Best Underrated Analog Board?

Greetings, All!
I, like many of you, am building my first home studio. So far, I've managed to save a lot of dough by buying up little-known high quality used gear.
My next target is a mixing board. So, if anybody has any suggestions for a great sounding board (not mackie!), I'd love to hear about it.
Basically I want a 70's era solid state board (of course I'd be more than happy with tubes), a small one- maybe 8 channels, that would rival Neve and Api, but got buried in the annals of history, thus keeping its price down. So far I've found that Stevenson, Altec and old Tascam boards may be named in this category. If anybody can think of anything else, please share with the rest of us!

I've heard good things about some of the old Yamaha PM-series boards...the PM1000, I believe. The preamps are supposed to be very API-ish, although the EQ's not supposed to be great and I'm not sure how the mix bus is...
-Ted

TAC - good English board. Never got the notoriety of Soundcraft, but sound better in my opinion.

Now that I think about it, I actually recorded a mariachi band on an ADAT with an old TAC Scorpion board in college. Sounded great.
-Ted

You can't go wrong with a Tascam M-520. I have used this board through the analog days (I still have myMS-16 tape machine). I am now digital and the 520 compliments everything.
Try total sweepable EQ (all bands). Utility out the wazoo...sends and returns. I use tube preamps for non-tube mics and the 520 for tube mics, and everywhere in between. I can monitor all analog outputs to digital inputs via a meter bridge that allows for external monitoring...0 VU equates to -18 db to -12 db on digital (peak your analog inputs on analog and adjust for digital).
There have been quite a few albums released in the 80's and 90's from this board.
You should be able to locate one for $500 to $700. Just make sure it's been taken care of.
jas

TAC consoles are preety decent sounding. I used to have a scorpion. Its got a pretty warm preamp, and a nice soft musical EQ. One other nice feature is its ability to overdrive with a nice sounding distortion, and the modular channel strips. You may be able to find a bullet or a little 16x8x2 for under a grand. The yamaha PM1000 and 2000 are nice little consoles as well. OPnce again a good warm sound, and yes, yamaha has NEVER been known for their EQ. Not even today on their flagship PM1D. Howqever, the desk is reliable and maintains a wonderful tone. Older Soundcraft in my opinion is way underrated. It sounds nothing like their newer stuff (thank goodness). They are starting to catch on though as the larger older desks are starting to get snatched up lately. I recently saw an AS IS soundcraft TS12 that says it needs some switches, pots etc... replaced for sale for under $2k. Quite a deal since all the parts are still available. I think it was 32 channels, inline so at least 64 inputs at mixdown. I am sure with no extra money and a little TLC you could pretty easily have 12 to 16 channels rocking on it, and be able to do a little repairs in the future and have a pretty nice full sized console later:)

Wow, thanks for all the advice, guys! Anyone ever had any luck with a Teac or Sunn board? I'm looking at a Tascam M-208 right now, I don't know if it's as good as the other M series boards you guys discussed. Anyways, keep 'em coming and Thanks again!

I'm not a huge fan of the sound of Teac/Tascam stuff compared to things like Soundcraft and AMEK/TAC, but they're certainly respectible - depends on the model.
The Sunn is probably a joke, however, they did have a model out in the early 1980's that sounded pretty good. I can't remember the model number, which is sad considering I owned one and did a pretty decent record on it. (I'm racking my brain, and I just can't pull it out...) I thought their other stuff was pretty bad though...

Yeah, I'd certainly prefer Tac, Amek, old Soundcraft, etc., but I'm trying to find something that I can get on Ebay for $100 or less. Right now I'm cool with just eight channels, mic pre's are not that important, I really just want this mixer to use with DP4 for a) convenience, b) analog summing and c) just a rounder, more interesting sound. I feel that the high fidelity of my digital gear is shining a spotlight on the poor acoustics of my room and my cheap guitar. I've searched around on the net and seen the M-208 still alive and well in many studios. I just hope that the old Tascam is better than a Mackie and that I'll prefer to use it rather than the dp4 mixer.

