Auditronics mic pre on the way!!

[TimS]

Just laid down some saved cash for one of Rob's lovely racked pair of Auditronics 110 mic pres..
Early Xmas present after some hard saving..
Can't wait till it arrives..

:)) I'd use a big smiley if they were available!!)
Tim.

[jkhuri44]

congrats tim!

no doubt you will be enjoyin' very soon : )

[Aearth]

Cool Tim, all the old stuff sounds great. How much, I hear they are a good deal.

nIC

[TimS]

Thanks guys..
I've been hanging to get some nice old mic pres.
Its taken a while, but I have a nice racked pair now :)

nIC
There are are few different Auditronic units listed on Mixmasters, so they vary in price.
These were the ones
http://www.mixmasters.com.au/used/preamps.htm


Tim..

[Chris H]

Happy Christmas then Tim. They look good too. It's great getting new gear and finding out "their" sound and discovering why other peaple think they are worth having.
You have got a great idea there... i should buy myself a christmas pressy too.

[TimS]

Cheers Chris,
Next saving if for a Neumann mic... either an U87 or an U89..
That will take a little longer I guess..
Tim..

[heathen]

They look great, looks like he does a great job with the racking.

[rick]

good enough for steely dan, the jackson 5 and donny and marie osmond good enough for Tim i think :)

[heathen]

good enough for steely dan, the jackson 5 and donny and marie osmond good enough for Tim i think :)

When you put it that way......... No wonder he wants that big smiley button.

[geofflee]

I've just returned from my work christmas party so I'm a bit pickled (and naturally turn to the turtlerock forum), so please forgive me but am I missing something? It's as ugly as sin, you have to turn your head 90 degrees to the right to read it, and the brand name is so cheesy - reminds me of 'audiosonic' that you see in the 2 dollar shops. Big bloody ugly things, preamps are supposed to be in consoles! I could be playing the devil's advocate ....or maybe I really do love my mackie!

[rick]

the early audiotronics ( memphis usa ) are classic desk designs , simple circuits , inducter eq, heaps of headroom and jensen transformers in and out , whats not to rack up ....?

but sure they are ugly....

so were neves, pultecs, and apis in the heady eighties.
its all a matter of familarity me thinks .

the ssl "format " owes eveything to the later series audiotronics "memphis machine" console lots of "ssl" ideas were seen first in that memphis board.
there is one kicking around australia somewhere
have you seen it lately otto...?

[TimS]

good enough for steely dan, the jackson 5 and donny and marie osmond good enough for Tim i think :)

ABSOLUTELY!! I'm not complaining...

rick wrote:
good enough for steely dan, the jackson 5 and donny and marie osmond good enough for Tim i think :)

When you put it that way......... No wonder he wants that big smiley button.

:-)) you bet Heath!

[TimS]

I've just returned from my work christmas party so I'm a bit pickled (and naturally turn to the turtlerock forum), so please forgive me but am I missing something? It's as ugly as sin, you have to turn your head 90 degrees to the right to read it, and the brand name is so cheesy - reminds me of 'audiosonic' that you see in the 2 dollar shops. Big bloody ugly things, preamps are supposed to be in consoles! I could be playing the devil's advocate ....or maybe I really do love my mackie!

Geoff,
yes, they may be ugly, but I didnt buy them for their looks...
I think they look pretty cool actually..
Tim..

[Aearth]

Gee I think they look cool, but sound is what it's all about. Happy recording Tim.

nIC

[TimS]

Arrived today!!
:-)

T..

[PRINCETOWN]

I've just returned from my work christmas party so I'm a bit pickled (and naturally turn to the turtlerock forum), so please forgive me but am I missing something? It's as ugly as sin, you have to turn your head 90 degrees to the right to read it, and the brand name is so cheesy - reminds me of 'audiosonic' that you see in the 2 dollar shops. Big bloody ugly things, preamps are supposed to be in consoles! I could be playing the devil's advocate ....or maybe I really do love my mackie!
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

you just dont get it!these sound way cool,these pres look good and sound great, as for the name who really cares

[Howard Jones]

If these desks were that great, how come they've been pulled apart to make outboard rack modules? Same question for all the other alleged classic consoles that seem to exist more as rack modules than as actual working consoles?

[TimS]

If these desks were that great, how come they've been pulled apart to make outboard rack modules? Same question for all the other alleged classic consoles that seem to exist more as rack modules than as actual working consoles?

Point taken, but how many folk can afford to buy an Auditronics 110 18 channel desk - I certainly cannot. Nor would I have the room to house it.
Having the availability of getting a pair of racked pres is a better option for me, whilst giving the flexibility of less space... and if they need servicing, its alot easier to send the 2 instead of getting a tech out.
How many pro studios have a super desk, but still have a few differnt mic pres in their outboard rack - gives a nicer range of options I think.
T..

