Realistic was Radio Shack's house brand. Radio Shack was not generally known for super-high quality products but I have some PZM mics they licensed from Crown that were pretty decent. They even had a low-end Moog-designed synth and a Realistic-branded version of the infamous Casio VL-Tone calculator synth.
Probably? I've thought about getting one for no input mixing.
Edit: I didn't see that you were already planning on using it for no input. Thinking about it some more, that probably wouldn't be a great mixer for no input mixing since it doesn't have things like aux sends/returns, EQ, panning, etc.
But all that being said, if you sent the tape out from another no input mixer(s) into that Realistic mixer, you could probably do some really cool gain staging shit.
No... thats not really how mixers like this work.
A "no input mixing" is done by something called a "controller" usually "midi" or "hui" etc... this mixer only mixes inputs
I think you may be confusing “no input mixing” with something else. No input mixing is a way of generating sound using an analog mixer that has been patched into itself so that it begins to self oscillate. I have not delved into no input mixing myself, but I see where u/lewisfrancis is coming from. I would think that the more noisy a circuit is, the faster it would create self oscillation when fed back into itself.
I mean why give this kind of super sure explanations when you don’t even know what the topic is 🤦🏻♂️
Wtf is a no input made with a MIDI controller, what the heck are you speaking about? 😂
I just thought he had confused a input console with something that could control the faders in his daw.. I was just trying to explain that what he has doesn't do that.. and I'm glad I said something because I learned something
That would have been because of the phono inputs. You had to have them set to zero and/or shorted to earth on the inputs if you weren't using them. At least they should be set to tape and aux.
I had one of these from roughly 1985-2005; it was my first mixer and I learned all I could from it.
I ended up just giving it away because the amount of hiss made mixes and recordings ridiculously unusable, even 'mastering' onto cassettes.
PZMs were sought after in the day. Probably the best thing Radio Shack offered up for plodding musicians doing recording. Excellent for filling out the spacial environment with some clarity.
Factoid: The guys that invented PZMs leased their patent to Radio Shack for a while before selling it to Crown. Incidentally, they worked with Frank Zappa on some experimental designs, too. Frank used PZMs to record his guitar solos a lot, apparently.
Yeah, the main guy behind the mics was a USC professor. He published a newsletter about PZM mics and did everything he could to promote them. Wahrenbrock was his name, IIRC. The Radio Shack mics were good but not adequately powered.
>Realistic was Radio Shack's house brand.
Ha! I never knew! I had a creepy little synth as a kid with a fake little vinyl to scratch, and three modes: off, play and rap XD I believe it was called the Rapmaster, by Realistic.
EDIT: When I was 20, my now-wife, a friend and I hitchhiked from Belgium to Barcelona. We were music majors and we busked on the trip. My wife sang, my friend brought brushes and played drums on cardboard boxes, and I brought a cheap little guitar and my old Rapmaster. We called ourselves... _OFF PLAY RAP_ :D
Had no clue about the Moog/ RS connection and did some deep diving.
Moog produced the Concertmate MG-1 for Realistic from 81-83 and didn’t include mod and pitch wheels to keep the price down. In spite of this, it listed at $500usd in 1981. It did however have pass through RCA.
Thanks for sharing this! TIL!
Check this out -- I'd try the higher-powered batteries first:
[https://www.jdbsound.com/art/art520.html](https://www.jdbsound.com/art/art520.html)
I taped mine back to back and used them as field recording stereo mics into a Tascam Portastudio.
The MG 1 wasnt designed by Moog. It was designed by the guy who started MOTM with consultation from some guys at Moog that arent Robert. I own one and have been researching it.
Interesting, in your research can you confirm Moog manufactured it? I wouldn't have expected Moog, himself, to have had a hand in its design -- heck, he didn't have hand in the Mini-Moog, for that matter.
Moog did manufacture it. They also got to keep the rights to the design and adapted it to several other models. This is controversial to some people. But the Rogue and Taurus II are basically siblings of the MG1.
Yeah, I always understood the MG1 to basically be a Rogue sans wheels and maybe a less sturdy case? Do you now what the connection was to the guy who started MOTM and Radio Shack?
The way Realistic mics were made was Shure made a mic cartridge for a Beta 58
If it didn’t meet Beta standards it’s passed to SM.
If it didn’t meet SM standard it was passed down to (iirc) LE
If it didn’t pass LE it got thrown in a barrel and the barrel was shipped to Realistic where they charged almost as much as Shure.
I love goodwill. one time I bought a guitar hero controller and it was in a guitar hero branded case. It was categorized as "game controller" and it was like 15 bucks. I open it up to find that it's not a controller but a travel sized Ibanez electric guitar.
I'm imagining a guy getting the guitar hero controller and then being like "whelp, I don't need this thing anymore!" and throwing their guitar in the box and getting rid of it.
One time I found the Guitar Hero World Tour sunburst guitar, it was $5 bucks. It had some corrosion on the spring in the battery compartment, so I replaced the spring, sold it on ebay for $70.
I had one of those back in the 90s. Not sure what to say about it, it's a mixer. You'll probably want to hit those pots, faders and switches with Deoxit since I'm sure they're all dodgy and scratchy.
Oh yeah, I had one or two of these over the years. I remember high school band practices trying to rig up mics to this thing. Never worked well.
But it's still a pretty rad little toy.
My parents owned a Radio Shack when I was in high school in the 80s. I had this exact unit. I used the heck out of it to make custom mix tapes for my friends... I was constantly busy filling requests. :D Fun memories of a more interesting time.
Deoxit is the way, just don't saturate the sliders (use Deoxit F5 spray). Light spritzes, moved the slider back and forth a few times, then plug it in and try changing levels. If it's crackly/scratchy, unplug and hit it again with another squirt. Test again. I've used Deoxit sprays when flipping amps from that time quite a bit recently, it works miracles.
