Does anyone need a 70s/80s small format mixer for summing? Selling my RAMSA WR S112

nice little 12:4:2 board with good 3 band EQs, very musical, sweepable mid, summing amps are based around 4558 opamps (yes that one from the ubiquitous green dirt box), sounds nice. Not as lowheadroom as they say but not mackie levels of headroom however the thing has great saturation in the red, not crunchy until you're really driving everything. High headroom mic amps and line amps, very detailed, direct reording outs on every channel... Panasonic built these really well. About 45 lbs in weight, heavy but 1 person can move it no problem. If it were modular it would be perfect, but hey.... you cn't have it all.

currently channels 2 and 10 are down. 2 Is motorboating and 10 is intermitently cutting out. Both could simply be the gain pots going open on 2 nd grounding out on 10. I gave them a good cleaning but its not dirt. YMMV if you wanna deoxit them to. I have no desire to fix it or even put another minutes effort into it as its nonmodular and I'm lazy, PLUS 12 channels didn't cut it for me so much... I also have a soundcraft 400b that's well serviced.... my loss your gain. ANY OFFER OVER $150 WILL BE CONSIDERED but you will have to come get it or pay ACTUAL shipping on top of purchase price.... even at 10 channels this is a fine intro to OTB mixing, a decent summer/router or a suitable donor for a larger Ramsa WRS that's ailing! Most of it works flawlessly.... I have never serviced this byeond cleaning, could be nothing. Will come with some extra faders, the rest is up to you. Service schematics and manuals are readily available in PDF EDIT: weighs 45 lbs

additional pics available on request although I don't want to open it up, its not modular. If I wanted to open it I would fix it.

This is a small, high quality board to learn on, vastly superior to a mackie, even the onyx... like a slightly less well engineered Yamaha PM1000 ;-)

Its been offered here but I plan to list it on Reverb Monday.

EDIT AGAIN: this is the series of board and era of board that Nirvana's Bleach was recorded on by Jack Endino. That was a WR-T820 with double buses and 20 channels, same circuitry though. If you like that reciprocal records 80s to early 90s sub pop sound? sound this'll help get there if you have a few dbx 160As etc. Those records are all skill and enthusiasm, nothing fancy. "All you need to make a record is some magnetic tape and a microphone. And maybe, just maybe, some bad reverb." -Conrad Uno

I'm going to bump this once because after today it goes up for auction

This is a small, high quality board to learn on, vastly superior to a mackie, even the onyx... like a slightly less well engineered Yamaha PM1000 ;-)

As a fellow Onyx owner, I assure you none of us are the least bit surprised, nor offended at this assertion, LOL.

Like 8 years ago, I had a colleague who's father was a soon-to-retire exec at GC, offered me the ultra-insider discount, so I swooped in and got some big items in that tiny window. I wanted a a 16 x 16 interface and a decent 4-bus mixer, didn't want to fuss with discrete, and narrowed it down to the Allen & Heath ZED R16 or the 1640i. There was no question the R16 was the superior-sounding analog mixer, but it had 2 strikes against it: 1) It wasn't fully-capable of operating as a driverless audio interface in OSX, which meant eventually, the audio-interface portion would become unsupported and useless and 2) John Maclean had trashed A&H in social media for providing horrific customer support when his 16R went bad on him... he switch to a 1640i and pulled no punches regarding it being inferior analog, sounding "neutral (at best)... not sounding like anything"... but at least it worked.

8 years on, the darn thing still works as-new... the latency is pretty trash by today's standards, and most of the gain on the preamps being in the last 25% of the knob sweep is so bafflingly bad for a company that has been making analog mixers this long... but it's the big slice of joyless, bland, reliable utility I knew it would be.

