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Originally Posted by Bassmankr  Thanks for the info guys,
John, I do have the full load config on the desk 36 left side input modules and 24 right side duel moniter modules so I'll be very cautious with the math and mods to make sure I don't stress/overload the PS. I came across that right side of the desk panning trick when I was researching whether to buy the desk or not but thanks for the tip regardless. Lou Gimenez in NY is a frequent poster here and has the 16 buss version of this desk, he gave me some contact info for a tech in NY named Tom Maguire who did a mod of his master module. What he did exactly to it Lou didn't say but he told me it certainly "opened the desk up" alot. I'll be calling him soon but I wanted to learn what makes this desk tick so I could have an intelligent conversation with him (I'm having a blast and really learning alot). As for the sound of the desk before I stripped it to the frame, the mids and lows were right there and creamy but the high end was veiled (maybe thats what Lou meant when he said the mod "opened it up". I could make up for it with the EQ but that's not the point, you want the desk sounding great without the EQ kicked in.
Jim warned me that the construction is bad in these desks and he was right but some of that is an easy fix. Layout on the input modules are bad also in that the EQ is up near the meters and buss assigment switches are close to the faders so you have to do lots of reaching, it would be much better if these two items switched positions. The last big negative is the real estate the desk takes up, 8 feet wide LOL but given the song I paid for it and the fact that it's replacing a Mackie 32-8 plus the learning experience of a desk that I can work on makes me think I made a compromise in the right direction. |
Perhaps ironic IMO it was Mackie's 8-bus in-line for just under $4k retail that killed the market for the Peavey $10k split... Just look at the price points now for value 8-bus desks. Hundreds not thousands of dollars. In hindsight Peavey/AMR may not have been the obvious brand to market an old school split into an increasingly in-line market.
I'll try not to sound like I'm making excuses but my layout guys were tasked with using in house single-sided PCB technology with crude by today's standards (20+20) spaces and traces. Physical layout was somewhat influenced by natural signal flow and the difficulty in passing signals back and forth. Even with modern fine line technology short signal paths are better. Short is a relative concept in the context of 6’ long consoles. As i recall I had next generation module revs working on the bench but the market went away from us pretty quickly, and I had to retarget my engineering group’s resources elsewhere.
I'll be glad to share my $.02 off list on specific tweaks and try not to get too defensive (I am human with a healthy ego). I think I recognize Tom Maguire, so I have probably spoken with him before. There were several AMR consoles in NYC area.
Good luck and with 100+ feeds to the L/R bus you're not likely to run out of inputs during mix down.
JR