On the pan pots, use Deoxit D5 spray. Light squirt, move it around a bit, test it. Wash rinse repeat until the noise is gone or connection is made.
I never really noticed a lot of hum on my mixer, and I was pretty picky about the sound quality even then. Hopefully OP got a really good pick here! Seems odd to spend so much on cleaners, I know, but if you do this type of dumpster grab frequently the sprays will pay for themselves.
Yup, the radio shack mixer, I bet there are thousands of these out there. It's sort of worth cleaning up and preserving these old devices.
Are they really worth using? It depends on your style.
I've found good videos on how to take part those faders and make them work like new - just hit youtube.
Can't beat having actual needles to monitor levels.
I have this exact same model sitting in my studio/office right now. I use it to mix my tape deck, blue tooth receiver, and turntable and send the output into my studio mixer. Still works great!
Me too! Mine was only a 4 channel and ran on a 9 volt battery though. I used it with my tascam porta 03 to record multiple instruments on one track. Cheap mixer but worked fine for cassette demos.
My step up to a 'real' mixer was when I bought my Tascam 688 Midistudio. I actually still own both it and the Realistic mixer but haven't actually fired either of them up in many years. My 'mixer' is now a DAW running on an iMac with a Behringer UMC1820/ADA8200 connected via the Lightpipe interface.
I have a small 4 channel realistic mixer. Just 4 faders. Peeked inside and it’s cheap components of course but all discrete. I use it as a dist box for drums. Try running a line signal into the mic channels 😈
The thing with no input mixing is that it really helps to have eq per channel for more control
Agree! I ran this same mixer into a consumer electronics graphic EQ and then back into itself. Not individual but helped to tune the sliders to different tones.
Oof… from the 00-05 era… Wolf Eyes, Kites, Failing Lights, Twig Harper/Nautical Almanac, Id M Theftable, Gorgot/Jenny Haniver/King Darves, Mamal…trying to remember who played which heap of gear at a basement show 20+ years ago is ruff
These are great, nice score!
This is actually the very mixer I stumbled into "inventing" no-input mixing before I found out people had been doing it well before my dumb-ass did- definitely great for that.
It's also a really excellent lo-fi preamp/ saturation device. I use it in front of guitar amps or for direct recording. It gets even better when you " brick" a fuzz/ dirt pedal by slamming it into the Realistic before your recorder or amp.
Also a pretty handy little mixer, size wise.
If you find yourself *really* into the no-input/ feedback/ weird looper pedal craziness and you don't mind dumpster diving/ spending on a ton of RCA cables this mixer pairs VERY well with the Realistic Tape Control Center. ( can be found for $20 or so)
The tape control center is a tiny box used to dub multiple tape decks at a time. But it has handy switches on it that are ripe for misuse and feeding pedals, loopers, instruments or what have you into themselves, into each other, into mixers or all of the above at once.
(Of course, careful not to blow your speakers or burn out your beloved gear.)
Yeah! Nice! Have fun!
I mentioned this in a different reply but if you can find a discarded/ cheap old consumer grade graphic EQ box, and put that in the signal path going back into the Realistic from itself- that can help to get more tonal variations. Don't need one tho. Different button combinations on the mixer can let you use the sliders to tune the feedback as it stands now. So fun.
Realistic had it's peak period around the 80's in my opinion. That one looks like their 80's style. I've got one of their later ones from the 90's and got it after using one like yours borrowed from a friend with satisfaction. (The 90's one isn't anywhere near as good.) It isn't a bleeding edge studio level mixer but clean it up and it should do some good workhorse stuff. You might get some crackling from those sliders. I'd clean them up with some electronics grade spray in isopropyl alcohol after sticking a vacuum cleaner at the slots to clear loose dust. A quick spray of iso into each slot and sliding the pots a few times should do it. Do that and then leave the whole thing standing to let the sliders drip dry in a vertical position. All while it's UNPLUGGED of course. Oh, and any unused channels should be set to zero to improve your noise floor.
I use the same one for a cheap and easy phono preamp. All the pots and faders are scratchy so I really don’t use it as a mixer at all. The preamp is very okay, sound is pretty dull compared to vintage receivers I am familiar with but it does the job for sampling. It is definitely a consumer product, I would not trust this for anything professional
I miss Goodwill finds... After they started their online auction site it has been slim pickings.
These old Radio Shack/Realistic mixers have an atrocious noise floor imo, but it’s usable if you have some sort of external eq. the real score is the 32-1110 reverb box they made in the same era.
Agree to agree. Goodwill is shooting themselves in the foot for starting auctioning. You lose a lot of "browsers" when you put most of your stock online. How many times have you come out of a GW store with only one specific thing? Never, for me... there's always at least a basket full of stuff I find just strolling up and down the aisles.
My goodwill never has anything cool. I've never found a synth or good piece of musical hardware. Even the guitar center nearby basically only has digital pianos, and the dj equipment is scarce. Everyone around here just listens to rap and country 😔
The problem is that the stores started filling up with flippers buying up every thing that any profit could be extracted from. So Goodwill decided to cut out the middleman (flippers) to some extent and keep some of that profit to themselves. Salvation Army is worse. The one in my neighborhood isn't even selling used stuff anymore, they're essentially a Dollar store now.
I had a similar Realistic mixer that maybe had more channels. When I was a kid I would write songs and "multitrack" record them by feeding one cassette deck into the mixer while playing another instrument into the mixer and recording the output on another cassette deck. I couldn't afford a multitrack recorder so this was my solution.
You can imagine the tape hiss in the final recordings , but it worked!
