Robert Hazard

Formerly part of Hazard's home studio. It is featured in this February 7, 2021 Equipboard forum thread started by jimmarchi1, with the history given in the linked comment. It was reviewed on the site on January 13, 2021 and listed for sale on Reverb.com on February 9, 2021.

jimmarchi1's review

can't go wrong for free

I forgot how much I liked this little thing.... it belonged to Robert Hazard in his demo studio in the 80s, then went to my Uncle with a couple tascam decks, then I had it for a bit in the 90s, then it went back to my uncle, now he gave it back to me... Limited but musical EQ, not enough balanced connections, onboard PSU adds some noise and the headrooms mediocre by mackie standards, but the opamps breakup great! Lots of connections and every single one has the impedance and voltage spec printed on it. Why don't they do that anymore? Preamps are smokey but sweet, what I always liked about it back when... everything you pass through a channel takes on some character, its not Neve or anything, but its not bad. A nice atlernative to my focusrite preamps. Line inputs impart a lot of character too though they're unbalanced, hence the poor PSU noise rejection. Sidecar isnerts in the FX return as well as the master stereo bus, nice touch. Clever 4 bus (2 stereo bus) structure but a lack of submix otions from the sole fx/mon submix section below the EQ, still, its got a sound that's dark and growly and everything else can be made to work for you. Currently trying it for summing. Definitely works for ome stuff and its nice to have an option between using my outboard reverbs with it or creating a send in my DAW and just shooting the stereo pair out tfrom my interface into the master bus so as not to waste channels and analog buses. Worth picking up.... these trade for epanuts and have a great sound of their own like the old soundcraft 200b and TAC stuff, its just a different sound than the brit stuff. Very somparable to the teac mdoel 24 but with sweepable midrange EQ, 2 less channels, a stereo true master bus, better connections and better preamps.... and a lot smaller. Not modular though and the onboard pwoer supply created noise floor hassle.... tis not terrible, but its there.

Forum Thread "Does anyone need a 70s/80s small format mixer for summing? Selling my RAMSA WR S112", Post 21841

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.

Reverb.com listing

Panasonic-made Ramsa 12:4:2 with 1 aux full stereo submix and lots of ins and outs (including submix ins to all buses and direct outs on very channel) with impedances clearly marked! Originally in Robert Hazard's home studio in the 80s. Little brother of Ramsa used by Jack Endino on Nirvana's bleach. Very good summing/hybrid mix board for your DAW. Look it up. These boards are reputed to be low headroom but they are only poor in that regard if you don't know analog gain staging. Sub busses can get vibey due to opamp seletion, push them, get nice saturation on drum transients. Very workable 3 band EQ. Shelves at 80/160 and 6k/12k with sweepable mid. midrange is 400 to 6k but can eb modified to reach down to 100 if you open the board up for service, which brings us to known issues...

Board was functioning well until recently. For the last 2 weeks channel 2 is always distorted and channel 10 has gone intermittent. I suspect the gain pots (2 open and 10 grounding out) but don't wish to open her up as she is non-modular and I don't have space to dissect the whole board with a 7 year old running around..... and I have a soundcraft 400b in good shape anyway that I like as much.

This board is a great donor for a big brother or a great project.... at the moment its a functioning 10:4:2 as well. Highly underrated sound, in the yamaha PM1000 camp, just no transformers, the trade is more useful EQ.

I would prefer local pickup around philly. I can meet you part way somewhere within reason on a weekend. For shipping the thing weighs 45lbs unpacked. I will pack it extremely well but you will pay actual costs. Continental US only. As-is, no returns. The board needs service, okay?

Any reasonable offer will be entertained. Try me. I need space in my home studio. Its leaning on my 62 ac30 right now. I just want it to find a new home even if that's a 2nd life as an organ donor. Feel free to contact me.

CHEERS!