Overloading Mixer?

[KingNothing]

Hmmmm, I had this problem a while ago and am wondering about it.

We were recording drums with 3 mics and running em into a realllll crappy mixer with only 2 functional inputs. (You should really see this pile of garbage...bought it used from some dude for like $20 who originally bought it at The Shack.)

2 of the mics were being run into 1 input using a Y splitter.

All the recordings sounded really really bad. It sounded as if the mixer was being completely overloaded, even tho the levels were all ok. The drums all sounded....hmmm...like it was some weird synthesised techno stuff. Hard to describe.

Is this not a technique you would recommed, and is this sound coming from running too many signals into the mixer? Sorry, kind of a long question.

King

[James HE]

sounds like your signal was taking a wrong turn every chance it got! The Y-splitter!- that hilarrious (you gottto do what you gotta do)
Seriously though I have recorded drums wich a radio shack mixer that only ran off batteries! just faders, no eq, trim, or anything. It sounded pretty bad, but it wasen't un usable.
It sounds like you were probably overloading the mics a bit (back them away from the drums a little) then you were totally degrading your signal with the Y splitter, then you were overloading the mixer.
Don't you love that $20 sound- (what kind of mics were they?)

[KingNothing]

Heres the funny part.

The mixer was $20 from Radio Shack. The mics....hahahah they were $8 a piece from Fred Meyers. They are called Recotons. These are finnne pieces of equipment, lemme tell ya. You can smash those things against anything, and they still keep soundin bad....(although they really arent THAT bad for Hhats.)

Just so you know, we have now upgraded our equipment, and that charade with the Radio Shack stuff was probably about a year ago. The old skool way was so much funner.