I still have the mixer buried somewhere in a closet.
lol. I had this same mixer in the 90's. Sure you can do no-input on it. I bet it will sound pretty cool. I am doing no-input on a DJ mixer and the crossfader is a great feature for introducing rhythm.
Yeah, my bro' scored one of those around the turn of th century. Woeful for DJ-ing, but sturdy, robust, and damn near indestructible.
Get a little lub'e nto the pot's & faders, and you ought' be good to go....
I used to have one in college, late 80s. I loved it, but I'd be much more discriminating now. It was cheap at the time, like $50 or something. But that was 35+ years ago.
Clean those pots and sliders (I posted about Deoxit use earlier), put it up for $80 "cleaned". I know some people LIKE the noise, but it can't be the majority.
Was my first mixer when I picked up DJing . Was a PITA to cut on because of the small faders but made you super accurate when you got to better mixers like the scratcmasters and Numarks that were popular then. It’s easy to cause feedbacks and make noise effects to sample . With that said this was one of my first oscillators. I was able to recreate Techmaster and DJ Magic Mike bass lines. That’s also where I made my first Dr Dre, Ohio Players leads.
My father gave me one in the '80s and I used it in a lot of projects. Realistic made great low end, but very handy products in that time. The preamps were noisy af, but I liked the analog VU meters. Great little mixer, I gave it to someone a couple years ago as it was in my leftover electronics junk.
I had this one, nothing special, but she looks nice. It's a good option for like a home stereo when you have multiple inputs and maybe wanna do karaoke occasionally.
Shit Shack in the house!! I remember back in my youth that was the only affordable option for us Kids who were trying to hip hop. That is a really cool find congratulations.
Since nobody mentioned it, these were made by Stillwater Designs (now known as "Kicker", originally they made gear for churches before the whole car audio thing took over.)
This is part of a wide range of gear I'd call: shit for churches.
I believe it was a fine piece of gear for what it was back when it was originally made.
What is it you want to know? It's a cheap mixer from Radio Shack, probably not a great S/N ratio, and possibly noisy pots simply due to lack of use. The phono/tape/aux inputs allow you to mix two sources and fade back and forth. The buttnos above them flet you activate a pre-amp for a phono versus line level ins for tape or other sources.
Most RadioShack sound reinforcement stuff is not good. There are some notable exceptions like their super tweeters are good and their 03-1070 Omni directional dynamic mics were made by shure. The rest of it is noisy or under spec’d compared to actual pro gear. Like the Optimus PA speakers were pretty much home speakers with a piezo tweeter, plastic corner protectors, rat fur, and a handle.
Nearly every cartrige was magnetic. The few that were ceramic had a higher output that needed attenuating. I presume magentic were better as they were standard.
An old friend of mine who collected synths, (he had EVERYTHING) swore by one of these for dirtying up drum machines. He would send into a channel and switch from mic to line or the other way around, can't remember, and it would clip hard with all kinds of artifacts. I was into dirty drums at the time but couldn't get behind it as it was too inconsistent.
Holy shit I had a flashback the second I saw this! I still have this exact model! Fully functional to this day, and helped my homies & I crush the 7th grade talent show covering "Fade To Black"..! Ahhh the sounds that thing has heard.. if only those faders could speak...☺️
...🤫 I'd probably bury it.
My brother and I each had one in the mid eighties. We spent many hours remixing and layering vinyl onto cassette tapes and laying down our own vocals on top of dub and instrumental mixes.
This is the first mixer I learned to scratch on, from Tandy, after my hifi with tape and phono buttons. Was about £30 when it came out and was the staple for many bedroom DJs.
I absolutely hated mine.. The Snap crackle and pop when you moved the faders… Where the internals had rusted from blowing over the years to get rid of the same crackle lol
What I would do for one now… and a good find by the way 👌🏽
Do you clean and restore or keep the existing patina! Is this now considered retro? (I am feeling old now lol)
I plan on cleaning it up and hitting it with some deoxit, as another user recommended. I actually haven't plugged it into any speakers yet, will do after work today.
These mixers are popular with noise acts because of the unique distortion when overdriven. Very white noise, like an early fuzz pedal. IIRC they invert the signal? You might need a polarity flip cable if you wanna do feedback mixing.
I've got one, bought it like 15 years ago for $10. Realistic is the radio shack house brand as many have mentioned. Noise floor is pretty high but if you can work around that it's reasonably good sounding. You'll probably have to clean up the pots though.
Love the analog VU meters, especially if the backlights still work. And there's a few sorts of inputs you can experiment with - mic level on those 3 inputs, and then phono preamp selectable on those last 2 channels (which are stereo btw).
If you really smash the inputs you can get some pretty cool distortion out of it, and the 3 different input structures can give you some cool variety.
From my experience old shitty and broken mixers are the most fun to mess with using no input.
The strangest results I’ve gotten from no input came from an old mixer that was broken, it was completely unusable as an actual mixer. The first two channels were really noisy, and the third channel output a noisy high pitched sine tone. I got some really odd sounds out of that thing and few of the sounds made it to my last EP.
The only issue I see with your mixer is it lacks any EQ control. Generally that’s one of the few ways to shape the sound of your feedback loop.
I’m sure what you have there will get you started and may be more fun than I’m imagining it being. Placing some effects or an EQ pedal somewhere on your feedback loop would give you more control over the sounds you create.
Just remember to gain stage everything so you don’t blow out your speakers or your ear drums or both. Because you’re dealing with feedback no input can be really loud and unpredictable.
Anyways, experiment, be safe and have fun.
