Need help with building a school studio!!

[forrowurdream]

The situation: I have decided to help out my music teacher with rebuilding the studio. At the point that I'm at, I can run recording no problem through a really old Mac G3 with protools 6.4 LE in it.

Now on to the main problem. I have an old Yamaha MC2404 mixer in the studio, all of the components function except the VU meters. I have run mics through with not much problem. Should it be a keeper or an item on craigslist? What would you recommend for a decent mixer? We do still have things like reel-to-reel recorders around, plus i like the feel of using an analog board. So mixer approach is preferred.

Our budget isn't large. Our school is located in British Columbia and our music program got nailed pretty hard with the school funding cut. All help would be appreciated =). I have a goal to get the studio up to standard before I graduate from high school.

 

[stevieb]

This is too cool a thread to be buried 12 freakin' pages down in a "new threads" search.

From the miniscule amount of googling I did, it appears that's a decent board. Should be fairly easy for a tech to fix the meter bridge, which translates into a modest repair bill. Check with the school board procurement department- they may have a contract with a shop that will do it cheap, and maybe even bill it to the school systems or your schools' general fund. Your school secretary should be able to help you with that. Selling it on CL may be more difficult that you think, as there are often school system regs that prohibit teachers (and almost certainly students) from selling school property.

Even though it's not cutting-edge digital, the basis of recording are the same. Plus, if you have R2R machines, you are in the analog domain, so just stay there. If you have a 24-track 1/2" R2R machine, or dare I say 1", your school has some pretty cool old stuff. You may need to spend some dough getting those machines calibrated, cleaned, whatever, but if you can scratch up the money from ANYWHERE- beg the principal to dip into school funds, get the band's and/or chorus' parents involved, heck, have a CAR WASH if you must, but get it done. Then, have student bands record there, for a fee or "donation," to what sounds to me like a very cool all-analog studio.