The High End Fairchild thread!

Even the most high end of Gearslutz have been rather quiet about these legendary vintage dynamic tools on these forums...

There used to be a stereo unit available on hire here in the UK and I would get it in for mixing with clients with lots of £££ in the late 80's, hardly ever used em by the late 90's or ever since really... A mastering studio here in London UK, Porkeys Prime Cut have one in their main room that sounds nice, (but I kinda fell out with them over their refusing to accomodate me with 96k mixes... so I wont be going back by choice)

Of course if I won the lottery I would be getting some!

So..Fairchild.... how often (if ever) do ya get to use em, rent em, OWN EM?....

Discuss, dream, drool etc

[Brad Blackwood]

Had one (670) available to me for the last seven years and used it only a hand-full of times - cool sound, but they track stereo terribly and are truly one-trick animals...

[subspace]

Mix through it all the time, it's an ok sounding plug-in, what all the fuss about?

[hollywood_steve]

Anyone know if there have been any sales of the $18k ADL copy displayed at the 2002 LA AES show? $18k is an ass-load of cash, but its also only half of what an original 670 sells for. I wonder whether the display unit is the only one ever made or whether they actually made a production run of these things?

I can't comment on whether it was a smart move to design and build that thing or on how it sounds. But I did look at the beast up close for quite a while and the construction looked very nice. Many others, from Pendulum to Fairman have produced models that claim to nail the 670 sound without the 10RU worth of parts. The ADL model is certainly more of a physical match than these smaller variations, but does it sound any closer to the original than these other challengers?

[bassmac]

Originally posted by hollywood_steve
Anyone know if there have been any sales of the $18k ADL copy displayed at the 2002 LA AES show?

If they would have included that promo girl at the ADL booth with it - I would have bought one on the spot!

[robmix]

When a 670's in the room I'll use it, but I don't go out of my way to rent one when it's not there. If I had a boatload of money come in I'd buy one. The occassional 2-mix, sounds great on rock piano stuff, love it for tracking bass, even better on big, glassy guitars. I have used the EAR for tracking vocals and was pretty impressed - it's definitely on my list. I also used the Fairman a bit at Conway last year as they had one sitting in the tech shop so I had our assistant take it (I'm sorry but it's a crime to have a nice piece of gear like that sitting unplugged). To me the Fairman captured the vibe but sounded cleaner, even cleaner than the EAR unit we had been using. Though pummeling the Fairman was not as cool as pummeling the Fairchild.

Rob

[DrC:Drive]

I have a Pendulum Audio ES8 vari mu liniter which is said to be a modern remake of the Fairchild. Its an awesome unit it has to be said

James Cullen
Seabrite Studio

[TOR]

$18k is an ass-load of cash, but its also only half of what an original 670 sells for

Whaaa??

[hollywood_steve]

$18k is an ass-load of cash, but its also only half of what an original 670 sells for

Whaaa??


I only exaggerated slightly........original Fairchilds are selling in the $30k range, so the $18k ADL unit is a little over 1/2 the going rate for a used 670.

[faeflora]

It's not a fairchild, but perhaps check these out:

http://www.tab-funkenwerk.com/U73.html

[Fletcher]

Like "robmix" said... if there is one in the room... I'll give it a try... but I certainly wouldn't waste rental budget on one. The sad thing is that the great majority of the ones out there need 6386 tubes in a big way... but finding a set of 8 "matched" 6386 tubes is damn near impossible.

Those tubes are the heart and soul of the 670 and 660's... but if they aren't a very functional matched set... then the unit will behave in a less than stellar manner. You'll still get the magic of the interaction of the capacitive and inductive networks... but the compression element is compromised.

Having had 15 or 20 pass through my world over the years, I've kinda learned to distinguish between the good ones, and the not so good ones. I could tell pretty quickly which ones needed a set of tubes, and which ones were OK. I would say that the majority of the ones I've seen in the last 5 years... had "issues".

A set of 6386's in constant use will only have a life span of a year or two [5-6,000 hours]... then it's time to replace them. While you can find 6386 tubes around, finding a set where all 8 for a 670, or all 4 for a 660 are functioning with the same efficiency is at best a bitch.

I happen to have a fresh set of matched tubes [if I know I'm going to run into a 660 or 670, I carry them with me]... a company offered me $2k for the set last year... I turned it down.

[Thermionic]

6386 aren't the only tube you've got to worry about on a 660/670. GE 6973 are getting scarce now as well.

I can honestly say that in all the years I've been salivating over Fairchild vari-mu comps, I have never seen as many for sale in Europe as there have been in the last year or so. I do wonder if peeps are selling them off whilst the tubes still have some life in them...Either that, or studios just can't afford such luxuries in these frugal days...

[Bob Olhsson]

Originally posted by Fletcher
A set of 6386's in constant use will only have a life span of a year or two [5-6,000 hours]...

At Motown, we found we had to re-tube our two 670s twice a year while everything else only got it once a year as preventative maintenance.

[Steve Smith]

Whatever happend to the potential "T-bar" 6386 replacement that manley was cooking up? did the betas go well? I remember her talking about them a while back, I am curious if they know more yet or if it is still being tested...

[Brad Blackwood]

Conceptually, the tbar mod will work in 670s, but the Manley PCBis too big to fit in the 670. It's a pretty simple thing to cobble together, so I'm sure someone handy could come up with a solution...

[oliver archut]

Biggest problem is what I encountered with Fairchild's, is that 9 out of ten are in bad need of rebuilding as well need new tubes. The rebuilding job, if done right cost more than a new in production compressor, also most of the x-formers even if still passing signal do not hold up to a 500V isolation testing, so the sound is being compromised from the beginning, it is the same like a 1960 engine with bad piston rings/seals......
The tubes are still available out of russian production, but like the EF86 out of russia, the 6386's is not useable at all for high end equipment at all, the 6973 can be easily replaced with a EL84, just minor rewiring and a different screen resistor is needed.
There are several different remote cutoff triodes that work same as good or better (for signal to noise spec) in the Fairchild but at the end it comes down to the same question VF14 or EF14....

Best regards,

Oliver

[Fletcher]

Originally posted by Steve Smith
Whatever happend to the potential "T-bar" 6386 replacement that manley was cooking up? did the betas go well? I remember her talking about them a while back, I am curious if they know more yet or if it is still being tested...

Finished, installed, tested and IMNTLBFHO, it sounds much better than the previous editions of the Manley Variable MU.

I sold mine.

[Roland]

Less than ten years ago they were selling for about 3k and I thought they were too expensive then! Wish I had bought them just to sell would have been a better investment than property!

Never got into using them myself, but I go the same way as Fletch on this one in that I wouldn't bother hiring one, but might use it if it was in the rack and working properly. I know several great old school engineers that used to use them and the general comment was that if they were well maintained they sounded good, bit of a one trick pony (as someone else in this thread pointed out), but totally overrated. As one of them said to me, it wasn't any suprise that they sounded good, all they were doing was slow gently soft compression and that there were many other ways to achieve this type of sound for a lot less.

If you want to know why they are in short supply. I believe Sir Paul has about 10 sitting in his studio just up the road from me.

Regards


Roland

[Steve Smith]

Ah yes.. sorry, I should have searched for the orignal thread... my apoligies.. :)