Allen & Heath ZED-10

Ultra-portable multi-purpose mixer from ZED series that is suitable for both live sound and recording applications and comes with configurable USB audio in/out making it easy to capture stereo recordings. The pre-amps are similar in design to Allen & Heath’s MixWizard range of mixers, but with a twist – inputs 3 & 4 have a high impedance jack input capable of taking either a normal line level or a low level input from a guitar pickup. These newly designed inputs have been crafted with the aim of replicating the sound of a classic guitar or instrument tube pre-amp in a combo or head amp. An extremely high input impedance ensures loading on pick-ups is minimal and a Class A FET (field effect transistor) circuit powered from 48V is employed to give the valve-like gain stage. There is a gain “Boost” switch associated with the guitar inputs which boosts gain by 26dB to cater for instruments with very low level outputs and the overdrive characteristics of the guitar inputs are very similar to a valve (tube) circuit, being asymmetric and soft. The mixer has also two stereo inputs for MP3/CD players or keyboards, professional Neutrik XLR stereo outputs and a flexible monitoring section with Nuutrik headphone and speaker feed outputs. The mixer features a responsive 3-band, swept mid frequency EQ design which utilises MusiQ – with optimised slope (or Q factor) for equalising individual instruments. Other features include 2 auxes, an illuminated PFL indicator, stereo returns and playback, 12 bar meters, separate 2-track record outputs, or DI level switching for sub mixing. All inputs feature independent level control.