Did you really mean $100, or did you mean $1000?
-Ted

Heh. I really meant $100. I'm a low budget kind of guy right now, unfortunately. It may well be possible that there will be nothing for me in this range that will fulfill my requirements, but you'd be surprised what you can get when you really scrounge. I got a hand wired 1950's tube preamp with a triad transformer for $40, and a stereo tube spring reverb tank for about the same. Both sound awesome (although the reverb's given me some serious electric shocks). There's always weird obscure peices of gear up for auction that get passed by because nobody looks for them, or they don't have a name with a reputation behind it.
That's what I'm looking for in this post. I geuss didn't emphasize (or mention) my budget so far, but I want a cheap 8 track board that would sound acceptable on a record, so I geuss I need some low-end comparisons. Mackie is sort of my reference point- if it sounds better, I'm interested, but if I'd be better off with a cheap modern mixer, I'm not.

Well, let me know if you find anything at that price!

Well, I did it!
It's a 1973 Sony MX-16 8 channel board. It's very simple, it has 4 outputs, each with a VU, each channel has 3 stepped controls: Output select (for channels 1, 2, 3, 4, and 1 and 2 combined), 4 step Input attenuation and a mic/line/off switch, plus faders, of course. If anybody out there has heard the old Sony tube condenser microphones, you'll know how high that company's standards were back in the day. Many Japanese companies in the 60's and 70's just copied the high end western circuit designs and used components of equal caliber, they were extremely competitive at that time. This board has all discrete class A circuitry. The 1980's incarnation of these boards used V-Fet preamps, I don't know whether or not this one does.
I conducted extensive listening tests, though, unfortunately none were blind since I was alone.
I must have run my CD player through it for an hour A/B'ing it with a direct line to my amp, and whenever I thought one sounded better (which took a long time to hear ANY difference), it turned out that that one was slightly louder than the other, I would correct it and again, not be able to hear a difference until I had really concentrated for a long time and it would always turn out that any perceived difference was caused by one channel being just a hair louder than the other, so I have to conclude that this board is pretty transparent! I was running my CD player through some very cheap cables, so maybe the signal was dulled down enough that subtle differences wouldn't be noticed. Don't know.
I then A/B'd the preamps with my stupid little Behringer and my old Magnasync (a tube pre with triad transformers). The Magnasync has such distinct and colored tone that it was not really comparable, just too different- beautifully detailed high end, but very low bass. Compared to the Behringer the Sony pre's sounded bigger and better defined, especially in the mids and in regards to dynamics, with a smoother bass response. But the Sony only has unbalanced inputs, so when I ran the mic into the pre it was first going through a 15 year old Radio Shack (gasp!) XLR to TS adapter plug that very noticeably dulls down and Lo-Fi-isizes the signal, but despite this the MX-16 still beat out the Behringer!
Then I tried it with my DAW- an RME Multiface running into DP4. It seemed to maybe have a very subtle warming effect when I ran a single channel through it, maybe this was my imagination. But when I tried mixing a few tracks down on it I was very impressed. I had been frustrated by the way that my mixes always seemed to be trapped inside the computer- kind of muddy or blurry, distant feeling and just inescapebly yucky and 2-dimensional. But through that new board they sound punchy, crisp and up front. I got a mix I'd been working on for months to sound better than it ever did in about 5 minutes. Who knows why. I know that there's a debate going on over digital and analog summing. Well, I've heard an A/B on a Neve and the digi mix just did not compare to the analog in terms of presence and depth. And now I've found the same to be true in my own studio, to a much greater extent than I imagined.
It's got its problems though- I need some sort of reverse direct box to use the pre's without the stupid adapter - Any Suggestions?And you can hear it humming if you really, really crank it. It's got a 2-prong plug and I don't know if that's affecting it, maybe it needs new filter caps, I don't know.
All in all, though, it's got to be one of the best $36 I spent! Thanks for all of your advice!

Studer 169 boards have a good sound. They are usually not $100, but sometimes can be found very cheap if a station is changing out boards.

A studer 169 would sound great. All the studer stuff does. But even finding an 8 channel for $1000 isn't easy.