VINTAGE MIXERS & ANALOGUE CONSOLES

Why do musicians, producers and engineers continue to seek out and use vintage mixing desks in the age of in the box mixing? This transcends nostalgia, fashion or convenience - even the most compact vintage console takes up a chunk of studio space. It is of course all about the sound and workflow. The ease with which you can swiftly sculpt and shape sound with both hands on a hardware console is unmatched in the software domain (unless you have a similarly-sizeable and possibly more expensive control surface).

Having real faders, pots and switches at your fingertips means you can work intuitively and mixes become performances that are hard to replicate ITB. Vintage analogue mixers, even relatively humble prosumer units, can add weight, textures and character that digital pres, eq and summing still struggle to replicate. Once you get into more serious ex-broadcast or studio consoles, the colour and quality imparted by transformers, preamps, discrete circuitry and mix/master bus architecture all add that special something. You could say that a good vintage console helps turn recordings into records.

For me personally, it's all about the studio as instrument and creative/performance dub mixing: without a mixing desk, I'd be lost. If you want to make the most of hardware effects such as a Roland Space Echo or Grampian Type 636 Spring Reverb, you need a mixer with a couple of auxiliary sends to get started.

At Soundgas we've been buying, selling, servicing and working through vintage mixers for as long as we've been making music. From big rare British and American broadcast and recording studio desks to the more compact Japanese home studio mixers, we've seen many consoles pass through our workshops. Over the years we've often gone against popular opinion and unearthed diamonds in the rough which others had previously dismissed. Many have strong views on what's good, what's underrated, and what to avoid, but how many of those expressing their opinions so forthrightly have real life hands-on experience? What's the best mixer is a very subjective question which depends on many factors - including personal taste, budget, and individual sonic and feature requirements.

WHAT COUNTS AS A VINTAGE MIXER?

The term covers a wide range of equipment designed for many different use scenarios. From the large-format broadcast and recording consoles with legendary names that echo through the history of recorded music: Neve, API, SSL, Trident, Helios. These classic boards defined the sound of the recordings of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and many now command serious investment (of time, energy and resources as well as money) to own. It's one thing to be able to buy a vintage Neve for example, but you then have to factor in many things to have a console that functions reliably in your studio. A technician (and spares) to maintain it in good working order is the first consideration - few vintage consoles can deliver reliably without careful and constant care and attention. Then there's air conditioning and ventilation - vintage consoles can cut your winter heating bills, but the annual cost in electricity consumption is not trivial. You need space and if it doesn't come with a dedicated (and appropriate to your set up) patchbay there's a significant investment required to interface with the rest of your gear.

At the other end of the scale are the compact and semi-professional mixers that once populated home studios, rehearsal rooms and small commercial studios during the same period. These were often denigrated at the time as being too noisy but with modern recording gear sometimes considered too sterile, people now enjoy these units for the very limitations that caused them to be disregarded in the first place.

Musicians, producers and engineers who want analogue character and workflows without the associated cost and complexity that comes with larger consoles are finding new uses for the old Boss, Tascam and Fostex mixers (and Portastudios) that were, up until relatively recently, the preserve of thrift stores, car boot sales and a few diehard lofi obsessives.

The most fertile territory for many musicians is somewhere in between: mid-format desks from Tascam, Midas, Soundcraft and Allen & Heath, that were built to a professional standard but priced for working musicians, smaller studios and for front of house use. These are mixing desks that can be relied on and used daily in working studios and writing rooms, and that can offer great value in the vintage mixer market. Because they require a little more space/investment than the aforementioned prosumer units, and were produced in larger numbers than the high end consoles, it's something of a buyer's market.

VINTAGE OR MODERN?

Modern mixing desks are objectively more accurate. The signal path is cleaner, the noise floor is lower, the specifications (on paper) are superior in almost every measurable way. However, many have been made with an accountant's hand resting heavily on the designer's shoulders. Again, this has to be split into price/use band segments.

