TC Electronic Reverb 4000

The hardware is fairly easy to use, though with so many parameters, it's not simple. I'd rather have the parameters though, and think tc have done an excellent job of organizing the interface to edit and store presets. Finding the presets in the first place is aided by their "Wizard" feature, which is very helpful. I still found it hard to find what I was after, though. The 960L LARC interface makes finding presets easier than this Wizard just because of the screen size difference. On the other hand, the TC Icon software makes it very easy to find presets and manipulate all of the parameters because they are right there on the screen. You don't have to scroll and push buttons forever to find what you're looking for. The software works fast and is light on CPU. Really great. The manual is great. It explains some issues about reverb that could apply to any device, so it's more than just a manual. the firmware revision number is 1.11. The hardware interface gets a 9 and the software deserves a 10, I think.

I recently sold the Reverb4000 (not because I didn't like it), and described to the buyer in an email what I felt some of the differences between it and the Lexicon 300 were. I've also hinted at a comparison between it and the 960L. At first, I liked the tc as much, if not more, than the 960L. Very different, but I thought it might be more useful for even most things. As time went on, however, I found myslef prefering the 960 on most of the projects I was doing. Since one had to go, it was practical that it be the tc. Here's what I emailed Wilhelm in Germany:

I've found that music and audio production is a very personal thing, so I'm reluctant to prejudice you too much about the tc. I will say that the tc is thinner and brighter than the Lexicon. It is also more transparent. It's still very smooth on top, though--no digital hash, it's very high quality, I think. The top engineer, Joe Chicarelli, says that the Lexicon takes up a lot of space in a mix, so if you want to retain space, the tc can be useful. Joe says that he often plays around with the tc's "high color" adjustment to tame the brightness. I agree with Joe, and found the high color adjustment to be a key feature. In my experience, both are great on a single source, say a solo piano. The piece I told you about was for solo cello, and the tc's Amsterdam Hall preset worked great to frame the sound with a large hall ambience without interfering with the music. Both work great as a "generic" reverb also. In other words, if you want to apply reverb to the whole mix, either on the 2-buss in the same amount for everything, or as an aux buss with different amounts on different sources, both work well and have contrasting sounds. The Lexicon is dark and lush, the tc is bright and transparent. I primarily bought the tc for single source reverb in a mix with other sources, and as an alternative generic reverb. It's impossible, for instance, to get that 1980s British/American bright splashy snare sound using a Lexicon. You can get that easily using the tc (or a Roland DEP5, though not nearly as good). The tc has more of what I think of as a "modern" sound, whereas the lexicon 300 is a recognizable classic (and therefor perfect for classic rock). The 960L has a more modern sound while keeping a lot of the classic 480 algorithms. I am very pleased with it as a main reverb. (One weakness of the 960, in comparison with the 480, is that it has reverb and delay only, no other effects.) The tc has a very nice AMS emulation. The plates are also very good. For my taste, I would almost always roll off the high frequencies of the tc using the "color" parameter. You can try to roll off some of the lows of the Lexicon, and eq the highs to accomplish the same thing, but it won't sound like the tc. So the tc is a great compliment to the Lexicon given that you like the sound of both. Much better than struggling with two too similar reverbs muddying up the mix.

Only owned it for six months, so I can really say. But I've owned several tc pieces (fireworX, m2000, g-force, gold channel) and they've been terrfically reliable.

I've only had really good experience with tc's customer support. Very efficient and reasonable. I did not deal with them in relation to this procust, so I won't rate them in this context. I'd give them a 10, though, in general.

I engineer a lot of styles, though mostly classical, jazz, and pop/rock. This is definitely a high quality reverb. Whether it will suit you all depends on context and taste. I might have kept it if I hadn't have needed the money as I think it may have been "a keeper" for the long haul. I don't like tc reverb as much as Lexicon, in general, though. I don't think it's as impressive, even in tiny amounts (what I mean is that the Lexicon sounds more impressive to me even when only a slight amount is added in comparison with the tc). But not all of my clients shared my opinion, and did prefer the tc over the Lexicon for some things. Because it has only reverb, it is a little limited. I may replace it in the future with an Eventide 8000 so as to have a variety of effects. At this point, I feel the Lexicon 960L covers my main reverb needs just fine.