I shopped for Hours looking at Mixers here on Amazon… reading all of the Reviews. Finally I decided on the ALTO ZMX862 Mixer. I was surprised it arrived so quickly… I had to double check my Order to make sure I didn’t accidentally pay as much for the Postage as for the Product. I ordered the new ALTO ZMX862 Mixer to replace my old Peavey 6 Mixer – I loved that old Peavey Six… I think I had been using it HARD (every day!) for the last 8 years, but finally the Fader Pot on the Main Output (that big Slide Volume Control) developed dead spots and or it would rise and fall in volume all by itself, or make crackle snap and pop noises. Usually squirting a little bit of Shop Grade Alcohol into the Slide, and exercising it and then letting it dry for a while brings back some temporary Life to a Fader that is, well, ‘fading’, but this one was finally shot. So I liked the Fact that the ALTO ZMX862 Mixer has no Faders, just regular Turn Pots. Check the Reviews for every single mixer being sold, and see what a common problem it is to have failing faders – it’s a Big Problem with Mixers. Now, there were reviews for the ALTO ZMX862 Mixer that took issue with the ‘fact’ that the different Pots on the ALTO ZMX862 Mixer have different ‘feels’—some are stiff and some turn more easily. Well, I spent two days “dialing in” my New ALTO ZMX862 Mixer and there is One Thing I am Absolutely Certain About, and that is I DID NOT NOTICE ANYTHING FUNNY ABOUT HOW THE POTS WORKED. Besides, if THAT is the worst problem with this Mixer, then it is probably the Best Mixer on the Planet, don’t you think?
I DID notice that everything was much Brighter through this ALTO ZMX862 Mixer then in my old Peavy6, so I had to dial down the mids and the highs a bit more, but that could mean that this Mixer has a much higher effective Bandwidth. The Peavey had great Total Harmonic Distortion specs (THD), and the ALTO ZMX862 Mixer wasn’t spec’d for THD, but I haven’t noticed any blurring or fogginess in the audio. After ‘dialing it in’ the ALTO ZMX862 Mixer sounds great.
Now, something about how Useful the ALTO ZMX862 Mixer is – I was using the Old Peavey to Mix IPOD Audio in with my Guitar and then running Both the IPOD and the Guitar Audio back through my Guitar Amp (a Fender Mustang III)… you know, instead of having separate speakers for the ‘Music’ and for the Guitar, I was using just the Guitar Amp. The way it works in detail is I got the ‘Conditioned’ Guitar Signal from the Amp’s FX Send and ran it to one of the Peavey’s Mic Inputs (mono). From the Peavey Mixer I ran the Mixed Signal back to the Amp’s FX Return through the Peavey’s own FX Send (and from there in the Amp it goes to the Final Power Amplification and then to the Speaker, and so the nice Clean IPOD Music isn’t ‘stepped on’ by ‘Guitar Effects’.). To keep the Peavey Working all the way through to the Main Out and the Headphone Out, I ‘Split’ the Peavey’s FX Send signal and plugged it back into the Mixer’s own FX Return Input (FX Sends need FX Returns, or that’s the end of the Line). But the new ALTO ZMX862 Mixer works a bit differently. With the ALTO ZMX862 Mixer to do the same thing with the Guitar Amp’s FX Send and Return and with the Mixers effective Send and Return, you use the AUX Circuits. You still run the Amp’s FX Send to a Mic Input (mono), but the ALTO ZMX862 Mixer has an “AUX Send” and the connector marked “2 FX”. It is a STEREO Send, and my Mustang III FX Return is a Mono, but all you have to do to convert a Stereo Out to a Mono Out is shove a ¼ inch Mono Plug into the Mixer Stereo Jack, and it all comes out Mono in the end. I originally tried using the Control Room Out for the Return Signal to my Amp’s FX Return, and although it did ‘kind of work’, it effectively locked in the Headphone Volume from the ALTO ZMX862 Mixer to the Main Level and Control Room Volume, which I had to adjust way down in order to not overdrive the Mustang III amplifier. I wasn’t getting much headphone amplitude that way. That is what made me think of using the AUX Circuits – there seems to be Volume Controls Everywhere in the AUX Circuit, so you can balance all the Volumes and keep the headphone volume on a different branch of the circuit. It was all very handy, as soon as I figured out what it was all for.
But yes, this new ALTO ZMX862 Mixer works a lot better in this application. With the old Peavey, I had to keep the Master Volume of the Amp really low because the Peavey Signal into the Amp could not be adjusted down far enough so that the Amp had a chance to work in its Sweet Spot. My next project will be running a mixed audio signal to a Video Camera, and so the ability to set those Output Levels will definitely come in handy there too.
I love this new ALTO ZMX862 Mixer. But if anything squirrelly happens ‘down the road’ I will be sure to come back and take off a few Stars and explain why.
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