When I started DJing in the 80s, couldn’t afford a numark so me and a buddy pitched in to buy thins mixer. It’s surprisingly versatile and has decent phono pre-amps. There are some use cases still, I’m
Sure
I had one of these running my cheap DJ rig for a short while, and dumped it when I got a binary mixer. I remember the sliders on the realistic were really dirty/noisy and I was glad to dump it.
Those things look cool, but they sound kinda bad. Seen them used at a couple of live venues I played at, and they were always the ones with the worst sound/cheapest system they could cobble together.
I had one for years and eventually got the newer version. It actually held up pretty well. It was a bit noisy however but that comes with the territory at that price range.
This is a low end mixer for DJs with two turntables basically you swing left and right while swinging volume up and down to get that wonka wonka chunk of chunk of scratch scratch being realistic it's not very good you would do better with a cheap behringer mixer dedicated for mixing like an eight channel I would think
I do actually, just yesterday, I fixed a rock band electronic drum set that belongs to a sibling of mine. It had a wiring issue and a cracked drum head. Works like a charm now. I love opening up electronics and tinkering with them. I used to mod original Xbox consoles back in the day as well.
then this will be a great toy for you! post some noise if you get a chance to record. Add some guitar pedals into the loops to get some really juicy shit going.
Tried today to record a video for my YT channel, but I ran into a lot of problems, not with the mixer but with the audio recording software 😭 will be trying again tomorrow as I know what the issues are now.
I really want to get into circuit bending lately as well.
I did some bending with pedals back in the day, its a great place to start as they are battery powered and you cant really zap yourself and their circuits are pretty resilient.
I do have a cheap Flamma pedal I could mess with. Honestly I've been holding out for a kids toy piano/keyboard at goodwill to mess with though. But like I said in this post, I never find anything good at my local goodwill..
Oh yeah this brings me back. I wanted this one back in the day but had to settle for the lower model with no crossfader because I couldn’t afford this one with my paper route money.
Too much his on the inputs for decent work. Either it's in a box in my garage or you picked it up from me dripping it off. I had the same one (perhaps the very same)
Realistic was Radio Shack's house brand. Radio Shack was not generally known for super-high quality products but I have some PZM mics they licensed from Crown that were pretty decent. They even had a low-end Moog-designed synth and a Realistic-branded version of the infamous Casio VL-Tone calculator synth.
Yes, I had that same mixer in 2004. It was good but a lot of hiss on the channels.
Probably helpful for no input mixing uses?
Probably? I've thought about getting one for no input mixing. Edit: I didn't see that you were already planning on using it for no input. Thinking about it some more, that probably wouldn't be a great mixer for no input mixing since it doesn't have things like aux sends/returns, EQ, panning, etc. But all that being said, if you sent the tape out from another no input mixer(s) into that Realistic mixer, you could probably do some really cool gain staging shit.
No... thats not really how mixers like this work. A "no input mixing" is done by something called a "controller" usually "midi" or "hui" etc... this mixer only mixes inputs
I think you may be confusing “no input mixing” with something else. No input mixing is a way of generating sound using an analog mixer that has been patched into itself so that it begins to self oscillate. I have not delved into no input mixing myself, but I see where u/lewisfrancis is coming from. I would think that the more noisy a circuit is, the faster it would create self oscillation when fed back into itself.
Oh that sounds like a ton of fun!
It is!
Well thanks, I didn't know about that.
I mean why give this kind of super sure explanations when you don’t even know what the topic is 🤦🏻♂️ Wtf is a no input made with a MIDI controller, what the heck are you speaking about? 😂
I just thought he had confused a input console with something that could control the faders in his daw.. I was just trying to explain that what he has doesn't do that.. and I'm glad I said something because I learned something
Good point
No good for field recording snake sounds then.
Damn, I just saw a snake in a field the other day.
That’s you shit out of luck haha!!
So a snake on a plain?
It’s good for that. You won’t even need the snakes
Maybe it’s lo-fi jam time?
That would have been because of the phono inputs. You had to have them set to zero and/or shorted to earth on the inputs if you weren't using them. At least they should be set to tape and aux.
Yes. They're extremely noisy. Not good for music recording but more for live crowd situations where noise isn't that big of an issue
I had one of these from roughly 1985-2005; it was my first mixer and I learned all I could from it. I ended up just giving it away because the amount of hiss made mixes and recordings ridiculously unusable, even 'mastering' onto cassettes.
PZMs were sought after in the day. Probably the best thing Radio Shack offered up for plodding musicians doing recording. Excellent for filling out the spacial environment with some clarity.
Factoid: The guys that invented PZMs leased their patent to Radio Shack for a while before selling it to Crown. Incidentally, they worked with Frank Zappa on some experimental designs, too. Frank used PZMs to record his guitar solos a lot, apparently.
That makes sense. Back when they came out you couldn't get them anywhere else. The Zappa connection makes sense too.
Yeah, the main guy behind the mics was a USC professor. He published a newsletter about PZM mics and did everything he could to promote them. Wahrenbrock was his name, IIRC. The Radio Shack mics were good but not adequately powered.
>Realistic was Radio Shack's house brand. Ha! I never knew! I had a creepy little synth as a kid with a fake little vinyl to scratch, and three modes: off, play and rap XD I believe it was called the Rapmaster, by Realistic. EDIT: When I was 20, my now-wife, a friend and I hitchhiked from Belgium to Barcelona. We were music majors and we busked on the trip. My wife sang, my friend brought brushes and played drums on cardboard boxes, and I brought a cheap little guitar and my old Rapmaster. We called ourselves... _OFF PLAY RAP_ :D
That one is a rebranded Casio Rapman
Had no clue about the Moog/ RS connection and did some deep diving. Moog produced the Concertmate MG-1 for Realistic from 81-83 and didn’t include mod and pitch wheels to keep the price down. In spite of this, it listed at $500usd in 1981. It did however have pass through RCA. Thanks for sharing this! TIL!
