Mixer to buy for reel to reel 8 track advice

roddick1993

New member
Hey!

I'm new to this forum so forgive me if I may sound a bit uneducated on recording. I'm currently building my home/bedroom studio. I'm looking for a mixer at the moment but I'm not sure if it will be compatible with the current gear I have. I'm looking to record everything to reel to reel tape. Keeping everything strictly analog. I'll list the current gear I have below:

Fostex A-8 Reel to Reel Recorder
Focusrite ISA One Preamp
Shure Sm-57 mic
Avantone cv-12 condenser mic
KRK Rokit 5 Generation 3 RP5G3 (Pair)
Tascam 246 4 track

I originally wanted to get an Allen & Heath 16 or 22fx mixer but I've heard mixed things in terms of using it for tape. Other forums have mentioned inline monitoring where you need a mixer with tape returns ins and outs. So I'd need a mixer with 8 bus. People have mentioned getting a mackie 24.8 or a tascam 2425. They've just been hard to find because I live in canada. Not everyone wants to ship here haha. I just want to know what ideal mixer would be for my situation. I'm trying to keep my budget within 1500 or less for the mixer. Ideally I record every instrument myself which would be guitar(s), bass, vocals, Synth/Keys, & drums. So I'd be recording each track one at a time.

Thanks to anyone who responds. I really appreciate it.
 
Hi and welcome,

When I first got my Fostex decks (A8 and Model 80) I wondered the same thing and saw a Fostex 450 on my local Craigslist. Since it was the model that they made to go along with these decks I figured what the hell and bought it. I had actually bought the one that matched the A8 but one of the VU meters was dead and I ended up returning it which I'm glad I did because the 450 is the better mixer for these machines. They're not the most well built though (lots of plastic) and the LED lights have a tendency to burn out but for a cheap board it works okay.

In the year and a half since I bought it I've learned more about reel to reel recording and feel like I'm almost ready for a change as the faders and EQ section leave something to be desired on the 450 but for some lofi work it really has that feel to it. I had to clean and lubricate the faders on mine because they didn't move easily, like the Tascam 246 for example, which has the best faders of any 4-track I've ever used. Hopefully some other members here can give you some more examples.
 
Thanks a lot. But couldn’t I as well get a soundcraft 16fxii and run the the outs and ins on my Fostex through inputs 1-16 on the mixer. I saw a diagram demonstrating that method.

If someone could give me a good list of mixers then that would be awesome. Thank you to “A Reel Person”. Appreciate your comments
 
A Tascam M-216 would do the job as well, and those are usually pretty reasonable. I used one of those with my Fostex 80 for a while.

I have a Tascam 246 too, BTW. :)

You don't need an 8-bus mixer unless you need to record all 8 tracks at once. And even then, there may be ways around that since you have at least one external preamp (that looks like a nice one, too!). If your board has inserts, you can use them as direct outs when tracking too.
 
Well, with eight tracks total you probably are not going to need anything more than a sixteen track mixer, as the only time even those extra eight tracks will come into play while tracking will be when you record drums. The typical method is to mix the live drums into a stereo mix, and print that on two channels of the deck. Monitoring while playing these tracks can be accomplished by sending what you are playing to via an aux send to your headphone feed while taking them out of the L/R mix so they do not appear on the drum track. Of course, you will need to print any FX, etc as well, by routing them also to the stereo bus. But what i am trying to suss out is what possible reason you would want to limit yourself with this format as it does not lend itself to certain things i find indispensable as a one person ensemble. Like multiple drum takes, or assembling one take from several sections without the need for destructive editing ie razor blades). I am not saying it can't be done, say by mixing your guide track to a stereo pass and printing it multiple times so if you want to keep one but try it again you could. But it takes so much pre planning. Of course, I also used to just record the drums all across eight channels, and then mix the drums down to a stereo pass and print that on a fresh section of tape so that I could control the mix more, although as all eight tracks were being used you still were mixing blind. And really, the best results i got back in the eight track days was with trios, kick snare, tom/cymbal mix, bass, guitar, that left two tracks left for vocals or whatever and you could at least have a fighting chance getting the right kick snare balance going. But this was all on one-inch eight track at plus 4 operating level. And a recording console. This song I did in 87 used that method. But that is quite a different world, one inch eight versus quarter inch eight track, sonically. Jeffrey Johnson - When I arrived in KCMO after spending... If you are going to go to all the trouble of trying to play something well and all that entails, there are certainly better ways and more cost effective to boot.....
 
There are at least a dozen ways to patch anything with anything else.

They all have their own unique advantages and drawbacks.
Proceed at your own risk. :eek::spank::cool:
 
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