help me find a good shure mixer to take apart and refine

hi
i was wondering if anyone could help me select the best shure mixer out of this list to take apart and make better.

here is my list:
m62
m62v
m63
m67
m68
m68fc
m675
m268
m68fca
m267
mf68A

has anyone used any of these? i'd love to know which one sounds best out of the can that way it would be easier to get better results.love to know what you guys think

Define "better."

What's your application?

These questions need to be answered before anyone can give you meaningful advice. In other words, we've got to know what you're looking for before we can try to help you find it.

better = clear, high gain, lots of headroom low noise, no hum.
some of these may be discreet and some have transformers.
so i was thinking maybe i could keep the transformers and change the circuit. or maybe i could keep the circuit and change some resistors and caps and change out the transformers to something nicer. all kinds of things could be done. but it certainly helps to find the best one and start playing with that.

shure mixer

Click to expand...

clear, high gain, lots of headroom low noise, no hum.

Click to expand...

Ummm...

Have fun :wink:

M267.

Peace,
Paul

can you tell me any of your experience with the m267?
i'd love to find out more.

Only that it didn't suck nearly as badly as the M67, M68 and other Shure mixers I'd messed with. Then again, hardly anything did.

And it didn't break.

Peace,
Paul

[quote author="NewYorkDave"]

clear, high gain, lots of headroom low noise, no hum.

Click to expand...

Ummm...

Have fun :wink:[/quote]
Well I have a couple of Shure mixers here with not much hum...

They're battery powered however.

but generally, I would concur that if you want super-clear, quality audio, you may be looking at the wrong brand.

Not that Shures suck at what they do: they're just not designed with that as a priority. Battery life, compactness and features tend to be MUCH forther up the priority-chain. -And if it's a toss up between better audio and drawing less current, Current-efficiency wins every time in a Shure product.

Low level crossover distortion and fine detail are essentially factors which -if they are dear to your heart- would make me say you should eliminate Shure as a brand, otherwise go for it.

They're almost unbeatable as ENG/reporter boxes. They'd probably be my first choice, brand-wise. But for musical detail, they're a long way down the list.

Hence the phrase "define better". :wink:

Keith

welli was thinking. some of them already have meters, power supply, a chasis, pots, and transformers. why not take out all the guts and put in some cool opamps with their same transformers, then hook it up to the power supply and presto. a new mic pre.

If you're going to gut it and build something new inside, the best model to get is...

whatever you can find cheapest!

I don't want to say anything to discourage you or dampen your enthusiasm, but I will offer this: try to formulate a less vague idea of what you want to do, then the way forward will become clearer. If you posted something like, "I want to build four channels of Circuit X inside of an old Shure mixer. Which model would be most suitable?" then it would be much easier to help you.

I had one of the FP-33's in ZImbabwe for my field work. I was a tank. I loved it.
http://www.shure.com/ProAudio/Products/MixersAndDSP/us_pro_FP33_content

[quote author="versuviusx"] i was thinking maybe i could keep the transformers and change the circuit.[/quote]

the transformers are crappy but sound pretty cool. the M688 I have contained five 1:10 mic transformers. I think they make a great DI wired 10:1. not as extended lows as a jensen JE-DB but not bad either. the high end has a nice little peak and a cool character that works really well on synths.

Ive also used those TFs with my own FET input amp. they sound ok, just not alot of low end. and limited headroom.

with stock electronics the 688 had 100dB of gain, was noisy, and had a gain staging problem, very easy to overload even with the "input" knob all the way down. try it with a 635A as a room mic and distort the hell out of it, thats the best use I ever found for it. Also, I once ran a toy piano track thru a stock shure mixer, cranked up and distorting like mad, and put it thru a leslie...

mike

I just hooked up a pair of M63 "audio master" EQ units from this series. holy cow! they are very good for what they are. high and low baxandal shelves and sweepable 1st order passive hipass and lopass filters. all simple bipolar discrete, and a bigger o/p transformer than the other shure stuff Ive seen. IMO qualifies as a poor man's pultec. very cool as-is.

mike

"poor man's Pultec"

Anyone wanna take bets on how long it'll be before some bozo appropriates that for his eBay auction? :roll: