WOT--Guitar and mixer question, what to get for kid... Options

[crash914]

My son's birthday is comming up and we are trying to think what to get him..

He wants a 12 string acoustic. What is good? Takamine? Seagull? don't want to break the bank...

Also looking for a mixer to interface with the computer, I am thinking about a powered mackie. 8 channel. We need to add several instruments and mic's.

I have a tascam board now, but it doesn't power any monitor speakers. Looking for something that can travel.

Thanks, herb

[rjames]

He wants a 12 string acoustic. What is good? Takamine? Seagull? don't want to break the bank...

Check shops that sell used equipment, and craigslist.com. You should be able to pick up a used Takamine 12 string for around $400. They are decent guitars. Best thing to do is have him play a couple of them as one will feel better in his hands than another. Of course if it's going to be a surprise then that might not be possible.

Also looking for a mixer to interface with the computer, I am thinking about a powered mackie. 8 channel. We need to add several instruments and mic's.

Since you already have a taskcam board, you could just keep that and get powered speakers instead. There are many brands that have amps built-in to them. Otherwise, Mackie is about as good as anything else in that price range. As far as mics, get a couple of SM57s because they are cheap. If you want a good sounding condenser mic, look at the low-end Rode mics. A great value for the money. If you want to get a nice tube mic for little $, look at the Chameleon Labs tube mic. They sound fantastic and are a fraction of what you'd pay for a higher end mic. A supurb all around great mic for recording would be a Neumann TLM103. They are inexpensive for how fantastic they sound, but they will still run you around $700. They are a do-everything mic.

I have a tascam board now, but it doesn't power any monitor speakers. Looking for something that can travel.

Are you looking for a mixer that you can use live? Do you want to record your live gigs? If so, there are several rack mounted mixers that will do the job and you could always get something like a Motu USB rack mount Mixer/preamp to run directly into a laptop for the recording. Units like the MOTU usually come with some type of software that lets you record directly to a computer. You could hook up your powered speakers to it too for mixing.


Hope this helps.