I need a hub between my rack preamps & my DAW

[JamesNC]

I have a handful of rackmount bass and guitar preamps that I would like to use for home recording. Would be nice to have some sort of hub to select them from. Is it as easy as running them all into a line mixer? Then out from the line mixer, thru my AMT cab emulator, and into my DAW interface?

The goal is to be able to dial in each preamp, then mute all the channels on the mixer. From there I could select a preamp for use simply by unmuting it’s channel. I’d also like to run an fx unit in the mixer’s fx loop so each preamp would have access to it via the fx blend knob on each channel.

I’ve narrowed it down to 2 line mixers because they have mute buttons and fx loops.

1. Samson SM10
2. Peavey Line Mix 8

 

[And I]

A patch bay seems like the right solution from a simplest-signal-path perspective, as long as the effects unit has a wetness control you can turn down to blend the effects to taste. A mixer will definitely work too, and gives you a bit more control to balance the levels of different preamps with different settings, plus the FX blend in a knob rather than a setting buried in a sub-menu on a tiny screen seems like a plus.

Not sure if your preamps are outputting line level. If they're outputting instrument level, you're going to need DI boxes or some sort of impedance conversion on each channel.

 

[JamesNC]

Not sure if your preamps are outputting line level. If they're outputting instrument level, you're going to need DI boxes or some sort of impedance conversion on each channel.

These are the pieces I’d like to route into the mixer. From there send out to the AMT cab emulator, then into the DAW interface.

For Bass:
1. Ashly SC-40
2. Line 6 Bass Pod Pro
3. SWR Bass 350

For Guitar:
4. Marshall JMP-1
5. Rocktron GAP-1
6. 1970’s homemade/kit preamp

Things may weed themselves out, but this is what I’d like to start with.

 

[silky smoove]

A patch bay seems like the right solution from a simplest-signal-path perspective

This is exactly what I was thinking. Patch bays are the go-to studio tool for this type of thing across a variety of gear types. They can be a little complicated to understand at first, but they're a real time saver if you have a lot of outboard gear you need to route.