ABSTRACT. The associative operad is the quotient of the magmatic operad by the operad congruence identifying the two binary trees of degree $2$. We introduce here a generalization of the associative operad depending on a nonnegative integer $d$, called $d$-comb associative operad, as the quotient of the magmatic operad by the operad congruence identifying the left and the right comb binary trees of degree $d$. We study the case $d = 3$ and provide an orientation of its space of relations by using rewrite systems on trees and the Buchberger algorithm for operads to obtain a convergent rewrite system.