Cheap stop gap desk for B-rig

J

John Brauer

Freshman
Apr 14, 2011
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Hello!

I'm scratching togeather a small rig for a temporary install for a run of gigs. In order to break even, my expenditure has to be severly limited. Once these gigs are out of the way I'll upgrade a few bits and bobs...

I have access to an old Yamaha PM1800. Unfortunately I can't get my hands on it until the day of the load in, so I can't really give it a good aprasal.

This desk is way before my time so I have no idea of how its sounds.... It certainly ticks the boxes in terms of functionality...

Is this false economy, or are they an ok beast?
 
Re: Cheap stop gap desk for B-rig

That's an ancient board. Great in its day, but due to the age, I'd be leery about the reliability. And HEAVY. Keep that in mind as well.

What size console are you looking at?

If you're paying any significant amount for the board before you even get your hands on it, it's probably a bad idea.
 
Re: Cheap stop gap desk for B-rig

24 channel.

Its really the aux count and the 2 x sweepable mids though that is important.

About $700 is the asking price
 
Re: Cheap stop gap desk for B-rig

What do you actually need the board to do, and what are your plans later? Generally speaking I'm not excited to trust important gigs to 30 year old technology. If it had to be cheap, I would be inclined to find a used A&H GL-series that was 10 years old, or if I had to have all that EQ, would try to get an 01v96, or something that isn't quite so far past its sell-by date. Have you looked into renting?
 
Re: Cheap stop gap desk for B-rig

Being the situation you are in with the console not available until the day of show I would stay away from it. They are fun little consoles to work on if you can muscle it in but things like external power supplies, analog meters... well there's too much to list... have become uncalibrated over the years.

I second the Allen & heath choice for your budget. You can find them used and should be a cleaner sounding situation for you.

Is renting a console out of the question since it's a temporary situation?
 
Re: Cheap stop gap desk for B-rig

If I knew that it was well maintained and working 100% I wouldn't worry about it. It's a decent little workhorse console.

If the history of it is dodgy then find something else. This board has issues with the channel strip connectors wearing out just like the 3k does. I'm talking about the socketed card-edge connectors inside the console. Even if it was in an install these card edge connectors get loose and all kinds of problems ensue.
 
Re: Cheap stop gap desk for B-rig

John Brauer said:
Hello!

I'm scratching togeather a small rig for a temporary install for a run of gigs. In order to break even, my expenditure has to be severly limited. Once these gigs are out of the way I'll upgrade a few bits and bobs...

I have access to an old Yamaha PM1800. Unfortunately I can't get my hands on it until the day of the load in, so I can't really give it a good aprasal.

This desk is way before my time so I have no idea of how its sounds.... It certainly ticks the boxes in terms of functionality...

Is this false economy, or are they an ok beast?
Click to expand...


If you like most providers have an Allen&Heath MixWiz 16:2 you could get the sys-link option and another of the MizWiz boards. Any combination will give you a total of 24 channels and some combinations will also give you subgroups for some of the channels.

It will cost more but would be an investment into something that will have future use.
 
Re: Cheap stop gap desk for B-rig

Those were nice boards in their day. I remember them being super easy to get a good sounding mix on. I remember this being due mostly to the ergonomics and the fact that the PFL buttons were at the very bottom of the channel strips. So I could hit them and build my mix without even looking at the board - which meant I was using it more often.

That was then this is now. I would go with the A&H GL series too. Easier to find used parts and service.
 
Re: Cheap stop gap desk for B-rig

i'm surprised no one has mentioned how noisy the pm-1800 is. and this is coming from an admitted yamaha fanboy. i've worked on every PM console from the PM-1K on and the 1800 was the only one that i truly was disappointed by. it took a significant amount of gain structure work to get the background hiss level to a point that i found acceptable. granted, i was using it for a lot of corporate stuff and not rock shows, but still...

that being said, i've used a bunch of very tired PM-1800's and never had a significant failure. my experience with allen & heath has not been the same...

brian
 
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