Author Topic: Biamp 1642  (Read 13933 times)

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Offline D.M.N.

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Biamp 1642
« on: June 23, 2019, 07:00:29 pm »
Well it's been 7 years since someone posted in this sub-forum, but the hell with it.

I'm starting to assemble a small home studio, getting pieces like a 1/2" 8 track tape machine, etc, and I saw a Biamp 1642 come up for sale locally for a decent price. Power supply and cable included, everything working as it should. There doesn't seem to be much info out there on the internet regarding them, so what can any of y'all tell me about it? Do you like the way they sound, are they noisy, anything and everything you can. I've seen them mentioned on gearslutz a few times as being able to get a really nice driven preamp distortion, and that they're solid work horses, the only real downside being the channels aren't modular. So what's the word?
House of the Rising Sunn........
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1969 2000s
1972 2000s
1970 1200s
1968 1000s
1969 200s
2010 2000s DIY 2x15
1971 2000s 2x15
1969 2000s 2x15
1972 2000s 2x15
1968 1000s 2x15
1970 1200s 6x12

Offline iomegaman

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Re: Biamp 1642
« Reply #1 on: July 20, 2020, 04:37:15 pm »
I don't know much of anything about the 1642...however I recently (in the last year) picked up a Biamp Legend 2016...here's what I know about it:

Discrete preamp section and then it goes into the the standard 4558 opamp topology that just about every console maker from the 70's on has used...

I spent a few days getting my board up to snuff with some help from a guy I contacted at gears;uts who used to work for Sunn...he was super helpful, and slightly brilliant.

I currently have a Sony console/a SOundcraft 200b and an ancient and unheard of "Amerimex Studio Mixer" vintage tank...the Biamp beats them all...

There seems to be a small window of production when Biamp was making mixers/small footprint consoles before they went over to full on commercial sound reinforcement manf....this small window has some under-the-radar-gems and probably some other things that are NOT gems...

My Biamp has 16 buses and 20 channels, is quiet as a mouse and some of the best pre's of any console I've ever worked on...it just works...its a small frame inline style console that does the same thing as a large format console...EQ's work quite reasonable, musical, but not overdone...16 buses makes it ver versatile...

I use it almost exclusively now because its dependable and plan on adding transformers to it because I can and why not?