Today I have received my much awaited new toys from eBay, and I am chuffed to say the least, everything works perfectly and it’s in mint condition, baring a few minor scratches, but you’d expect that from used rack gear. In case you had forgotten, I have bought one of these and one of these. At the moment I have one of the compressor channels running between my hi-fi CD player and amplifier, yes I realise that it’s sad, but I am proud to say that I am a tech geek, or gadget freak, if you prefer that! I also bought myself an 8-way XLR wiring loom, or at least it was a wiring loom, before I attacked it with a pair of scissors. Right, this is where I start to look stupid; at first I thought “damn, the input is female and the output male, I need to remove the binding rubber covering, so I can have four female and four male”. Then half way through cutting the covering off, I thought “bugger, I don’t have enough cables” – as four input and four output would use all eight cables, and kept cutting the covering off. Then when I finally cut the covering off I realised that it was fine as it was, and didn’t need to cut it off, as the input would be coming in off the multi-coil stage box, then the outputs from the compressors to the mixing console. To say that I felt like a prize prat is an understatement, but it ultimately doesn’t matter, I have eight thinner wires instead of a one thick wire but I could have saved myself the effort of removing the covering, oh well, it’s not the first time, nor will it be the last. Now onto the geeky stuff; I will be running the compressors on kick drum, snare drum, hi-hats, three vocal channels and using the existing 2 channel compressor, which is a model down from my Composer Pro-XL for guitar channels, so that will mean a much tighter sound all round, less bleed between microphones, and hopefully a clearer vocal mix. With the existing MDX2200 I could compress and/or gate all vocal channels using the subgroup insert on the desk, but we need a separate compressor/gate channel for each vocal microphone as every vocalist requires slightly different settings! Anyway, I’ll shut up now as I am sure that you are bored to tears reading techie stuff unless you are a techie yourself; *hoping I’m not the only one*