i'm thinking about getting one of these to use with my ampex 440 8 track and 351 2 track. any opinions on sound quality? i don't have the money for a bcm-10 but i've heard great things about studers small mixers. thanks.

Well I'm sorry I really can't comment on a 169 but I have had a 962 for a couple of month and I'm very happy with my Studer. The sound can be described as clean, punchy and warm. I have just started to explore it's potential so take this with some grain of salt!

I bought mine from another nice gearslut, Echorec, and I seems to rember that he said that the 169 sounded more vintage rock n' roll (maby try to PM him). Again add some salt to this as my memory seems to be somewere else!

Good luck!

/Cojo

169 sonic characteristics curiosity bump.

clear, warm, big, vintage, versatile, silent ; definitely the Highend of the compact console ; it has the warmness of tubes without any tubes !
well !
and the EQ is very musical too (wide band)
you can use the inserts as direct out (unbalanced) and can modify the connections inside so the inserts are postEQ
check if the mixer has been recapped recently

I had one for a couple years and I thought it was just ok. Definitely fairly clean and clear and warm, probably closest to Trident out of any of the big names. The eq was decent but I felt a little harsh when used too broadly. Overall I felt it was a rather small sounding board so I sold it.