Anyway... Good luck with the sale on this beauty!

allen and heath hasn't made a reliable small format board since the venerable mix wizard.... honestly the difference between an onyx and a zed is really sonically negligible. The summing is better on the zed, but the EQ is dead similar as are the line amps.The "perkins" EQ isjust a copy of all these trident 80 derived brit EQs from A&H or soundcraft.... soundcraft has been riffing on the same design since the model 200 replaced the series 1! A&H seems to think their sound is like if Mallcolm Toft tried to make an SSL LOL

Its not like the CR rack mackies versus the rack friendly Mix Wixzard a ew decades ago.... although I really like the crest X series over the mix wizard in that era

mackies never die, never.... they always sound just as mediocre year after year.... when we're gone and the cockroaches evolve a culture they will mix their music on ancient mackie 8 busses and onyxes...

TO ALL: If there's no takers soon the Ramsa goes to reverb and then fleabay if no one there has a use for it.... I would rather see someone who needs a punchy little summing board and some nice EQ grab it and put it to use, maybe get it fixed... it would be sad for it to become a parts donor since its admirably musical. The thing has beena round the block.

allen and heath hasn't made a reliable small format board since the venerable mix wizard.... honestly the difference between an onyx and a zed is really sonically negligible. The summing is better on the zed, but the EQ is dead similar as are the line amps. The "perkins" EQ isjust a copy of all these trident 80 derived brit EQs from A&H or soundcraft.... soundcraft has been riffing on the same design since the model 200 replaced the series 1! A&H seems to think their sound is like if Mallcolm Toft tried to make an SSL LOL

This is good info. Cheers!

I have a soft spot for Soundcraft, my first mixers were those smaller Spirit mixers from the late 90s... I have zero doubt that a real, non-budget mixer made with fewer cost-cutting ICs would be a nice sonic upgrade, but I just never seem to get excited-enough about consoles to put down the $$$$.... one day!

mackies never die, never.... they always sound just as mediocre year after year.... when we're gone and the cockroaches evolve a culture they will mix their music on ancient mackie 8 busses and onyxes...

If you can't be better, at least be tougher. :D

This is good info. Cheers!

I have a soft spot for Soundcraft, my first mixers were those smaller Spirit mixers from the late 90s... I have zero doubt that a real, non-budget mixer made with fewer cost-cutting ICs would be a nice sonic upgrade, but I just never seem to get excited-enough about consoles to put down the $$$$.... one day!

I cut my teeth on a 90s spirit studio 16:4:2 that was a distinct cut above the mackie 8 busses that were in every project studio at the time. Still, the Delta series was the real successor to the 200s, 400s,600s etc. A delta is very much an early 90s 400 series with some thoughtful upgrades and properly balanced ins and outs isntead of sorta not so balanced ones... however they're not as rugged, so getting an odler 400 or 600 or the mighty 1600 or 1624> good call. If you wanna balance everything you can do it with ISO transformers from jensen, hell you don't have to do it itnernally, you cna buy boxes of them from jensen or radial and run short elads from your ins and outs to a box or rack unit which will isolate your signal and send balanced to and from the recorder... I've never had a problem with noise in my home studio, its small, lines are short, but I do have a radial twin ISO and I think I hear an improvement in clarity and heft through those 2 jensen 1 to 1 transformers. Plus my master bus is always sporting the warm audio comp now, even if tis not engaged the discrete line amps and cinemags are in line. All that iron is tasty. I digress...

What I maant to say is almost every IC console design uses cheap TL071s and TL072s for a lot of the stages throughout the board. That opamp was a game changer for console design. Soundcraft, allen and heath, crest, AMek/TAC etc etc... You think discrete for neotek and mci, but not entirely, the mic and line amps are, but they're discrete in my 400b there too, man. Malcolm Toft jumped right on these ICs with trident's 80 series and you can pay 3 grand for a new Toft ATB and get a board full of 71s and 72s, they're cheap ICs, sure, but they're a quality multi fet opamp in there and are really as good as the supporting componentry and circuit topology. If you wanna get fancy there are some drop in upgrades these days from cork sniffer companies like burr brown. There are some OPAs that will supposedly improve your 71 and 72 stages. Cheap modification. I might try it on some spare channels and busses I have for my 400b. I don't expect a big improvement though. Budget ICs are no biggie. If you want a discrete baord that's fine, but even SSL isn't all discrete. That's old school shit. Neve, API, sphere, calrec etc.

