Soundcraft GB4-32 and Roadway Carriers

After spending nearly an entire summer researching all the possible mixing consoles out there, I decided to go with the Soundcraft GB4-32. It seemed to have all the relevant options for the medium size applications we frequently encouter. I spent many an eight hour day fretting over pricetags and budgets, but mostly my days were spent going through technical riders from the previous six years-- to my suprise, we kept most of them, although some of my predecessors weren't nearly as organized as I hoped them to be.

For the purchasing sound engineer, tech riders are the touchstone that ensure happy performers. I loathe to remember all the times we had a visiting engineer who claimed our less-than-desirable equipment was the cause of the band's less-than-desirable performance. While I would have rather countered, "Worked excellent for me the last seven years," I opted instead to buy the best equipment I could afford, so I could place the blame where it properly rested: the acting engineer.

Most requests we've had from touring bands covered the basics when it came to consoles: professional quality mixers with a minimum of four pre-fader auxillary sends and a minimum of four subgroups. Depending on the act, some riders would request much more as an "ideal" rig: up to ten auxillary sends and eight subgroups, but these were often the exceptions. Many riders requested their ideal consoles by name: Yamaha, Soundcraft, Allen & Heath, Midas, Crest and a few others, some that I've never heard of during my entire tenure as a sound-mixing monkey (and had a hard time finding after ample research!). Given my budget, some consoles were obviously way out of range: if I were to buy a Midas board with the same amount of cash, I'd be stuck with at most 16 channels; Allen & Heath boards, despite their acclaim, fare little better.

Other boards were specifically named as not acceptable by any means, Peavey being the most frequently mentioned manufacturer. Although I've used Peavey as the old "failsafe" at home as well as on the road, often with more than adequate results, I have a tendency to agree that Peavey doesn't generally perform up to "professional" standards. First, Peavey boards tend to opt for fixed-band parametric EQs, which limit their useful application in live or recording settings. Ever try to cut an annoying ring from an untuned drum with fixed EQs? It just doesn't cut it. Second, the Peavey boards I've used tend to have a lot of crosstalk between channels. Imagine being in the middle of a show and there's a sudden quiet section in the program, but the CD music you were playing for the opener is fully audible, despite the fact you muted it before the band went on stage. Disaster! Don't get me wrong-- Peavey consoles do a decent job for the touring musician on a budget. They make sounds louder or quieter and mix them together with comparable features as the more expensive boards (I've even seen some bigger Peavey boards dropped from over six foot heights and still function properly, with bent faders and all) but their responsiveness and tonal control leave them with much to be desired.

So, as said before, I decided to go for the Soundcraft GB4 32 channel mixer. The best price quote I received was from Full Compass, which undersold the desk by about $400 under the minimum advertised price. I was pretty stoked. 32 mono channels plus 2 stereo channels (both XLR and 1/4" inputs), 8 auxiliary busses (the later four are globally pre/post switchable) and 4 subgroups (the faders of which are switchable with the auxes, easier for running monitor mixes), a matrix mixer, semi-parametric sweepable hi and low mids, and 4 mute groups. The little bells and whistles made it all the more worth it: phantom power, polarity switches and a 4 segment PFL LED on each channel, switchable pre/post direct outputs for each channel, and a center mono channel for mixing larger theaters. When I heard that the new board had arrived on a palate with about $9,000 of other gear I had purchased, I rushed off to pick it up, excited and ready to test it out.

My excitement soon turned on its head, however, when I inspected the palate upon delivery. I immediately flashed back to just about every Christmas I had as a child, spent in the return lines of department stores days afterward, excited to finally get a working model of whatever present I had received that year. I stood in front of the shipment, wrapped partially in plastic, ogling at the gaping dent running down 4 1/2 feet on one side of the palate. To my horror I realized that the dent was along the side of the GB4, rather than on the other side where the new JBL speakers had been packed. I wouldn't have been as worried if the other side had been hit; speakers can take a decent amount of moving around, and are housed in thick plywood. A quick check and I could tell if the speakers had been damaged or not, but a soundboard with 32 channels and thousands of solder points is a little harder to check out. Electronic equipment, especially items that cost more than $3K, don't like to get abused. And frankly, it looked like a forklift driver had been playing bumper cars with our shipment, and had hit it a few extra times for good measure on the sticker clearly stating "Fragile: Electronic Equipment." Needless to say, I was aggravated, and adding insult to injury, the receiving department had signed off on the shipment, meaning it had been accepted as is.

I immediately went to work making damage claims. I took pictures of the whole palate, and each item that showed signs of damage. We had bought a bunch of new Yamaha monitors in the same shipment, and whatever hit the palate did so hard enough to dent the plywood spine on several wedges. A box on top of the palate containing a dbX Driverack, another crossover and a bunch of new cables looked like it had an anvil dropped on it, but luckily the items inside were fine. Also damaged were boxes housing 2 Soundcraft Gigracs, which had puncture holes in it, probably from a drunken forklift driver. I decided to accept the speakers because they checked out fine, but I wasn't even about to open the boxes for the electronic items. When looking to buy used soundboards, sellers often list the entire history of the gear; the theory being that heavy road touring puts a lot of strain on the equipment, and heavy vibrations can cause microscopic problems which manifest into massive malfunctions. Often we've sent consoles down south 100 miles to get fixed, and by the time they return, they've got new problems that weren't there before. There was no way I was accepting a piece of gear that costs more than my car unless I was sure it got the white glove treatment during shipment.

