Samson sm 10 / Swiss army knife for mixxing keys.

I bought this unit because I got tired of plugging in to a regular board with power cords etc. I rack mounted it and I can run any channel to any source. it has an FX out and a Monitor out and you can listen to any mix in the headphones. I played a gig SAT night the other night . I play Guitar and keys and the FOH said since we were opening for another band. " I only have one channel for you " . so Line 6 stlive guitar I had a monitor signal in the mixxer. All I had to do was turn up the Monitor out on the guitar channel and I had both signals going down the direct path . this mixxer saved my butt. If I didn't have this I would not have had a guitar signal going to the mains. Swiss army mixxer versital. Great signal responce no eq flat response for the FOH man and everyones happy. 2 thumbs up.

Handy

I needed a line mixer and this one is a clear winner to me in terms of features and price. I play trombone in a cover band with 4 horns, and I was tired of inconsistent monitoring setups due to the horns going to different places every gig (depending on if we were running sound, if we hired a sound guy, if the venue provided it, if they want individual horns or a mix, etc.). I moved the preamping of the horns to a rack for more consistent levels, and the horns don't even really need to sound check now.. I use the SM10 in my live rack for a convoluted yet awesome monitoring setup with an HMX-56. The SM10 was the only line mixer that made the level of control I wanted possible. Basically I can give FOH individual horns if they want it or a mix that I can control from the stage (handy on a lot of gigs). I can control the FOH levels of the individual horns without affecting the monitoring setup, I can control the amount of reverb sent to FOH, I can split the FOH dry mix and FOH reverb into two separate channels, and I can even combine an additional aux input with my HMX-56 output (using the Mix B section). The best thing is that with the turn of one stepped knob on the SM10, I can switch what is in my headphones or wedge back and forth between my personal mix and the FOH mix to check levels, reverb, FX, etc. Working great so far. My only complaints are that the FX send is only available in an unbalanced form and the balanced output for the Mon send is on the front. The monitoring of the main outputs is visible enough at a distance. It's not the most exciting $200 I've ever spent, but it makes me more happy when I'm using headphones, so now I can actually use my hearing protection without compromising my playing.

SM10 -- SAMSON SINGLE RACK MIXER

This is a great single rack unit for keyboard players to expand their sound module use. It does have a few drawbacks. First, there are only 2 xlr channels. I use them to mic the leslie. But if you needed more xlr inputs for drums, you're scewed. One other feature they can work with. Make sure your MUTE buttons are NOT engaged when you turn it on, because once you dis-engage them when the unit is on, they give off a NASTY POP in your system! I am talking speaker popping kind!! And third -- One very stupid feature is that the ON/OFF switch is in the REAR ! Way to go! How the hell are you going to access it when it's bolted into your rack! So once it's installed in the rack the only option is to leave it on all the time! The dude that came up with that one obviously doesn't use rack equipment. There are NO treble/bass adjustments. This unit is purely for an expansion unit only , but it sounds ok, and works good if you need to save spaces in your main board inputs and are not objective to self mixing. I like it overall, just disappointed in their lack of thinking it through in the design department. So if you want functionability for this reason go for it, otherwise look for one with all xlr/ts combo inputs. I think their next one up does have these attributes.