Comments on: Big Ole Project Studio Mixing Consoles of the early 80s https://www.preservationsound.com/big-ole-project-studio-mixing-consoles-of-the-early-80s/ information and ideas about audio history Thu, 31 Mar 2022 18:23:33 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Samuel Hirsh https://www.preservationsound.com/big-ole-project-studio-mixing-consoles-of-the-early-80s/#comment-620566 Thu, 31 Mar 2022 18:23:33 +0000 http://www.preservationsound.com/?p=7367#comment-620566 Soundcraft 800 user here! We got ours for free from a friend of ours who was mixing tape recordings with it in his studio, but threw it to the curb when he stopped recording to tape and upgraded his rack with 8 Neve preamps. Our board is from early 1982, and was working overall but in serious need of some TLC. It’s a 18/8/4 configuration and was apparently originally owned by a touring rock band. There was a $500 price sticker on it and the console was probably one of the dirtier bits of gear I’ve seen. Spent a long time removing decades of masking tape residue from the channel inputs, a thick layer of cigarette smoke residue probably from many nights of a FOH engineer enjoying cigarettes over it. Still working through the electrical issues but 14 of the channels work enough to use and we have started using it as a front end to our recording interface which has very clean and characterless preamps.

Overall, really nice sounding board! The Preamps sound nice and running an entire band through them sounds really great, with everything having that nice warm, glued together console sound. The EQ is great too, nice and simple and shapes the sound just enough going into the DAW without coloring things to drastically. Will experiment with more of the routing options as we restore it more and more, we’re now going to take out the individual channel strips and work through them one by one, and will probably recap it soon.

It’s been a fun journey restoring it and I can’t wait to work on it some more. Big fan of Creation records and My Bloody Valentine and those records were mostly produced on budget DDA and Soundcraft boards so it’s a nice fit for our studio sonically. Another studio we are a fan of in Appleton, WI, Crutch of Memory, uses a Soundcraft 400 and produces fantastic records with it. Great stuff and under rated boards, nice seeing these original brochures!

]]> By: Marigatti, Sergio https://www.preservationsound.com/big-ole-project-studio-mixing-consoles-of-the-early-80s/#comment-447260 Wed, 17 Jan 2018 20:22:39 +0000 http://www.preservationsound.com/?p=7367#comment-447260 Hi Friends,
Does anyone have the Service Manual or Schematics of the Tapco 7416 Mixer, 74 channel 16 series ?
Thanks
Sergio
contact: servox@live.com

]]> By: Andrew https://www.preservationsound.com/big-ole-project-studio-mixing-consoles-of-the-early-80s/#comment-253029 Sun, 18 May 2014 18:41:14 +0000 http://www.preservationsound.com/?p=7367#comment-253029 I have a modded and perfectly running allen and heath series 8 16 track running with a soundcraft 760 2″ 24 track, with Logic pulling it all together!

Best part is I paid $300 for the mixer, $300 for the tape machine

All local

]]> By: Ron Rochondo https://www.preservationsound.com/big-ole-project-studio-mixing-consoles-of-the-early-80s/#comment-196926 Fri, 25 Oct 2013 15:29:02 +0000 http://www.preservationsound.com/?p=7367#comment-196926 I had one of those Tapco 16 channel mixers about 8 or 9 years ago. I loved it. Thing was beat to hell and still worked great. Not very “transparent” I would say, kinda made everything you ran through it a bit dull and noisey, like it was coming off of shitty old tape or something. At that time I was doing mostly all electronic music, so it worked out well for making things a little less computer-y sounding, and sterile. It had a built in spring reverb mounted on the back, and that’s something I would really like to see come back in style with mixers. Just turn the knob on any channel and you got verb.

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