cheap mixer for a 4 piece band

[short_steve277]

We are going down to my holidays house at the end of the year for a week of jamming and want to record some tracks but we are confused in what mixer should we get?

The drummer wants to buy a recording mics for his drum kit and is also confused what to buy.

We want a mixer so we can mic up the singer, bass, guitar and the drums. So please suggest a decent mixer for students and also good drum mics to use and how many he should get?

Thanks

 

[sasebastian]

What are you going to be using to record? That makes a difference. If you are recording into a computer you just can't get any old mixer. Please explain what your situation is now, and how you are going to record.

 

[short_steve277]

thanks for the fast reply..

at the moment we are using the singers shure mic connected to the laptop using audacity.

The laptop has an s/pdif and a mic input. The laptop also has an inbuilt mic but its a piece of poo.

thanks

 

[stranger0]

I guess if I had to start over again, the way I went about this the first time was not a bad idea.

When I first got into this stuff, I purchased an m-audio fast track pro, 2 xlr and other stuff...I was on my way, initially I realized I needed more so I went and bought a Presonus Firestudio...that, in a sense was a mistake.

If I had to redo things and was on a limited budget, I would probably do it like this.

Get a unit like the M-Audio device (most of these are 2 channels, people love the firepod apparently, I never tried it) and then I would have bought a small mixer and there you go, you can run a left and right from the mixer to channels 1 and 2 of your m-audio or whatever device and expand it to more if need be.

As for drum mics and all that, I'm sure the guys will correct me a bit but hey, nothing wrong starting with a basic drum pack, you can get them cheap too. A lot of having a great sound starts with (A) how you guys sound but also (B) where everything lies in the mix, I feel you can use almost any type of mic for a group and still get them sounding fantastic as long as it's balanced.

Anyway, my 2 cents

 

[sasebastian]

Here are 2 suggestions if you are recording live, and need to have a mixer to go to the PA at the same time.

1) You can get a 2 or 4 channel USB or FW interface, but they usually don't have a mixer. And if they do the outputs are limited, and you can't mic the whole band. So, you'll have to get a seperate mixer. Behringer mixers are cheap and reliable. You'll mic up the band, and go 2- or 4- channels out the mixer into the interface. This will probably run about $500 or less, and you'll get 2-track live recording that you can overdub.

2) You can get a 8, 12, or 16 channel mixer with USB or FW interface. I use the Mackie Onyx 1602. But this will run you over $900. The upside is that you can mic up the band and have everything out the PA AND record all the tracks seperately.

There are many more options if you are just tracking, and not worrying about mixing live.

 

[chutsk10]

For live recordings I use a Mackie VLZ-1602. With this I plug in the vocal mic, guitar, bass, and use the rest of the inputs for drum mics (3 toms, snare, high hat, kick, 2 overhead mics) I send the L/R outputs of the mixer into the two inputs in my M-box interface which then connects to my computer.

If you are looking for something in expensive you can always take your mixer output and plug it into your mic input on your laptop but then everything will be mono.

The other thing for you is the mixer, I like mackie but Behringer makes some descent inexpensive ones, the problem is if you want to mic individual drums you will be needing a lot of chanels on the mixer and then you are looking at $200+ for something that will work for you.

 

[hunta]

What kind of budget are you guys working with?

If it was me I'd get a Saffire Pro/10 (FW 8 inputs for $500), or Presonus FP10 (roughly the same for $400). Forget the mixer. If you get an 8 channel mixer + a cheap interface you're going to be out nearly the same amount of money for far less quality. This will allow you to record all your tracks separately instead of mixed down to stereo like you'd have to do on a low end mixer. This is assuming you have a suitable FW ready computer.

For drum mics, I think those cheap mic kits are mostly garbage, but in lieu of better mics they work ok. The Nady kit is pretty terrible from my experience, the $400 Shure PG6 kit is probably as low as I would go. Keep in mind none of the mics in the PG6 kit are keepers, you would eventually want to replace all of them if you really got into recording. There's another $400 Shure kit which includes 3 SM57's and a Beta52, which really is a much better deal as those are all mics you'd keep in your collection, but you'd still need overheads. Spending less than $200 (PER MIC) on overheads is probably a poor choice.

If you wanted to get a baseline drum mic "kit" that would last, get 1 SM57 (snare), 1 Blue Kickball (kick), and 2 Audio Technica ATM450's or Oktava MK-012's (OH's). That will all run you about $600 for the mics. Vs spending $400 for a set of mics that you'll want to replace soon after getting them.