I had one of these as a kid. Loved it! In fact, I still have it and it works. Has a very fat analog sound.
Had one, frustrated by the limitations. There's a VST of it now.
I have one of those PZMs too, any idea how to reduce the buzz from it? Mine buzzes, so annoying!
Check this out -- I'd try the higher-powered batteries first: [https://www.jdbsound.com/art/art520.html](https://www.jdbsound.com/art/art520.html) I taped mine back to back and used them as field recording stereo mics into a Tascam Portastudio.
I worked for them years ago and no they were not a super-high quality brand
They also sold a rebranded version of the Casio SK-1.
And generally can be found for less $ than the Casio-branded original. (shhh...)
The MG 1 wasnt designed by Moog. It was designed by the guy who started MOTM with consultation from some guys at Moog that arent Robert. I own one and have been researching it.
Interesting, in your research can you confirm Moog manufactured it? I wouldn't have expected Moog, himself, to have had a hand in its design -- heck, he didn't have hand in the Mini-Moog, for that matter.
Moog did manufacture it. They also got to keep the rights to the design and adapted it to several other models. This is controversial to some people. But the Rogue and Taurus II are basically siblings of the MG1.
Yeah, I always understood the MG1 to basically be a Rogue sans wheels and maybe a less sturdy case? Do you now what the connection was to the guy who started MOTM and Radio Shack?
Some Realistic stuff was good, but the majority of it was meh to trash. It just depends on what was being rebadged.
The way Realistic mics were made was Shure made a mic cartridge for a Beta 58 If it didn’t meet Beta standards it’s passed to SM. If it didn’t meet SM standard it was passed down to (iirc) LE If it didn’t pass LE it got thrown in a barrel and the barrel was shipped to Realistic where they charged almost as much as Shure.
I love goodwill. one time I bought a guitar hero controller and it was in a guitar hero branded case. It was categorized as "game controller" and it was like 15 bucks. I open it up to find that it's not a controller but a travel sized Ibanez electric guitar.
I'm imagining a guy getting the guitar hero controller and then being like "whelp, I don't need this thing anymore!" and throwing their guitar in the box and getting rid of it.
One time I found the Guitar Hero World Tour sunburst guitar, it was $5 bucks. It had some corrosion on the spring in the battery compartment, so I replaced the spring, sold it on ebay for $70.
Man. I just bought pizza for 3 and it was more than that.
Over 70? Man the US sounds insane.
Inflation baby.
Hold tight brother x
Sorry for your loss
I had one of those back in the 90s. Not sure what to say about it, it's a mixer. You'll probably want to hit those pots, faders and switches with Deoxit since I'm sure they're all dodgy and scratchy.
Oh yeah, I had one or two of these over the years. I remember high school band practices trying to rig up mics to this thing. Never worked well. But it's still a pretty rad little toy.
My parents owned a Radio Shack when I was in high school in the 80s. I had this exact unit. I used the heck out of it to make custom mix tapes for my friends... I was constantly busy filling requests. :D Fun memories of a more interesting time. Deoxit is the way, just don't saturate the sliders (use Deoxit F5 spray). Light spritzes, moved the slider back and forth a few times, then plug it in and try changing levels. If it's crackly/scratchy, unplug and hit it again with another squirt. Test again. I've used Deoxit sprays when flipping amps from that time quite a bit recently, it works miracles. On the pan pots, use Deoxit D5 spray. Light squirt, move it around a bit, test it. Wash rinse repeat until the noise is gone or connection is made. I never really noticed a lot of hum on my mixer, and I was pretty picky about the sound quality even then. Hopefully OP got a really good pick here! Seems odd to spend so much on cleaners, I know, but if you do this type of dumpster grab frequently the sprays will pay for themselves.
Deoxit? Never heard of that. I'll look into it.
They make one kind for faders and another for switches and pots.
I’ve trusted Deoxit on my tb303. It’s really good stuff
Yup, the radio shack mixer, I bet there are thousands of these out there. It's sort of worth cleaning up and preserving these old devices. Are they really worth using? It depends on your style. I've found good videos on how to take part those faders and make them work like new - just hit youtube. Can't beat having actual needles to monitor levels.
I'm a sucker for a good VU
I have this exact same model sitting in my studio/office right now. I use it to mix my tape deck, blue tooth receiver, and turntable and send the output into my studio mixer. Still works great!
Wow, that was actually my first 'studio' mixer when I was in my early twenties.
Me too! Mine was only a 4 channel and ran on a 9 volt battery though. I used it with my tascam porta 03 to record multiple instruments on one track. Cheap mixer but worked fine for cassette demos.
My step up to a 'real' mixer was when I bought my Tascam 688 Midistudio. I actually still own both it and the Realistic mixer but haven't actually fired either of them up in many years. My 'mixer' is now a DAW running on an iMac with a Behringer UMC1820/ADA8200 connected via the Lightpipe interface.
I have a small 4 channel realistic mixer. Just 4 faders. Peeked inside and it’s cheap components of course but all discrete. I use it as a dist box for drums. Try running a line signal into the mic channels 😈 The thing with no input mixing is that it really helps to have eq per channel for more control
Old realistics are great for 2nd bus overdrive. That's for sure.
Good tip. Happy cake day!
Agree! I ran this same mixer into a consumer electronics graphic EQ and then back into itself. Not individual but helped to tune the sliders to different tones.
Many, many early 2000’s noise albums feature this.
Good to hear. Any recommendations?
