Fostex 1840, the good, the bad, and the ugly!

[1manband]

I just bought one of these and was wondering if anyone has any knowledge of them or has one? Any opinions would be appreciated.

[1manband]

come on people., i know this is not a sexy question but somebody has to know something about this mixer, had one or seen one once, something? please help!

[SouthpawGuitars]

Hey, just saw your post and thought I'd help you out. In fact, I joined this forum just to respond, since no one else has. You've already had the board for over 4 months now and have probably formed your own opinion, here's my feedback anyway:

I've had a Fostex 1840 Mixer for almost 15 years. I bought it new when I was working for a dealer on 48th St. NYC for only $400. brand new. We bought out all remaining inventory from Fostex at that price and the store owner was nice enough to let me buy one at cost.

The Good: Decent noise specs, outboard power supply, excellent versatility offered by in-line monitoring with fader reverse (yielding 36 inputs on mixdown not counting returns), 2 switchable monitor outs, 2 switchable 2-track returns, direct outs, inserts and Mute/PFL/Solo on every input, etc.

The Bad: No center detents on pan pots, those REALLY loose faders (they're on rollers, gotta be careful not to brush them accidentally), a potpourri of jack types requiring a variety of cables (XLR, RCA, TRS).

The Ugly: It's WAY bigger than it needs to be, at least twice as large as any other 18 input console currently in production. I recently replaced it with a Behringer MX2440 simply because it saved me tons of space on my Omnirax workstation.

Overall, the Fostex 1840 served me well over the years and I've never had any reliability issues with it. Feel free to email with any questions.

Tom