!

OK, must head to work.  Was it worth the wait?  Sure was, but it would 
have been
sweet to have this last November too.  Damn, I should have had this all my 
life!

Mark