Now I remember why I retired my avid eleven rack

A

alund

Well-known member
I have been piddling with different effects for my wet side of my wet/dry/wet rig. Have been using a chorus ensemble and my H9 max but was fumbling through the cache of equipment that I have acquired over the years and found my avid eleven rack; decided to connect up.. jeez. It was terrible. I guess I didn’t have patience a time ago when I bought it and I certainly don’t now. The wet side of things were terrible while using the eleven rack. Maybe I needed to go through and tweak all the knobs but after an hour I said screw it. The H9 has a massive sound on its own without 238 extra knobs to turn especially while playing in stereo. Now I need to find two 1x12s for the wet side of things so I don’t have to haul around 3 2x12s. Fortunately my son owns a trailer dealership so I have space to haul but dammit I’m getting old. Or I need more kids to haul for me 😏
 
H9 is a great working unit. I wish they modified it to have more touchscreen modification capabilities but still keeping the footprint really small. This is 2022. Everything has a touchscreen. Having to edit through the app is aggravating. But they do sound great.
 
H9 has Blue tooth , with a surface or iphone you have the luxury of touch screen and many other things. I made that decision as to not be slave to a PC and being able to adjust perimeters Easy workaround. I like the thought of that vs a massive pedal board sized H9.
 
I know some peeps still swear by the Eleven Rack, but I've never tried one myself
 
The H9 sounds great but I always had phase issues when doing w/d because of the lack of dry/thru.

I know a handful of guys who swear by the eleven rack but I think it sounds pretty bad tbh. Maybe user error? I didn't spend a whole lot of time with it if I'm being honest.
 
I never really cared for the eleven rack. I’ve always thought their timing was not in their favor, just when they released the axe fx line was taking off and well we all know how this has played out between the two
 
I was gonna jump on one for shits and giggles recently.
Why not? Super cheap rack gear!!
My close bros talked me down off the ledge.
They ALL said the same thing. "You don't use effects anyway. WTF is wrong with you?!"
 
I had one a long time ago. I thought as an interface the encoders were good quality, but all the fx and amp models were horrible imo
 
rottingcorpse said:
I was gonna jump on one for shits and giggles recently.
Why not? Super cheap rack gear!!
My close bros talked me down off the ledge.
They ALL said the same thing. "You don't use effects anyway. WTF is wrong with you?!"
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I have been seeing them pop up recently for dirt cheap. I almost bought one just to see what it was all about, because I use a POD bean for doing scratch guitar ideas late at night.
 
with a little time a dialing in, they can sound GREAT. actually kinda regret selling mine. The guy I sold it to, gets great tones out of it.
 
Juggernaut said:
with a little time a dialing in, they can sound GREAT. actually kinda regret selling mine. The guy I sold it to, gets great tones out of it.
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It might and as I recall when I used it in a 4CM it was good. Probably could get away with 4-5 sounds and you were good for an entire show. But for my wet side of w/d/w. I just quit trying. My sound now is insanely better. I think I came up with the same conclusion a few years back but forgot.
 
11R wasn't a bad unit. I had one at a couple points in life. Fractal kinda killed it, along with their product development team - that was non-existent.

That said, I liked Headrush too, so maybe I'm deaf...
 
I have absolutely no experience, but Jon Levin used one on one of the Dokken records he did, and I think he sounds great with it.
 
paulyc said:
I have absolutely no experience, but Jon Levin used one on one of the Dokken records he did, and I think he sounds great with it.
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I remember reading about that, too. Hard to believe it considering how good it sounded - I never got close to getting a good tone with the one I had; but it did serve well for effects and reamping.

Damnit I think I need to find one again lol

Edit: Just found that interview. Looks like that album was a combo of 11R tracks, and some that were reamped through a Custom Audio amp. Good tones regardless.
 
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We used the Elevenrack for the cleans on this song in the verses. Here's the instrumental for clarity.
I did the scratch tracks with it and it ended up staying in the final version.
Some cool random tones in that thing.

 
I had an 11R for a while and it was good, but not great. I always found better tones using it IRs on my DAW, but at that rate I’d start looking elsewhere. I think the big thing that it had going for it was the “feel” you would get based on how the input was designed. That was kinda cool
 
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