We've barely finished wiring up the studio and it seems very likely that we have the opportunity to upgrade from my little Trident VFM 16x8 board to a partner's late model Soundcraft 600. I say late model because it looks much more "modern" than many of the 600s that I have seen, so I'm guessing that it is from somewhere near the end of the model's production. The good news is that the 32x8 board will almost be a "plug and play" replacement at the patchbay with the 8 buss VFM. (I am SO glad that I spent the time and money to wire up a rear connector panel on the patchbay!)
The Soundcraft looks all shiny like new and has spent its entire life in a post house where it seems to have been treated very nicely. And the purchaser was told that the board had received the full Audio Upgrades module modifications: if every channel was redone, that upgrade would make the recent purchase price a truly remarkable deal.
What can any Soundcraft 600 owners/users offer in the way of potential concerns with this board, problems common to this model etc.? (the board has already been purchased, but we have not fully decided to bring it into our shared studio.) We have a decent little collection of outboard gear, so a lot of the consoles work consists of convenience operations: feeding and controlling monitors, headphone sends, etc., in addition to its main job of mixing. The 600 will be a major improvement over the VFM with regard to these types of features; it'll be nice to have a polarity reverse switch and phantom power on the channel strips, and I'm really looking forward to having the stereo buss on a selectable switch - the only way to the stereo bus on the VFM was via the 8 busses. YOu couldn't go directly from an input channel to the 2 bus and you couldn't send a signal to one of the 8 busses without it also going to the 2 bus.
The other big convenience is that the 600 is a "modern" split console. When its time to mix, you did not have to re-patch. The right side tape monitor inputs are normalled to the first 16 input channel line inputs. The VFM was old school split; mixing meant re-patching from tape returns to line inputs.
So, even though the Soundcraft 600 is no high-end console, it offers LOTS of features missing on my old VFM. And the Audio Upgrades mods should mean performance to go along with the convenience. But I've got open ears if anyone has any warnings or other comments regarding the 600. Thanks.
Steve
[email protected]
(and no, the VFM will not be for sale, even if the 600 does become the main studio board. I bought the little Trident as my idea of the ideal board for an analog 8 track home studio, and that hasn't changed. Its just not meant to be the control center for a studio with as much gear as our current shared facility.)