Help! Soundcraft Spirit Notepad connections!?

[jonah49]

Hey everyone,
I'm pretty much a newbie (when it comes to recording at least), and I'm hoping one of you can help me out. I just bought a new Soundcraft Folio Notepad, because I heard it had decent pre's and was adequate for my needs (acoustic duo/vocals). I have a Rode NT-1A and and SP C1, and I plan to get a Marshall v67g and an SP B1 as well, just to cover my bases. I record with a Taylor acoustic with the Fishman Stereo Blender, and the other half of the duo will be mic'd up.
I was reading the manual for the Notepad, and I noticed that it had "global phantom power" which (I think) means that phantom power gets turned on for all of the in's at once. It cautioned me to not use any "unbalanced inputs" while phantom is on, because it could fry my equipment. I don't have any dynamic mics, so that doesn't worry me so much, but I'm just wondering what I can do. Say that I hooked up 3 condensers and 1 guitar line-in to the 4 inputs, and then my Blender system into the stereo input. Would either of the guitars fry? I'm not familiar with what phantom can do to an "unbalanced" source. How can I keep my sources balanced?
Also, does anybody know how to use the Stereo Blender in stereo instead of mono? I have an adaptor that takes a 1/4" input and splits it into strereo RCA jacks, which I believe could be used on the Stereo ins of the notepad, but I'm not sure. Do I need a special instrument/line cable? TRS?
I apologize if this has already been covered, but again, I'm a nebie. I'm not so great with wiring and all that. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much.
Cheers,
Jonah

[TexRoadkill]

You wouldn't want to plug the Fishman directly into the mixer anway. You will need a High Impedance input on the mixer (if it has one) or you will need to use a DI aka Direct Box. The DI will take the guitar level signal and turn into a balanced mic level signal so you can plug it directly into the mic inputs. If you want to go stereo you would need two DI's or a stereo unit and it would take up two channels of your mixer.

[jonah49]

Any idea how much one of those would cost? I've kind of already stretched my budget as far as it will go.
What if I bought a Tube MP or something like that, and used the phantom/pre on that for the condenser, so I could turn phantom off on the board?
Could I just do a line-in mono channel from the guitar, without frying it?
Does any of this make sense, or is it my brain that's been fried?
Please helP!?
Thanks!

[TexRoadkill]

Phantom power has nothing to do with this. The problem is that a guitar signal is usually too hot for a mic input and not hot enough for a line level input. You either need a high impedance instrument preamp or the DI so you can use a mic preamp on the Folio.

A DI can be as cheap as $20-30 new. Try plugging your guitar into the input and see if it works. If it distorts too easily you will need a DI.