There are companies today making high quality analogue mixers with few compromises (Zael, RND, Neve etc), but these come at a price equivalent to or higher than the vintage boards their potential customers are used to. If we had a serious budget for a studio console that needed to be used daily, we would most likely choose one of these over their vintage counterparts: because we understand more than most the costs and compromises that come with a high end vintage console.

Stepping down into the mid range there is less choice; at this level the pressure of the bean counters' hands is felt more strongly and many are digital or hybrid because this is how they can deliver feature-rich boards at a price point that won't frighten the market. They may not be designed to be viable for long term repairs/maintenance (or supported by manufacturers for parts/repairs/schematics) - cost savings that will return to bite the owner long after profit has been taken by the manufacturer's shareholders.

One brand that shines for us - and that we were introduced to by our head tech, Dr Huw (who'd spent many years on the road with Massive Attack, Portishead, Robert Plant etc) - is Midas. Originally a British company proudly manufacturing in the UK, now owned by Music Tribe (Behringer) 'designed in the UK' and built in China. These desks are the mainstay of the live music scene. They are reliable, sound great and have feature sets that go way beyond most consoles designed for recording studios. Get a good one and you'll be very happy, but beware as many have toured/gigged and lived hard lives on the road. I've read a great deal about how the UK ones are superior to those made in China, but I'm on my second Chinese-made F series and have experienced no issues whatsoever.

When you drop down to today's equivalents of the consumer desks there is an incredible array of options, but long term reliability is questionable - future maintenance and parts availability means we are in the realm of the disposable. That's not to say that you cannot make perfectly good recordings on a compact Mackie - in many ways today's cheap mixers are incredible value. But you probably aren't reading this because you're interested in a used Mackie or (dare I say it) Behringer, but if you are, go for it - neither of these will hold you back. It's the hands that matter, not the tools. I can be perfectly happy with a tiny Mackie or Tascam mixer and Boss DD-3 delay pedal...

But vintage (and high quality modern) consoles have so much allure and mojo: from the harmonic content introduced by transformer-coupled circuitry, to the way vintage components behave/sound differently to today's brand new equivalents, it's the inherent musicality within these circuits designed without - or with fewer - compromises by engineers seeking the best possible performance rather than the maximum potential profit (which might explain why so many of these manufacturers are no longer with us).

Hardware analogue circuits are complex, non-linear systems, and it's that complexity that is part of what makes them interesting to work with. When you run audio through a modern or well-maintained vintage console, you might come for the summing weight, but you stay for the processing and the performance; myriad swift and subtle mix adjustments made without overthinking that add up to way more than the sum (ahem) of its parts.

BUYING VINTAGE - WHAT TO KNOW

The vintage mixer market is something of a minefield - I know, I've bought (or acquired) a few myself and nearly every time it's been a heart over head decision (and the head was later able to say 'I told you so'). Condition varies enormously, and technical/operational condition matters exponentially more than with other gear. Your desk is at the heart of your studio and if it adds noise, is unreliable or fails when you need it most, it can be a disaster. A well-maintained example of a mid-tier desk will - for most users - outperform a neglected high-end one and the cost of restoring a poorly-maintained console can easily/vastly exceed its purchase price. Our buyer's guide covers this in more detail. Equally important is understanding what you're buying it to accomplish. A large-format console requires significant space, power, air conditioning, and continual/ongoing maintenance. A compact consumer or semi-pro desk from the Tascam M-series or Midas Venice range can sit on a regular office/studio desk or table, and sound excellent from day one - provided they've been properly serviced. Then there's the voltage question. A significant proportion of the best-value vintage mixers were manufactured in Japan for the domestic market, which runs at 100V. You can of course find export versions that run natively at your voltage, but often these have lived harder lives than those coming from Japan. Running Japanese equipment in the UK requires a step-down transformer. This is a topic we cover in full elsewhere in this hub, along with our recommended solutions.c