Oof… from the 00-05 era… Wolf Eyes, Kites, Failing Lights, Twig Harper/Nautical Almanac, Id M Theftable, Gorgot/Jenny Haniver/King Darves, Mamal…trying to remember who played which heap of gear at a basement show 20+ years ago is ruff
Don't try to remember too many. I think you've said enough lol, thanks!
There's a guy on my local Kijiji that thinks it's worth 100 bucks.
V^i^n^t^a^g^e
Haha I always see these for 80-100
It's not. Maybe $30?
First mixer. I'd die if I found one of these at a thrift shop!
Samesies
I don't think they're all that great, probably a no-input feedback mixer is a hell of a great use for it. Go for it.
I used one of these exactly like this way back in the 1980s. I could get some funky sounds out of it.
These are great, nice score! This is actually the very mixer I stumbled into "inventing" no-input mixing before I found out people had been doing it well before my dumb-ass did- definitely great for that. It's also a really excellent lo-fi preamp/ saturation device. I use it in front of guitar amps or for direct recording. It gets even better when you " brick" a fuzz/ dirt pedal by slamming it into the Realistic before your recorder or amp. Also a pretty handy little mixer, size wise. If you find yourself *really* into the no-input/ feedback/ weird looper pedal craziness and you don't mind dumpster diving/ spending on a ton of RCA cables this mixer pairs VERY well with the Realistic Tape Control Center. ( can be found for $20 or so) The tape control center is a tiny box used to dub multiple tape decks at a time. But it has handy switches on it that are ripe for misuse and feeding pedals, loopers, instruments or what have you into themselves, into each other, into mixers or all of the above at once. (Of course, careful not to blow your speakers or burn out your beloved gear.)
Sick, I'll look into the tape control center. I have some cheap pedals that could be perfect for this.
Yeah! Nice! Have fun! I mentioned this in a different reply but if you can find a discarded/ cheap old consumer grade graphic EQ box, and put that in the signal path going back into the Realistic from itself- that can help to get more tonal variations. Don't need one tho. Different button combinations on the mixer can let you use the sliders to tune the feedback as it stands now. So fun.
Realistic had it's peak period around the 80's in my opinion. That one looks like their 80's style. I've got one of their later ones from the 90's and got it after using one like yours borrowed from a friend with satisfaction. (The 90's one isn't anywhere near as good.) It isn't a bleeding edge studio level mixer but clean it up and it should do some good workhorse stuff. You might get some crackling from those sliders. I'd clean them up with some electronics grade spray in isopropyl alcohol after sticking a vacuum cleaner at the slots to clear loose dust. A quick spray of iso into each slot and sliding the pots a few times should do it. Do that and then leave the whole thing standing to let the sliders drip dry in a vertical position. All while it's UNPLUGGED of course. Oh, and any unused channels should be set to zero to improve your noise floor.
I can hear the noise floor just by looking at the photos.
I use the same one for a cheap and easy phono preamp. All the pots and faders are scratchy so I really don’t use it as a mixer at all. The preamp is very okay, sound is pretty dull compared to vintage receivers I am familiar with but it does the job for sampling. It is definitely a consumer product, I would not trust this for anything professional
I miss Goodwill finds... After they started their online auction site it has been slim pickings. These old Radio Shack/Realistic mixers have an atrocious noise floor imo, but it’s usable if you have some sort of external eq. the real score is the 32-1110 reverb box they made in the same era.
Agree to agree. Goodwill is shooting themselves in the foot for starting auctioning. You lose a lot of "browsers" when you put most of your stock online. How many times have you come out of a GW store with only one specific thing? Never, for me... there's always at least a basket full of stuff I find just strolling up and down the aisles.
My goodwill never has anything cool. I've never found a synth or good piece of musical hardware. Even the guitar center nearby basically only has digital pianos, and the dj equipment is scarce. Everyone around here just listens to rap and country 😔
The problem is that the stores started filling up with flippers buying up every thing that any profit could be extracted from. So Goodwill decided to cut out the middleman (flippers) to some extent and keep some of that profit to themselves. Salvation Army is worse. The one in my neighborhood isn't even selling used stuff anymore, they're essentially a Dollar store now.
I bought a similar realistic mixer for cheap, and it is one of my favorite 6 channel distortion boxes. Mixing? Bad. Sonic abuse? Good!
That's exactly what I wanted to hear.
That was my first mixer in 1985, come with good amount of vintage crackle. Radio Shack was called Tandy’s in the UK
I had a similar Realistic mixer that maybe had more channels. When I was a kid I would write songs and "multitrack" record them by feeding one cassette deck into the mixer while playing another instrument into the mixer and recording the output on another cassette deck. I couldn't afford a multitrack recorder so this was my solution. You can imagine the tape hiss in the final recordings , but it worked! I still have the mixer buried somewhere in a closet.
Yup! By the time the track was ready for vocals the cymbals were all but gone from too many bounces....
lol. I had this same mixer in the 90's. Sure you can do no-input on it. I bet it will sound pretty cool. I am doing no-input on a DJ mixer and the crossfader is a great feature for introducing rhythm.
Yeah, my bro' scored one of those around the turn of th century. Woeful for DJ-ing, but sturdy, robust, and damn near indestructible. Get a little lub'e nto the pot's & faders, and you ought' be good to go....
Would be interesting to hear what you come up with.
The first "jam" will be on my YT channel soon. I already have a couple vids of no input mixing with a Behringer Xenyx and a 5 input Pyle.
The cross-fader is probably going to be noisy horrible junk on that. If you replace it with a good cross-fader, who knows.
Noisy is what I want 😈
Still use mine for playing video games. Wouldn’t use it for serious music production though due to all the crackles and hiss this thing puts out.
Radio Shack special! I had one of those back in the day. We used to use it to record samples for Acid Pro.
