Tweaking the Rane MLM-82
The Rane MLM-82 is quite possibly the perfect rack mixer for this application. It has four mono mic/line inputs,
plus four stereo line inputs, all in one rack space. It's clean and quiet, what can I say? I'm a big fan of Rane
gear.
The newer models (the MLM-82a) has front panel switches which allow you to assign the mic inputs to left, right,
or center. Unfortunately, I have one of the older models. The good news is that there's an easy mod which allows
you to semi-permanently assign the mic inputs to only one channel. The
description of the mod and the
schematic are both available from the Rane website.
It's a very easy mod. The signal from the mono mic channels, at the end of the chain, goes through two resistors
to get mixed onto the final L and R mix outputs. By clipping one of these resistors, you effectively pan the
channel over to the un-clipped side. I supose you could tinker with various resistor value to pan partway, but
for this application hard panning is what you want. Simply clip two resistors (one for each channel) and the
mod looks something like this:
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