A true classic.

Great on drums. Super fast. 40dB of gain reduction!

Love it.

Cheers :)

Good on saxes, all horns, really, as well. Practically bulletproof build quality, too, and great output headroom.

It works great for me with bass or acoustic guitar

I love mine, although I will often times throw up an LA3A on the same types of material.

I'm with, onboard with, KROK. Similar but subtly different and completely different operational designs. So you stick it where it feels best.

So, KROK, are you actually in California as in LA? That used to be my favorite station when I visited there back in the 1980s. In fact I believe I have a 6 hour VHS audio air check from 1981 or was that 1982? The audio is crappy but it's a great air check. They just didn't do radio stations like that in Washington DC. And since I was working at the number one station in Washington DC, I had to bring back something that sounded good. Even if it didn't sound good, it was right.

I'm feeling old now
Mx. Remy Ann David

Nope....good ole Iowa.

You mean the LA rock station KROK's call letters, now resides in Iowa? Or you have just taken the moniker of KROK and reside in Iowa?

It doesn't take much to confuse me
Mx. Remy Ann David

RemyRAD, post: 374381 wrote: You mean the LA rock station KROK's call letters, now resides in Iowa? Or you have just taken the moniker of KROK and reside in Iowa?

It doesn't take much to confuse me
Mx. Remy Ann David

KROQ is the LA station. As I recall, their tag line was "Rock of the 80s". I suspect that has changed.

If I can put my hands on that 6 hour-long mono, noisy VHS videotape, I'll transfer it to a 16-bit, 11 kHz sampled MP3 And stick it on sound cloud. That gives it a nice a.m. radio passband since it's response wasn't much better than 5 kHz anyhow. And it was simply an air check out of a mono clock radio I just turned on and let run all day. It's fun. A bygone era. Oingo Boingo figured prominently that day as I recall? Now I'm going to go nuts looking for that.

Boinging
Mx. Remy Ann David

Mo Facta, post: 373528 wrote: Super fast.

Interesting assesment. When I first encountered a 160 (this would've been circa 1980) it was in a recording studio where my only choices for compression were either the dbx 160 or the UREI 1176. Compared to the 1176, the 160 was SLOW! And so for the past 30 years I've never even considered a dbx 160 when I was looking for a fast compressor.

the 160 has a nice slow attack when you barely tap it, but it seems like the attack gets quicker the hard you push it. maybe I'm on drugs but thats what it seems like to me

Plus maybe he was referring to the release. It can sound fast sometimes...can bring out a lot of the tom body when compressing toms for example...but not super super fast...once again its all in how you hit it...

I love mine!

I have a hard time believing that the ATTACK time on the 160 is "too slow", mainly because it's really easy to crunch up a bass through it if you don't slow it down. Maybe it IS the release time the mudbuster was referring to. Whatever the case, I like both of those boxes.

moonbaby, post: 374989 wrote: .. if you don't slow it down...

are you thinking of a different version of the 160 (like dbx couldn't make it more confusing!)

The 160vu doesn't have timing controls.

No, the other 160's don't have that , either. I was remembering the 165, the one with the VU meter and the 2 smaller knobs for Attack/Release.