its really the sum of all the components, their quality and application, mackie cuts lots of little corners and focuses on headroom and it adds up a certain way.... there are other approaches to putting the same basic parts together and choosing where you cut costs that provide more vibe for the end user. But I'll tell ya, a mackie 8 bus is a headroom champ! It needs to be, if you clip it you know the bus is clipping and you wish it wasn't! Some distortions can never be unheard :-O

CORRECTION! the model of the board is WR-S412

don't know why I thought 112. What would you do with a 12:1:2 configuration LOL

LAST CALL before reverb listing

How much for it?

make me an offer! seriously, as long as its not 2 digits I'll consider it. When working they go for $300 to $500 these days due to the low channel count.

EDIT: email is jimmarchi1 @ gmail.com no spaces

make me an offer! seriously, as long as its not 2 digits I'll consider it.

Well, all I can afford are two digits. I hope it finds a good home!

got 90 bucks and want to drive to philly? I really wanted 150 or so, but hey....

I need the floor space in the studio. if I sell it for good money it'll probably get parted out which is a shame because its got a nice sound and great stereo width...

here's an excerpt of a fast mix I did of this live triphop shit my buddy and his friends created at the big studio on new years day.... its all board EQs and summing, I used compressor plugins and not hardware except the master bus because I was still wiring stuff up that week... in fact I'm still wiring stuff up now in the home studio LOL its brutal in there!

https://soundcloud.com/james-marchione-1/trash-godz-live-20210101-excerpt-ramsa-rough-mix/s-kft2y2nqJn6

here's an excerpt of a fast mix I did of this live triphop shit my buddy and his friends created at the big studio on new years day.... its all board EQs and summing, I used compressor plugins and not hardware except the master bus because I was still wiring stuff up that week... in fact I'm still wiring stuff up now in the home studio LOL its brutal in there!

https://soundcloud.com/james-marchione-1/trash-godz-live-20210101-excerpt-ramsa-rough-mix/s-kft2y2nqJn6

I was really impressed with the quality of this recording, Jim. All of the stuff on your Soundcloud is quality, and clearly crafted by someone whose composition and mixing skills are highly-developed... but there is something especially pleasing about the sonic quality of this recording here. If this is the only recording on your SC mixed/summed on this old board, then it is indeed a very effective pitch for what this thing can do.

I was really impressed with the quality of this recording, Jim. All of the stuff on your Soundcloud is quality, and clearly crafted by someone whose composition and mixing skills are highly-developed... but there is something especially pleasing about the sonic quality of this recording here. If this is the only recording on your SC mixed/summed on this old board, then it is indeed a very effective pitch for what this thing can do.

Seconded. This mix sounds incredible! It makes me wish that you wouldn't sell it just so we can hear more like this.

Speaking of, when can we expect the next Trash Godz to drop? XD

Speaking of, when can we expect the next Trash Godz to drop? XD

soon, I'm wiring my patch bays for a larger mix of more complicated sessions... I graduated to the 16 channel 8 bus soundcraft 400b which is an even more euphonic console with a similarly pillowy EQ and fatter summing amps, smooth treble etc. Its a very good sounding desk that I know reallywell. There's still a lot of wiring to do, I'll be mixing this weekend I expect.

I believe theres some other mixes from my old teac 24 on soundcloud, most of the electronic is ITB though... mainly acoustic stuff on the teac, it had very round line amps and a similar EQ again to the panasonic, limited so you couldn't fuck up a good thing. I went console-less for awhile due to space constraints but decided I can't deal anymore. This little ramsa came into ym hands randomly, I di one session, didn't even finish, and lost 2 channels and was so put out I bought a serviced and upgraded 400b from the same era. Before the Teac I ahd a soundcraft 200b so I know the console, its just a mroe sophisticated version with some mods. Trident and Soundcraft are my favorite working man's boards.

