I'm not sure if Doug McClement is still on this list, having sold his Elite a few years back, but Doug has had three Mackie 8-buss consoles in his "B" remote system for years. Those boards have been all over the world (including Kuwait when the place was still very much in flames) and have done probably thousands of live broadcasts and recordings. I know, I was audio supervisor for at least 130 of them on a TV show we worked on together. For my part, I had several 1202, 1402, 2 x SR-24 and an SR-32 in inventory when I managed a large PA company in the '90's. Those desks worked hard, going out several times in a week and the _only_ fault I ever had was when one of them went into our service shop to get the BNC connector for the LittleLite fixed. That said, when I worked at the Mackie service center for a couple of years, I saw a lot of 1604's...but of course, if you work in a hospital, you mostly see sick people, right?
Cheers, Ike
On 11-06-15 7:25 PM, Tommy Mokas wrote:
I'll chime in and also defend the Mackie for such operations. I used a 24x8 bus and a 1604 (both VLZ), and come to think of it, a 1202 for plenty of tracking and even summing a few times. I'm not going to say its this incredible console or anything, but I have done plenty of pro level stuff with both boards when I had to. They are certainly quiet, and if they're kept clean, will operate flawlessly for many years. Its wise to keep them covered if you're in a dusty area, cause those little grey buttons can get pretty crackly and start to cause problems for the whole channel. But I think you'll be just fine to use them for FX returns and even utility pres for certain things. They have enough gain to drive something like an SM7 and aren't terribly noisy even at the top of their gain structure. I used the Onyx pres a couple times for a short amount of time and those seemed even quieter. They have little to no character, and by this I mean they are very clean, but for returns, I think you'd be more than fine to use those, and they can be had really cheap. The 24x8 and the 1604 have the added bonus of direct line outs, on the 24x8 one on each channel, on the 1604 I believe the first 8 channels do.
-- Ike Zimbel, Zimbel Audio Productions Ltd. Toronto 416-720-0887 "Studio House Calls". Authorized Warranty service for Allen& Heath, Clear-Com, Drawmer, Soundcraft, SPL and Yamaha. Repairs and upgrades to analog audio equipment including: AMEK, dbx, Neve, Neotek, MCI, Soundcraft and more. Ask about our RF frequency co-ordination services! www.zimbelaudio.com ------ View the list online at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] You can unsubscribe at anytime by sending an email to mailto:[email protected] with "unsubscribe neotek" in the message body. If you have any difficulties, or questions --please send an email to mailto:[email protected]. The Neotek list is lovingly hosted by Catapult Web. Remember that any message or reply sent to the list will be automatically forwarded to all subscribers. Vive Le Neotek! Thanks.
