what makes those old consoles sound so good

[bantam]

DIY mixer question

It seems that there is much less to these consoles than there is to an outboard mic pre. (complexity wise) we are only talking about some faders (pots) and pan pots with an output gain stage.

My question is where is the great sound coming from. I bought a bunch of alpha sliding pots and dual pan pots, if i wire them up correctly ( i have a good passive mixer schmeatic) then it should sould pretty good? Is it just the gain stage at the end that makes such a difference in consoles like neve api etc...

(taking aux gain stages out of the equation)

parts
http://www.futurlec.com/cgi-bin/search/search.cgi

schematic
http://www.forsselltech.com/summing_buss_schematics.htm

[nacho459]

That's just it the beauty with a passive mixer is you have very little going on, and you can invest in a good 2 channel amp instead of a million IC's everywhere.

As for your vintage consoles they are more complex then a simple mix bus, but you end up with transformers, all over the place, desecrate op amps, or tube gain stages, many times simple passive EQ's. But as the IC became king it made things like the 1604 possible, and transformerless inputs and outputs, and fully parametric EQ's posable and functionality became the focus. Ie: SSL. And today a lot of people are realizing that less is more, and that every little IC in your signal path messes with your sound. In my console I almost always bypass the EQ because it messes with the sound more then it helps. I would rather have a couple caps and inductors at crucial points then a 4 band fully parametric phase machine any day.