Eventide H3000D/SX
The Ultra-Harmonizer that broke the two-thousand-dollar barrier with every algorithm intact.
Overview
Eventide's own advertising for the H3000D/SX made a plain promise: this was the first Ultra-Harmonizer processor to sell for under $2,000. The D/SX was not a stripped-down, bandwidth-limited budget box wearing the Eventide badge. The company was explicit that nothing had been taken out of the design to hit the price. Buyers got the same no-compromise effects quality that had shaped the sound of pro artists and studios, for people who were serious about their music but couldn't yet justify the flagship.
The feature list covers what the H3000 line was known for. Diatonic pitch shifting, six-octave MultiShift, the reverbs, and the Mod Factory modular algorithm construction kit all carried over. That's a lot of machine for a "budget" entry point, but the D/SX was positioned as the gateway into the Ultra-Harmonizer family, not a separate, lesser product line.
To sweeten the deal, Eventide added a bank of hundreds of brand new presets contributed by Joe Satriani, Vernon Reid, Bob Bradshaw, Matt Henderson, Mesa Boogie, and Steve Vai, among others. For a player stepping up from an entry-level effects box, that preset library was the pitch. It put the sounds of working pros into the same hardware those pros were using.
The contemporary press filed it plainly. Sound On Sound (June 1996, p.50), in its effects buyer's guide, described the H3000D/SX as Eventide's entry-level 'ultra harmoniser'. The same guide listed it alongside the DSP4000 and H3500DEX in Eventide's effects lineup. It sat at the bottom of the family by price, not by capability.
It is an H3000 with the price trimmed, not the algorithms. Collectors chasing the full-fat H3000 variants sometimes pass over the D/SX, but it delivers the pitch-shifting and Mod Factory toolkit that made the line famous, and it does so for less money.
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