Personal Mixers: Active vs. Passive

[FenderGuy53]

At our last Jam Night, our bass player, who also provides the PA, was late arriving. During setup, I'm thinking: How is this going to work without vocals? Our lead guitarist then pulls an old Radio Shack (powered) personal mixer out of his gig bag. We run the mic and my guitar thru the mixer and into my amp - instant vocals. Rock on!

Anyway, I thought: WOW! We can run mics or other instruments thru the same amp! It may be handy to have one of these personal mini-mixers in MY gigbag, too.

We don't record, so this would mostly be used in cases where someone's gear was down or we needed to power more devices than we had amps.

I did some quick research and found an active (Samson S-Mix, $49.97) and a passive (ART PowerMix 1, $40.97) personal mixer. Here's some info on both:

ART PowerMix 1

Samson S-Mix


Whaddayathink?

Does anyone use personal mixers? What are the pros & cons of active vs. passive? Are there any "gotchas" that I need to know?

Thanks, as always, for your support.

[mudbean]

The "passive" unit is simply a line level mixer to combine signals like those from multiple keyboards. It does not have a microphone preamp. Yes, they say that you can use "high impedance" microphones - but there is no such thing as a GOOD quality hi-Z mic. So, if you want to mix regular mics, like the Shure SM57 or SM58, with your guitar signal through your amp (has never worked well for me, BTW, but YMMV), you need the "active" unit.

mud

[FenderGuy53]

Originally Posted by mudbean

The "passive" unit is simply a line level mixer to combine signals like those from multiple keyboards. It does not have a microphone preamp. Yes, they say that you can use "high impedance" microphones - but there is no such thing as a GOOD quality hi-Z mic. So, if you want to mix regular mics, like the Shure SM57 or SM58, with your guitar signal through your amp (has never worked well for me, BTW, but YMMV), you need the "active" unit.

mud

Thanks. The more I think about it, the more I agree that there certainly are advantages to the active unit.

[T Prior]

It certainly does not hurt to have a small 4 or 6 channel mixer floating around. I picked up a Behringer 4 channel (active) for $29, I have used it for all sorts of stuff, but after reading this thread I think I will carry it in the car to all gigs as well, you never know.

t

[FenderGuy53]

Originally Posted by T Prior

It certainly does not hurt to have a small 4 or 6 channel mixer floating around. I picked up a Behringer 4 channel (active) for $29, I have used it for all sorts of stuff, but after reading this thread I think I will carry it in the car to all gigs as well, you never know.

t

That's right. Ya never know...