I assure you the soundcraft will outperform the ramsa, though the ramsa is no slouch and has a certain magic to its EQ that's not exactly british, but I have a couple of pultec clones now fr that inductor midrange thing, just retubed them with NOS today and Ill change the transformers if the stock ones are blah.

But really its not thelittle details of the tools, as long as I have the right feature sets I can do this sort of thing. The trick is working in real time with both hands and mixing with th the computer monitor not showing the waveforms as you playback. People are visual and you will ehar with your eyes if you have visual feedback, all you need is meters and that's just a voltage measure, its not a "this si too ho, its wrong" its mroe like "that's a lot of voltage into that opamp, its going to saturate on the next big transient, do i want that, is it pleasing?" There's just soemthing about the old way that's best.

Sorry rambling

there's about a year worth of trahsgodz material on a drive in my control room. You wuld be surprised how scrappy these recording actually are, they're tracked to cubse sx2 on a machine running xp through a behringer live mixer that feed a mix to the live feed and sends the dry multitracks to the xp machine to give to me later. I don't engineer those although I've made suggestions they take very seriously about rms levels of the signals, mic placement etc. Ive fiddled with the rig and its frustrating for me. Hard to make it behave with the digital phone app itnerface, too many features to weed through on that GUI. It works for the Godz.... I've also traded a lot of gear with them and we loan eachother shit all the time.... they turned me on to the TOA tripe delay from the 80s and I turned them onto the transmisser and afterneath.... lots to tell really. More soon, lots more.

but there is something especially pleasing about the sonic quality of this recording here. If this is the only recording on your SC mixed/summed on this old board, then it is indeed a very effective pitch for what this thing can do.

it is, I haven't mixed on a ramsa since the late 90s I think, maybe early 00s, and that was probably this one as it changed hands through my family a lot... I had another one at one point before I got my original 200b 16 input 4 bus frame around 2003 I think. I wound up using that a lot for front end as it needed work and I wasn't up to it at the time.

Its not so much the specific board but the mindset of mixing through a console and exploiting the electronics to the full, hands on gain staging with real voltage and not 1s and 0s as virtual decibels against full scale. meh

story of this board (its entertaining, get ready):

This board was purchased brand new for 2 or 3 grand by Robert Hazard for his home studio along with two tascam decks, an 8 track, the one everyone had, and a 1/2" mixdown deck. He had dbx noise reduction and some dbx compressors. In the 80s he sold the entire rig to my dad's keyboard player. Or maybe said band member stole it. there was a lot of that from the keyboardist and bassist. If they did tech work and felt underpaid they robbed the dudes. I had Blood Sweat and Tears Princeton Reverb for many years and it came to me with a similar tale. We're at maybe 83ish? The guy looked it all over and sold it to my uncle who was just graduating princeton for engineering....he made a bad pop record on it under the monicker Thomas Mars and proceeded to get a masters. Then he and my dad got a DX7 and a drumulator (which i have to this day) and made a new agey album called "stress break" with this gear. It was meant to be listened to in a waterbed based isolation chamber that was being marketed through sharper image but yuppies in fact did not want subject themselves to MK Ultra experiments so it never caught on. Shit looked like the mercury capsule, it was so cool.

From there the baord went to do live sound for another uncle and the tape machines and outbaord sat around. In the 90s I used this board to record and mixsome poor tape deck band rehearsal space EPs and went on to use it for an industrial EP that used a mix of casstte 8 track and computer for the master. Then I did some techno and DnB singles on it, most of which should never be lsitened to by anyone. I started my first studio job and I lent it to one of my guitar students whow as into recording and made some stuff with it. I purchased a 200b around this time and sued it for a solo record that's best not lsitened to and will remain secret. THe 200b did not make it all the way through that and I went ITB as it was possible all of the sudden but I wound up asking for the baord back to sum drums and EQ some stuff into the recorder.

