Rack effects to mixing desk.

Scruntfundle

New member
Hi folks.

I have a 12u rack box at home which was rammed with stuff until a few days ago, I had a bit of an upgrade and managed to get rid of a lot of old stuff.

While talking to a friend the other day he suggested I run my rack effects through a mixing desk to get more control over the outputs. I can see the benefits, but we didn't get into the details of how to achieve it. He's just gone on holiday to Spain (Selfish git) so I thought I'd ask here how best to get this setup.

My current setup is: Guitar into a Line 6 Pod, fx loop send >> Virtualiser >> Lexicon unit >> Boss unit >> Return to Pod. Final out to Saffire >> DAW. I have a couple of patch panels with everything plugged in at the back so I can swap things around easily.

Now, I can see how to send the rack units outputs to the mixer, what I don't get is how I'd split the guitar signal to each unit. They all have 2x ins and outs which I'd obviously want to preserve, so I need in total 7 outputs from my guitar?? And I don't understand how I'd order the effects with a mixer, as I'd always have all signals in parallel. Or does a decent mixing desk cater for all this? If so what does it need, what am I looking for?

And at the end of the day, would it really be worth it? I can see it would really easy to note down the settings from a desk surface to recreate the same sound later, a lot easier than noting down every effects units ins and outs and levels. I should mention the Virtualiser, Lexicon and BOSS unfits are pretty much only used for one effect each. The POD is superb, but I run out of processor power with a few of my sounds so the other units tend to provide the final stereo spread and mild modulation type stuff.

And yes, I use a decent DAW, so why bother, why not do it all there? Well, I'm not always in front of the DAW so I need a hardware solution, plus I hate working with latency.

Could someone please run through what would be needed and how this would be achieved?

Many thanks.
 
It looks like I need a load of aux? But I can't find any desks with 4 stereo auxs that don't cost a small planet or my soul! There are some 12 channel mixers out there that look ideal, but only have 1 or 2 external aux.

Rather than using the aux return controls, is there any reason I couldn't run the return back into channel inputs? That way I could use the faders instead of the knobs, and then I'm not bothered about returns, I just need sends. If that's the case I could be very dirty and use the headphones out, monitor out, etc.

Am I getting this right?
 
If you have enough patch points, connect the mixer inserts to the patch bay. Then you can route the insert send through any effect in any order and return it to that channel. Also connect a couple of effects sends to the patch bay in case you want to use some effects in parallel. You could route the returns to channels for more flexibility. I would probably also put the Pod effects loop in the patch bay while connecting the output to a channel input.

When using the patch bay with an insert or effects loop it's useful to set the patch channel to "normal" the signal back to the return so you don't have to keep a cable in it when it's not in use.
 
I always return effects to channels, it give more control as you can eq the effects as they return and the fader is more accurate then a small rotary knob (usual for a return).

Alan
 
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