Usually, these posts are about gear I've recently acquired or hope to own in the future. This one's different, as today I want to take a moment to talk about a piece of gear that I've had for quite a while and have found to be absolutely indispensable. Presenting...
...the Soundcraft Gigrac!
Now I'll admit that I'm normally not a fan of these all-in-one powered mixer deals. Having said that, this thing is a sound tech's swiss army knife, and it's one of the most valuable pieces of gear I've got! 8 channels (4 phantom powered, 2 with RCA inputs, 2 with stereo 1/4" inputs), two independent 300W amplifiers which can drive mains, monitors, or both (line outputs are available for both mixes, as well), A 7 band graphic EQ that can be assigned to either bus, and a really decent integrated effects unit, all for less than $400!
I mentioned in my last post that we had designed a separate sound system for our Maunday Thursday service tomorrow night. What I didn't mention is that my lil' ol' Gigrac is serving as our entire front of house and amp rack in that system. Now granted, it's a small system, and we're only using it for one night, but nevertheless, this little 40 pound box is handling every audio input and output that we need by itself. For those geeky enough to have read this far, allow me to elaborate:
8 inputs - 2 vocals, keys, acoustic guitar, violin, a wireless system for our pastor, an input for an MP3 player, and a room mic for the in-ears.
5 outputs - 2 speaker outs, each driving two cabs, a dedicated RCA recording output, a line-level monitor feed to the stage driving our in-ear monitor distro (admittedly, this would be much more complicated if we were using more than one monitor mix for this service), a headphone out at the board, and an output for our live video feed in the lobby (from the line level main out).
Now I'm not going to pretend that this setup sounds as good as our normal system, but for a one off gig that only requires a few inputs and outputs, you'd be hard pressed to find a better piece of gear. I should point out that it's also performed flawlessly at outdoor services on generator power, as a standalone mixer for a choir concert that a teched in December (bypassing the amps), and as an extra power amp when we needed a couple of extra monitors last year. All of my sound techs swear by it, and so do I! Worth every penny!