Nearly a month and a half after making a damage claim, Roadway carriers (who had shipped the order) finally sent out an independent claims "specialist." She took some notes, then went off to write a report. Weeks passed without hearing anything, and the GB4 sat in our storage space untouched. Finally, Full Compass sent out a replacement console, but inexplicably sent it to the wrong address where it sat in a storage facility without notice for a few more weeks. After sending a couple of perturbed e-mails, I finally tracked down the shipment and went again to pick it up.

As I walked up to the new GB4 shipment, my jaw dropped as I let out a very enraged "What the F*#K!!!" The new box had been packed on a palate all by itself, but managed to sustain even more damage than the first shipment. One edge of the box had been run into so hard that the corner crushed about 4 inches below the other edge, breaking and crushing the Styrofoam packing inside. The force had been so hard on one side that it concaved the other end of the box about an inch. And again, the personnel in the receiving department had signed off on the shipment as if there was no problem. In disbelief, I made another damage claim, imagining the forklift driver's reaction somewhere in the Great Plains: "Oops-- I did the same thing to a similar shipment a couple of weeks ago-- oh well..."

This time around, Full Compass sprung into action and sent me out a third console within a week, but sent it without telling me and again to the wrong address where it sat for another week in limbo. This shipment had "Fragile" plastered all over it, and had a few extra layers of packing to protect it just in case. Finally, the GB4 had arrived in pristine condition, and I accepted the shipment, and took it back to the office to unpack it. I marveled at it for a bit outside of the box, played with the faders (very smooth) and then set it on the floor, surrounded in Styrofoam, out of the way of traffic. It wasn't going to move anywhere, because the ATA roadcase that we had purchased for it in the original bid almost 3 months before still hadn't arrived. I wasn't about to actually use the thing until I was sure that it was housed in its case (which we paid about $800 for).

Months later, and still waiting for the ATA case, I have yet to actually try out the GB4-32. It's a little frustrating, and I'm not very pleased with the customer service that we've received from Full Compass thus far. After spending $11K with a company, I'd expect to be treated as if they wanted me coming back to them. While they underbid all of their competition without exception, I can't really give them a good report card; I sure could have used that GB4 for many shows in the months since I purchased it.

I'll give a full review of it once we actually move it around without danger of damage.

Unity Gain

I got the impetus to start a blog reviewing sound gear after spending over $13,000 on the first leg of a 4 year improvement plan for our local "sound company." I found it frustrating to wade through user submitted reviews, corporate advertisements and misleading spec sheets, only to keep my fingers crossed when finally purchasing big ticket items. We're located in the least populated state in the Union (you do the research) and we're many miles away from the nearest showroom or professional sound company; geography prevents any hands-on "try before you buy" activities. Somehow I didn't find helpful reading product reviews written by newbies and indiscriminate purchasers-- how often have I read "This mixing board sounds great! I'm 15 and just starting playing guitar, but this is the best buy you'll ever make!" or "These speakers suck! I hooked 'em up to my amp and the horns blew!" -- not much pertinent information is being imparted here. Reading other product reviews, it became increasingly clear that some of them were just advertisements masquerading as impartial analyses. Even more infuriating at times would be dealing with the big warehouse-type sound peddlers who sell you junk over and over, jerk you around when you complain, yet still advertise themselves as "no hassle" retail outlets.

Well, I'm going to start naming names. And I'm going to strive to give useful analyses of the products we buy-- what works, and what doesn't, things to watch out for in products lines, what's worth the price, what isn't, etc. I'm going to give kudos to the gear and companies that make my job easy, and I'm going to howl at the moon about those who don't. And I'm not taking payoffs or playing nice-- but I'll give credit where credit is due. As time goes by, I'll add reviews of the gear we have and use and I'll try to keep up to date about new gear we purchase, the fiascoes we encounter, and I'll keep track of the stuff that breaks (our gear sees some punishing conditions).

I'm interested in following two lines of reviews-- the big ticket items that break the bank when they bust, and the cheap gear that may or may not substitute for the pro-lines. This is two-fold-- some times there's no substitute for the high dollar pro gear, especially when the client is getting picky and you want to be a professional. Other times the cheaper stuff will suffice, either because no one is paying attention, the price is right, or the cheap stuff works beautifully. Balancing the high and low dollar gear is the key to working within a tight underfunded budget, so often one has to weigh the pros and cons.

Why me? I've been in this business for almost a decade, and I think I have some insights to impart. Maybe not. But hopefully something here will help someone else make a solid business decision so they can worry less about spending money and do more about producing their art.

Feel free to post as well; contradict me, agree with me, whatever-- but keep it useful and intelligent. The sound industry isn't an exact science, and there's contradictions all the time. This isn't a dictatorship-- yet.