(11 Mar 2015, 08:38 PM)dcdmollie Wrote: Thanks so much for your input, and we eagerly await your response! (We have a gig this Saturday at which we were hoping to use our new system.)
Hi Mollie! I am so sorry to be seeing this for the first time a day after you needed the help. I've been crazy busy this last few weeks. Hopefully the gig went well nonetheless.
Quote:Here is what we always need:
Emily-vocal mic
Mollie-vocal mic
Mollie-keys line input
Sometimes, Emily plays autoharp, and we currently use a vocal mic to amplify her. But we have considered installing a pickup on her autoharp.
I also just picked up the banjolele and may someday need to mic it or install a pickup.
For both the banjolele and autoharp, I would highly recommend getting a pickup. They resolve a number of issues all at once - feedback, gain structure, mic placement, physical movement. Just make sure you get a good sounding one. Do your research on Google and call a couple of acoustic instrument shops to see what they recommend. If there aren't any in your area, call some in LA.
Anyway, I think this all means that you need a bigger mixer. Here's what I'm getting for a channel count:
MIC CHANNELS (ie, channels with adjustable gain):
- emily vocal
- mollie vocal
- autoharp
- banjolele
LINE LEVEL CHANNELS:
- holy grail (so stoked you bought this!)
- keyboard
The size of the mixing board you should get will be defined by the number of mic channels that you need. (I should clarify here that "mic channel" doesn't necessarily mean that you're plugging a mic into the channel. These channels also have 1/4" inputs into which you can plug pickups or keyboards or whatever you like. The point is that the mic channels are the ones that have the adjustable Gain knob, as opposed to the line level channels, which have fixed input gain.)
It sounds like your plans are generally expansionist in nature - which is great - and so you have a couple choices here of how to proceed.
The next size mixing board has 4 mic channels:
Behringer Xenyx 1202FX. This would put you in good stead, for now, and it's only like $40 more, which is very good. BUT: your mic channels would be maxed out right from the get-go - meaning that the very next time you want to add another vocal mic or pickup, you'd be right back in the same situation.
The other option would be to future-proof yourselves a bit by getting a board that has more mic channels than you need right now, so that if you want to add something in at any point it's not a problem. You would sort of be future-proofing yourself to a certain extent, which is a good thing. That would mean getting something like this:
Behringer x1222 USB
As you can see, that is like a next level up. It has 6 mic channels, plus a bunch of line-level channels, and then some other goodies as well like inline compression, master EQ, separate FX/monitor sends, and so on. But it's $110 more than the one with 4 mic channels. If you think about it that's sort of an insanely great deal, but still, $110 is $110.
If I were in your band, I would send the board you got back to Amazon - they're pretty cool about returns - and I would get the x1222. It'll give you room to grow and it'll be money well spent.
If the extra $110 is too much to bear at the moment, then I would get the 1202FX as a stopgap solution. It'll get you a bunch of shows down the road, and you can save up for the next bigger mixer in the meantime.
Let me know if you have follow-up thoughts. It may take me a few days to reply, but I'll get back to you soon enough.
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A general ps: I don't work for Behringer, nor am I endorsed by them. And in fact I'm generally pretty skeptical of their products. The bulk of their business model is to reverse engineer gear that other, better companies have made and then reproduce it with cheaper parts. And a lot of stuff they've put out over the years has been horrible crap that sounds terrible and breaks if you look at it funny.
But that said, this new mixer line of theirs is genuinely good. The preamps sound fine, the EQ sounds good, they don't make too much noise, and they represent overall a terrific value for the money spent. Bottom line, I recommend these boards to working musicians because I think they are a great balance of quality and price. I just thought I should probably address what for some people could certainly be an elephant in the room, haha.