Lexicon PCM70

Category:  Gear / fx units / reverb

Lexicon PCM70

The Lexicon PCM70 - a big old monster reverb/fx unit from the past, released around 1990 to much acclaim.... At this time 'quality' digital reverbs were coming on strong for a few years, but cost alot, and the Lexicon PCM60 along with other prestine major-studio 'verbs like the AMS, Yamaha REV1 & eventide/Klark etc etc were the top alternatives to a quality plate reverb. In a way the PCM70 was like a bigger sister stablemate to the older PCM60 ... anyways... these were a droll-factor 'high' product when released, and still offer the thought of 'quality' when seen in a studio rack...

The PCM70 - It is primarily a reverb, but does some other fx like flanging, chorus, multitap delays, echo & 'resonant chord' programes... hmm... it has been criticised that it's other fx aint all that useful in day to day work, and thus it is too expensive when a pcm60 will get you the top end Lex reverb sound for cheaper... probably thats a fair comment even at the time of release... i wouldn't want one unless i had cash, ran a commercial hardware studio and saw one real cheap... in that instance you get a great quality reverb you can tailor exactly to get the sound you want... and sitting in the studio rack it ad's a few bucks to your hourly studio rental fee heh heh...

Nowadays there are so many decent quality multi-fx machines around offering great algorithms that these extra pcm70 fx aren't probably worth much... I think in some respects the name 'Lexicon' coupled with the magic 'PCM' prefix heps to elevate this units re-sale price...

you get about 40 presets and about 50 user-storage slots to place your edits (which you CAN rename which is handy)... the number of user-slots changes a little according to OS version.

You can change patches via midi, but the pcm70 also recognises note number, note on velocity and pitch bend info too which can be assigned to effect parameters for realtime tweaking - You also get two extra jacks inputs on the back for remote footswitching the units 'bypass' and the other one to step thu patches via another footswitch... these might be useful for gigs i suppose.

also on the back panel is the midi In, OUT & THRU, and the mono 1/4" unbalanced jack IN and two 1/4" jack mono unbalanced outs... also there is a switch for setting the input/output to +4dB or +20dB.

When editing a preset/reverb you can choose like 'plate' or 'room' and alter loads of paremeters according to the effect type but basic's include, pre-delay, reverb time, ji & lo freq' damping, dry/fx balance, attack time of the initial reflections etc etc.. you can also add chorus & gating to the 'verbs you setup, but note this unit has NO reverse reverb effect at all...

The delay fx live in 'row' 0 of the 6 effect banks (6 x 10 fx, but there is only 40 presets so some of these programmes are blank) - The delay fx editing icludes altering each of the delay times of the 6 delay 'taps', then each 'tap' can further have it's own delay time adjusted, as well as it's feedback and pan... max delay time is 432ms

Row 1 features 'multi-band' delays each with 6 available delay 'taps' with independent level, delay, pan & hi/lo freq filtering - max delay time in this 'row' is 936ms.

Row 2 holds the weird 'resonant chords' programmes - well resonant chords... if you get a delay and crank up the feedback & set a low delay time you can get a long feedback tone from a delay right.. (try it on hats etc for that Piccotto hat sound etc. Anyways the res' chord fx in the pcm70 is like having 6 of these res' taps/delays... you can tune them to chords, & ater parameters of each part of the 6 'taps' to create weird & wonderful chord effects to add to drums ^ synths etc... think about it... you can set each of the 6 delays to a different 'pitch' and a different predelay and then input a chord and the res' parts will play a small 6 part arpeggiation or all play at once if the delay time of each is the same etc etc... the master feedback/res' of all 6 parts can be controlled as one, and each individual one of the 6 parts/'taps' can also be adjusted... weird & wonderful...

Row 3 contains 'Concert Hall' programmes... bigger lush 'verbs but without much density as in a concert hall alot of the detail/density of a reverb gets adbsorbed...

Row 4 has smaller 'Rich Chamber' sounds, smaller room sized 'verbs with more mid-range fatness & detail..

Row 5 has 'Rich Plate' reverbs for drums etc.. these have more hi-end and greater initial diffusion/swell/phatness....

All the reverb proggies have around 20 user adjust parameters, as well as gating which can be applied to any programme.

Row 6 - this is a row for loading programmes into so you can use midi control on them in realtime

Row 7 contains midi s/w stuff for setting up etc

The whole unit has hi-spec's (for it's time) - 20hz to 15khz bandwidth, 80db dynamic range, 0.05% distortion and it has a lithium battery backup to preserve edited programmes on power-down.

Oh well.. as you can see, it's more than a reverb.. and it's not cheap... but lexicon do have a sound... these can be had quoite cheap occaisionaly s/h if a big studio is flogging one off and doesn't really give a shit if they get top dollar... So.. the PCM70... any user comments??...

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