Then it went back to the original uncle who was archiving multitracks into cubase sx. I helped him bias his machines and he tried the ramsa but wanted a dry sound as he didn't want to mix at the time. I was in dog and pony at the time (the loudest band in thehistory of philadelphia, it is known) and had been given my friend's teac 24 which we cut the record on at the main studio Iw as working out of. We were out in the carriage house behind the main building... anythign with a lot of pieces or hella loud got cut there. I know for a fact that that was the only record I cut on there thatw asn't mixed through it too. We went to another studio me and the bassist worked at and used their SSL room. I think that was also cut to Alesis HD24, I really like that machine. But Under Your Bed's first demo was cut through the teac although it may have been summed through Mitch Levine's similar Tascam 16 track because I used his home studio control room and it was a great excuse to hang with my favorite old man.... we shall never see his like again! Miss you buddy. From there the UYB demo was at studio 4 and was polished up by Phil Niccolo who fixed all my deficiencies as an engineer and some deficiency caused by the bad treatment in mitch's control room and overlarge 3 way JBL speakers. The Teac did good service on those 2 personal projects in that 300 year old carriage house! There it stayed where I cut many record through it for years forgetting all about the little ramsa that could. The Teac moved to under your bed's rehearsal spaces forr awhile and then wound up stored at another uncle's and he sold it out from under me without asking for 200 bucks. If I didn't lvoe him I woulda killed him. He ditched that massive teac on his 'old junk' theory.... the same theory that caused him to give me a princeton reverb from 64 as my first guitar amp in 91 or 92 (another instance of the keys and bass duo from Woodlands boosting gear from scheister live sound and lighting clients and using my uncles as unwitting fences). But he sold that teac without the power supply which I still have LOL. I believe he also told me to just get a 16 channel mackie if I needed a mixer. Beause they're so clean and all. So if ayone has a Teac Model 24 and no powersupply? I;m your guy!

Meanwhile the ramsa was with "Thomas Mars" and there it sat until he tried it for a band rehearsal and found he couldn't remember how to work the routing so he asked me if I wanted it back this thanksgiving and I said sure. He gave me some extra faders and when I got around to using it I made that one mix and the next weekend i lost the 2 channels and threw my hands up in the air. I've been inside it back in the day and just didn't have the time or energy to disassemble the thing. Being non-modular and built like a tank its an undertaking to get to the channel cards and get them back in properly. I could do it but its distracting from music to have stuff taken apart allover your control room. So the Trash Godz and I found this 400b that's been srviced and upgraded and I ahd it delivered Saturday. Guy's son drove it from Ohio for me, nice kid. Thing lit up and performed flawlessly day 1.

as a result of having learned the way I did I always do a sheet like tis before beginning a project...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1skY9l9upG8D7uytobQYytjuRbc3wFMCaQimcmNVIUrc/edit?usp=sharing

it helps crystalize everything and sets my boundaries.... things can change but its got my signal flow ideas and gar I thik woill be a good starting point. I might use plugins but sorting plugins during the initial balance can be really soul destroying. I have a tendecy to not experiment ITB until the end. Just channel everything up the same and see what I get. Console-wise I do soemthign similar but it was born of nescesity from when I ahd no budget for stuff... 9 times outta 10 your initial ideas work fine.

just a note, all submixes are in the master but there's a main mix in the master when i mix too, its all parallel groups. The master mix is usually fine but has more ush and vibe with the parallel subs. Adjustments are made for level creep this way as you go.

https://reverb.com/item/38745307-ramsa-wr-8112-circa-analog-mixer-mixing-board-small-format-console-circa-1980-vintage-as-is

its on reverb.com, anyone from equipboard can get a discount!