NMD. Soundcraft Notepad 12fx review
 

In the continuing effort to drop weight and lug, my duo just sidelined our Peavey 10 board and a small rack with aphex , stereo 31 band eq and headamp for Iem's Dropped 40 pounds. We picked up a new Soundcraft Notepad 12fx and a small ART headamp. We will be using it with one or two Yamaha DBR 10's. We play 60's and 70's tunes to audiences up to 150.

Big selling features of this mixer were 3 band eq on mic channels, 4x4 usb with lots of routing, three different banks of variable effects, flexibility in routing monitor outs and a very small footprint. The price is very reasonable as well at about $150. Great alternative to the Allen and Heath products which are great but higher priced and the newer models have reduced features.

The mixer is dead quiet and has outstanding mic preamps, as you would expect from Soundcraft. Even the wall wart is high quality with rubberized cabling instead or cheap lamp cord, though I don't like wall warts at all. Sound is warm and full and we've found we don't miss the eq or aphex at all. Routing for iem's is easy and seamless, effects are great and you can actually combine reverb and delay ! Who'd of thunk it ! ( sorry for sarcasm here lol ) Channel mic inputs even use combi jacks which I love.

Cons are few - only one master slider for mains, fx and aux out share a layered knob arrangement which works but is cumbersome, and the wall wart thing previously mentioned. For the solo or duo artist with a powered speaker this is a great option that is light and small, won't break the bank and will suffice for 4 track recording and playback via usb. Thanks for reading

Yes, just got the SoundCraft Notepad 8fx and it's become my go-to mixer for solo gigs---excellent mic pre's, 3-band eq, hi-pass filter, usable effects (lexicon reverb), main xlr outs and TINY as heck!

Looks a lot like my 124FX which has been a solid performer for rehearsals and duo gigs for a long time. It is actually smaller that the new version but the new version includes XLR speaker outs which I like. The 124FX was originally priced a little high but I bought mine at a real blow out sale price. I used to say I wish I had bought 2 at the blowout price but mine has held up fine so I never needed a backup.

I am glad to see them reenter this market and at a reasonable price point too.

hunter

Good to hear these little mixers are liked. I fancy the 12fx as my mini solo duo mixer where my bigger one is not needed. Have not had a chance to test drive so am glad the fx seem decent which was my only real concern. Very neat and compact to look at.

Kris

Porting into android phone
 

Can the USB out successfully stream sound into an andorid phone using OTG?

One shortcoming of this line of mixers is the driver for Windows is unsigned and to use the 12FX as a USB audio interface to a Windows PC requires rebooting the PC in debug mode 7.

I looked at these when i wanted to replace my aging mackie with something smaller for solo gigs.
I needed to jump up to the signature
series in order to get the parametric
mids. These boards get alot of love.
and sound great!.
I ended up finding a like new
zed 10fx .. with the para mids and the
high z inputs.. im happy with it..
But the soundcraft notepad would
have been a close second.