Best Mixing Board For Analog Home Studio

[Derrick111]

Hello, I want to get opinions on the best mixing board for my home 8 track reel to reel studio. I record mostly rock (both light and hard), as well as some acoustic instruments. I like big, solid, proffesional, quality sounds, as well as raw, low fi sounds. I always heard things like this or that board from the early 80s sounds great. OK, what are some of the sleeper boards to look for? It looks like Makee boards are fine and all, but the name is just a bunch of hype and it is possable to get older boards which are better sounding and cheeper. What are the great, cheap boards I should look for?
Thanks to all!!

[The Ghost of FM]

For 4 buss mixers, I like, use and recommend the 300B series from TASCAM which came in 3 different frame sizes; 8, 12 and 20 channels. They were a fully loaded boards feature-wise and offered very clean, smooth and musical sound quality.

I use two M312B mixers cascaded together to form a 24 channel board with up to 44 inputs at mixdown for more complex productions.

My mixers originally retailed for $3400 a piece and commonly sell for about $350 a piece on the used market these days. A true bargain if there ever was one!

If an 8 buss board is required, the 500 series from TASCAM offered much of the same as the 300 series with just more recording busses.

If you work by yourself or with a Friend or two, a 4 buss mixer will do the trick but if you are recording an entire band in one pass, an 8 buss board will come in more handy.

The 300 series boards also offered direct outs on each main channel mixing strip so if need be, it could be configured to be an 8, 12 or 20 buss board too with a bit of re-patching to the recorder.

Cheers!

[robin watson]

I don't know what kind of money you want to spend, but three desks that come to mind are:

1) Soundcraft 6000 - the only one of the three I can truly vouch for, as I own one - replacing a Mackie VLZ, the 6000 took a veil off the whole picture. In hifi terms, everything just sounds bigger, clearer and more real (even thru lowly Yamaha NS10s, the difference is obvious). If you can find one with a patchbay, it just gets better, easier, and more fun.

2) Allen and Heath Series 8 - I first heard about these through a potential sale on Ebay, a few weeks before I happened upon the 6000. it eventually sold for 200 quid, which looking at the desk and description, I thought was a decent price. Not much info on the web about these:

http://www.dancetech.com/aa_dt_new/h...id=2651&lang=0

3) Yamaha RM800 - the link below takes you to a website dedicated to this desk, which I found very interesting and practical:

http://www.inversionstudio.com/rm800/rm800.html

Of course, maintenance tends to be an issue with older desks, and so modular designs offer some comfort; should a channel strip go down, it may be possible to just send the offending strip away for service and continue with what you've got.

Just a few ideas.

Robin.

[snipeguy]

Ghost of FM: I like, use and recommend the 300B series from TASCAM

I have to agree. I use the 308B and love it. Paid $250 canadian for it and feel it was worth every cent.

[Herm]

I have the m-312b also and its a great board. Very flexible and sounds great.

[The hidden Bird]

I have a StudioMaster Series II in my basement, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It's early eighties. The mic preamps are muddy (although the line in isn't too bad) and it's very difficult to open up and work on in the event of a dirty pot switch. I ended up mounting the thing into a custom desk with the bottom removed because it was so difficult to get at each channel.

It's a 24x8x2 desk with 6 aux ins/outs, 4 band eq with sweepable mids, a slate tone generator. Lots of great features, and I've learned a lot about recording using it, but I think I could've had a much better sounding board for the $800 I spent on it.

-tHB

[Derrick111]

Thank you all so much! Thanks for the "mudd" warning on the Studiomaster. Gohst, I am looking into the Tascam 300 and 500 series boards. Robin, the Soundcraft 600 series and Allen & Heath sounds like great potential as well. What 600 series Soundcraft would be the 8, 12, and 16 chanel versions? How do the Soundcraft, Tascam, and Heath and Allen compare in sound? How would one describe the sound of each?
You guys are great!