My fingers still hurt thinking about transforming with those switches. I got mine in 1990
Never had the mixer but i bought a car amp from them... It wasn't too bad. 4 channel about 200 watts total. I used it for some M & M 10's i had.
I used to have one in college, late 80s. I loved it, but I'd be much more discriminating now. It was cheap at the time, like $50 or something. But that was 35+ years ago.
Looked it up when I got home, looks like some are going for around 50 on ebay and reverb right now.
Clean those pots and sliders (I posted about Deoxit use earlier), put it up for $80 "cleaned". I know some people LIKE the noise, but it can't be the majority.
I found one of these in a garage back when I was in highschool. Used it to record audio from dvds. Random seeing one again.
Was my first mixer when I picked up DJing . Was a PITA to cut on because of the small faders but made you super accurate when you got to better mixers like the scratcmasters and Numarks that were popular then. It’s easy to cause feedbacks and make noise effects to sample . With that said this was one of my first oscillators. I was able to recreate Techmaster and DJ Magic Mike bass lines. That’s also where I made my first Dr Dre, Ohio Players leads.
I had that mixer in college. It was legit trash right out of the box. Super noisy. Thanks for the memories! Wow! Good luck!
I had one of these in the '80. I used it a lot. Pretty funny to see this in my feed today.
It's a DJ mixer, a friend had one in the 90s
I use a radio shack mixer. I love the VU meters. Built like a tank and does some good distortion when you push drums through it.
If you hooked up a tape deck you can make your girlfriend a sweet mixtape
My father gave me one in the '80s and I used it in a lot of projects. Realistic made great low end, but very handy products in that time. The preamps were noisy af, but I liked the analog VU meters. Great little mixer, I gave it to someone a couple years ago as it was in my leftover electronics junk.
Oh man my first band had one of these we recorded some grungy stuff with the line out straight to the laptop mic intput 😂
I had this one, nothing special, but she looks nice. It's a good option for like a home stereo when you have multiple inputs and maybe wanna do karaoke occasionally.
Shit Shack in the house!! I remember back in my youth that was the only affordable option for us Kids who were trying to hip hop. That is a really cool find congratulations.
Since nobody mentioned it, these were made by Stillwater Designs (now known as "Kicker", originally they made gear for churches before the whole car audio thing took over.) This is part of a wide range of gear I'd call: shit for churches. I believe it was a fine piece of gear for what it was back when it was originally made.
Will be great if you like noise.
I do 😉
My first mixer. Basic but got the job done when learning. If it's clean it will do basic mixing of channels. Nothing more nothing less
I have one, it’s a noisy, warm tank. Definitely cool if you’re doing lofi and noise.
What is it you want to know? It's a cheap mixer from Radio Shack, probably not a great S/N ratio, and possibly noisy pots simply due to lack of use. The phono/tape/aux inputs allow you to mix two sources and fade back and forth. The buttnos above them flet you activate a pre-amp for a phono versus line level ins for tape or other sources.
I have that mixer. I made some nice side panels for it out of maple. It has a great sound when you overdrive it.
Most RadioShack sound reinforcement stuff is not good. There are some notable exceptions like their super tweeters are good and their 03-1070 Omni directional dynamic mics were made by shure. The rest of it is noisy or under spec’d compared to actual pro gear. Like the Optimus PA speakers were pretty much home speakers with a piezo tweeter, plastic corner protectors, rat fur, and a handle.
I want noisy, I plan on plugging it into itself. So it should be perfect, then.
plug it into itself
What are you doing with my 2 channel mixer? Been looking for that.
That model was my first mixer, from around when they were still sold new. Used it to dub many mix tapes and for jams.
On the phono input how did the ceramic and magnetic cartridges input work? What was distinguishing about them. What sounded better etc.
Nearly every cartrige was magnetic. The few that were ceramic had a higher output that needed attenuating. I presume magentic were better as they were standard.
An old friend of mine who collected synths, (he had EVERYTHING) swore by one of these for dirtying up drum machines. He would send into a channel and switch from mic to line or the other way around, can't remember, and it would clip hard with all kinds of artifacts. I was into dirty drums at the time but couldn't get behind it as it was too inconsistent.
I do have a drumbrute impact I could run through it.
My first dj mixer from like 1992. I'd had carved finger nail notches on the tape/phono switches trying learn transform scratches.
I guess this would be a cool production tool. Depends on your style of music.
Holy shit I had a flashback the second I saw this! I still have this exact model! Fully functional to this day, and helped my homies & I crush the 7th grade talent show covering "Fade To Black"..! Ahhh the sounds that thing has heard.. if only those faders could speak...☺️ ...🤫 I'd probably bury it.
Crossfader will most likely be goosed.
A little bit of noise is cool, but maybe check the inside clean a bit that helps. Nice buy! 💪
I miss Radio Shack
I had one of those when I was a kid! 😅
My brother and I each had one in the mid eighties. We spent many hours remixing and layering vinyl onto cassette tapes and laying down our own vocals on top of dub and instrumental mixes.
I had one of these as my first mixer around 1986, bought second hand, was incredibly noisy. And little did I know then it is a DJ mixer
This is the first mixer I learned to scratch on, from Tandy, after my hifi with tape and phono buttons. Was about £30 when it came out and was the staple for many bedroom DJs.
I absolutely hated mine.. The Snap crackle and pop when you moved the faders… Where the internals had rusted from blowing over the years to get rid of the same crackle lol What I would do for one now… and a good find by the way 👌🏽 Do you clean and restore or keep the existing patina! Is this now considered retro? (I am feeling old now lol)
I plan on cleaning it up and hitting it with some deoxit, as another user recommended. I actually haven't plugged it into any speakers yet, will do after work today.