[Howard Jones]

This misses the point, somewhat, as my comments weren't directed at your situation. If you find some nice strips racked up and ready-to-go at a price you can afford, you'd be silly not to buy them. My question is this: if these old consoles were as great as this forum keeps telling us, then why do they get pulled apart and racked up? One obvious answer is money as even a Neve appears to be worth more in pieces than whole.

Frankly, there have been some raves on this forum about brands that were a joke at the time and are still a joke, just because they were an analogue 80s console and were available to be racked up. Surely there's more to it than that?

[Kris]

Kind of a sweeping statement there Howard.

Don't forget that Neve and SSL consoles are often found available in the stripped out/racked up format too.

[Text_Edifice]

re cannibalization of old desks - quick thoughts:

1) Economics - as previously noted it's possible to make more money from an old desk by farming out the bits to studio's that want 'that' sound but can't afford a big desk - plus you can have several different flavours of 'that' sound for half the price of a second hand Neve (though it should probably be noted that some time in the murky past the market value of said gear probably wasn't as high as it is now). Also (based on others experience) large desks are expensive to maintain and take up a lot of room making a couple of channel strips more economically viable if you don't need more than a couple of preamps and don't use the console to mix through - this brings me to point two

2) Computers - for better or worse a lot of small studio's (even some larger ones) are mixing in the box. Subsequently a market has developed for front end audio gear and this has served to privilege the input sections of large format desks over there mix busses. The market responds by hacking up old desks - serious question for me here is what happens to the faders and purportedly exceptional mix busses from the desks that are cannibalized? - to sell the stuff that consumers think (accurately or not) will get them the sound of a hit record. This brings me to point three

3) Marketing - for some reason somewhere along the line someone came up with 'anyone can make a hit record in their bedroom' as a way of selling recording gear to a consumer market (excuse cynicism). I think this may have subconsciously had a profound effect on the way we relate to audio equipment such that marketers can now promoted their product on the basis that the sound of a good recording comes from good gear rather than the talent of the engineer, producer or artist. If hit record 'a' was tracked on console 'x' it follows that if I can only get my hands on console 'x' or it's channel strips I can make a hit record (obviously this isn't a universally held belief but it's not uncommon). In addition we see the fetishisation of old gear to the point that a good portion of new audio equipment is designed specifically to sound the same as the vintage gear used to 'craft the hits'. The logic almost seems to run - old records sound good / have vibe, old records were tracked on old gear, therefore old gear = good sound / vibe. Obviously this isn't universal but there seems to be a lot of time, effort and internet chatter invested in 'vintage' recording gear compared to innovative, new, cool sounding gear.

Ok now everyone knows that a good argument has only three points (and I could be w-a-y off the mark too) so I'll leave it there with one caveat.

I like the sound of vintage gear and I really like my AM16s. They sound great, are portable and didn't cost me anywhere near what I'd pay for a console (even a large mackie) or (most importantly) a set of new high end preamps.

Hope this is useful.

[Chris H]

Well if you ask me, its a real shame that the great old desks like the early neves with 1073 modules etc get parted out. ....and why would anyone bother racking ssl chanel strips???.......

[wez]

i've worked out that if we were to part out the calrec (as raw modules, no racking) we would make AT LEAST 2-3 times what the whole console is worth. people want the sound without the hassle, and that's fair enough. not many people have a lazy $50k but just about every dude with a home studio has $5k for a couple of really nice channels.

but of course while the calrec 1549 module is sought after because it sounds fabulous, there is a bit of hype over certain things simply because they're analogue and old (MCI 400/600 comes to mind), which is not always justified.

[Howard Jones]

I'm waiting for someone to start racking up those vintage Tascams...

[Chris H]

I'm waiting for someone to start racking up those vintage Tascams...

I saw somwhere someone calling their Ta@#$% desk a baby SSL in their studio promo.

[Howard Jones]

Well, I guess a Skoda is a baby Ferrari!

[mfdu]

well there's a 'call for expressions of interest' in the for sale section - Ta@#$% ms20. looks like the channels are in groups of four, so that may affect the ease of racking them . . . but maybe a few channels are just the sound we've all been after?
compare it to any 'pro-sumer' gear on the market nowadays - i bet it isn't surface-mount, and aren't they kind'a fairly appreciated?

for me, a console comes down to workflow - having the signal routing options, the talkback mic, the monitoring paths. being able to create parallel processing paths, having a few tape return options - it all makes a huge difference.

when all i had was my studiomaster, i was at least thankful of being able to practice working a console - even if it was only a mixer!

chris
mfdu

(raises the question - when is it a console, and when is it a mixer? does it need to be more than 20 channels, or over 1200mm wide? any ideas?)

[Ausrock]

They're all consoles and they're all mixers..............one definition of the word "console" is a panel of controls for electrical equipment :-).

[jkhuri44]

(raises the question - when is it a console, and when is it a mixer? does it need to be more than 20 channels, or over 1200mm wide? any ideas?)

console - definition - makes you weak at the knees

mixer - definition - something a drunk guy mixes on at a pub gig