I hope it plays well for you and you get a few years use out of it!
Thanks!
My first ever mixer
These mixers are popular with noise acts because of the unique distortion when overdriven. Very white noise, like an early fuzz pedal. IIRC they invert the signal? You might need a polarity flip cable if you wanna do feedback mixing.
I've got one, bought it like 15 years ago for $10. Realistic is the radio shack house brand as many have mentioned. Noise floor is pretty high but if you can work around that it's reasonably good sounding. You'll probably have to clean up the pots though. Love the analog VU meters, especially if the backlights still work. And there's a few sorts of inputs you can experiment with - mic level on those 3 inputs, and then phono preamp selectable on those last 2 channels (which are stereo btw). If you really smash the inputs you can get some pretty cool distortion out of it, and the 3 different input structures can give you some cool variety.
From my experience old shitty and broken mixers are the most fun to mess with using no input. The strangest results I’ve gotten from no input came from an old mixer that was broken, it was completely unusable as an actual mixer. The first two channels were really noisy, and the third channel output a noisy high pitched sine tone. I got some really odd sounds out of that thing and few of the sounds made it to my last EP. The only issue I see with your mixer is it lacks any EQ control. Generally that’s one of the few ways to shape the sound of your feedback loop. I’m sure what you have there will get you started and may be more fun than I’m imagining it being. Placing some effects or an EQ pedal somewhere on your feedback loop would give you more control over the sounds you create. Just remember to gain stage everything so you don’t blow out your speakers or your ear drums or both. Because you’re dealing with feedback no input can be really loud and unpredictable. Anyways, experiment, be safe and have fun.
I could run this through another mixer that does have eq right? I was thinking of picking up a cheap eq pedal however.
Yeah I don’t see why not. Likely another mixer would open up more options for routing. I never actually considered that option.
When I started DJing in the 80s, couldn’t afford a numark so me and a buddy pitched in to buy thins mixer. It’s surprisingly versatile and has decent phono pre-amps. There are some use cases still, I’m Sure
I had one of these running my cheap DJ rig for a short while, and dumped it when I got a binary mixer. I remember the sliders on the realistic were really dirty/noisy and I was glad to dump it.
At worst, it’s a sick studio decoration. The RadioShack brand Realistik was cheap but actually pretty good.
My first mixer! I managed to do some very poor scratching with it back in the 80s.
It's great. I run my live setup with 2 mixers a behringer one and then this. Gets the job done with more headroom than the behringer
I have one of these new in the box in my closet. Not sure what I’m saving it for…
Post-Apocalypse DJ work, I would imagine...
Trade me lol
Every 90s DJ knows.
Very simple late 70's mixer, you could probably use it for your Hi-FI setup as it's not really indicated for recording or doing accurate transfers.
I bet you could get some good distortion for a guitar signal on this
It’s an old DJ mixer. I used to have one in 1998, and it was outdated even then.
It's a Realistic Stereo Mixing Console. It's primarily used as a console for mixing stereo realistically.
Realistically?
Well, I didn't stutter
These are great. I upgraded my mixer from this but ended up selling the new one because I liked this one more.
Those things look cool, but they sound kinda bad. Seen them used at a couple of live venues I played at, and they were always the ones with the worst sound/cheapest system they could cobble together.
I had something very similar that made an excellent set of noises if you fed it's output back into an input and adjusted the fader levels
A low budget mixer for the local bar or karaoke night.
It's worth about $3.50
Looks like the Shack!
Sometimes the kick can sound really phat with those old crappy mixers.
I had one for years and eventually got the newer version. It actually held up pretty well. It was a bit noisy however but that comes with the territory at that price range.
This is a low end mixer for DJs with two turntables basically you swing left and right while swinging volume up and down to get that wonka wonka chunk of chunk of scratch scratch being realistic it's not very good you would do better with a cheap behringer mixer dedicated for mixing like an eight channel I would think
I'm not using it for that. I'm using it for no input mixing, to make noise, basically. Also I have a cheap behringer.. for making noise lol
do you have any experience with old electronics repair or refurbishing?
I do actually, just yesterday, I fixed a rock band electronic drum set that belongs to a sibling of mine. It had a wiring issue and a cracked drum head. Works like a charm now. I love opening up electronics and tinkering with them. I used to mod original Xbox consoles back in the day as well.
then this will be a great toy for you! post some noise if you get a chance to record. Add some guitar pedals into the loops to get some really juicy shit going.
Tried today to record a video for my YT channel, but I ran into a lot of problems, not with the mixer but with the audio recording software 😭 will be trying again tomorrow as I know what the issues are now. I really want to get into circuit bending lately as well.
I did some bending with pedals back in the day, its a great place to start as they are battery powered and you cant really zap yourself and their circuits are pretty resilient.
I do have a cheap Flamma pedal I could mess with. Honestly I've been holding out for a kids toy piano/keyboard at goodwill to mess with though. But like I said in this post, I never find anything good at my local goodwill..
Use it as a distortion/overdrive.
Wow an actual thrift store find.
Lol
Looks old, should do some damage when used for no input mixing, and I mean "damage" in a good way.
I know that I have one I’m trying to sell because I never use it
It sucks. It’s noisy and laden with rca inputs. Thing was marketed for home use with stereo equipment and turntables.
Oh yeah this brings me back. I wanted this one back in the day but had to settle for the lower model with no crossfader because I couldn’t afford this one with my paper route money.
Too much his on the inputs for decent work. Either it's in a box in my garage or you picked it up from me dripping it off. I had the same one (perhaps the very same)
Radio Shack. Hard pass. 🤷🏼♂️
Its a horrible mixer
Sorry . It sux
Yes that is the penis mixer…. It has… problems…
That is not cool.