Is my Mackie 1202 VLZ broken, or do I just hate the Tech 21 Tri-AC?

[cardinal]

I'm wondering if you guys have some experience with a Mackie 1202 VLZ Pro mixer, because something's not right and I'm hoping for some trouble shooting advice.

In my stupid quest to buy a headphone rig that is not a Pod, my signal chain is:
Guitar --> Tri-AC --> Mackie 1202 VLZ Pro --> Audio-Technica ATH-M50 headphones

Pretty sure that the M50's are working fine. I just bought both the mixer and the Tri-AC, both used (but I can return them quickly if I need to).

Before buying the Tri-AC, I tried it at the store through an acoustic amp and thought it sounded pretty nice, natural, big, and warm. Got it home, plug into the Mackie and the M50's, and it's a completely different story. Run clean, it sounds OK, but with any overdrive, it sounds absolutely terrible. Very, very harsh and thin, especially as I go higher up the neck. Once I'm around the 15th fret, it's painfully bad.

Since the Tri-AC worked OK at the store through an amp, I assume it's still working now... (The only amps I own are about 2,800 miles away from me at the moment, so I can't really plug into anything else but the Mackie right now).

I think the Mackie is working OK: with the Tri-AC in bypass, my guitars actually sound rather pleasant coming through it. I started with the EQ all flat and adjusted the trim so that the signal hovers around 0 db on the signal meter. Once I'm running the Tri-AC with any overdrive on it, the thing sounds almost tolerable only if I completely zero out the 12 k Hz EQ. I can't imagine that I'm actually suppose to use such an extreme EQ setting, and it still doesn't really sound that great.

Does it sound like the mixer's broken, or do I just not like the sound of the Tri-AC going direct? Or am I doing something really dumb with my signal chain?

Thanks guys.

 

[Mop]

The Tri-AC is a preamp only right? And the mackie is just a mixer? So what you're hearing is just a preamp into a mixer, no poweramp or speaker cab or emulations of those?
That sort of setup usually sounds shit in my experience, nothing wrong with the mixer. You need the poweramp->speaker cab part of the chain, or emulations of those, like in a pod for example.

 

[cardinal]

The Tri-AC is suppose to be a "SansAmp" product, and Tech 21 says that you can "float into any club or studio with just a SansAmp TRI-A.C. and plug directly into the board."

But, maybe it sounded OK through the acoustic amps because there still was some type of speaker roll-off. I'm hoping that I just don't like the Tech 21 pedal, so I can keep the mixer and keep looking for something to plug in direct to use with headphones. Really need a headphone rig, but I blew all of my AxeFX money on a guitar, so I was hoping to find something for just a few hundred bucks. I've used a PodXt before that I wasn't crazy about, but it sounded better than the SansAmp.

Thanks for the input.

 

[Mop]

Hmm, I've not tried one of those out, someone else will probably be able to provide more insight

 

[Nostrildamus]

Bought one and sold it within a month. Hated it. Thin on the Marshall settin and muddy on the high gain. Tried it in combination with cab sims etc and the only sound out of that thing that seemed to be any good was the cleans (Fender setting). As far as putting it through a DI box it did not improve it.

I would love to hear someone's recording and know their setup if they have something which sounds good. I'm sure the OP would appreciate it as well.

 

[cardinal]

Thanks for the responses. I'm worried that it's a phase-shift issue, since it sounds worse as the pitch increases. Could it be that the left and right singals coming to the phones are out of phase? That seems unlikely to me, but I honestly don't know much about this stuff. I played around panning the signal from left to right. It sounded about the same, but it was hard for me to judge the sound of it through just one ear.

I'm planning to bring the Tri-AC and the mixer into the store and run a variety of stuff through the Mackie to see what's going on.

 

[cardinal]

Played it through a Mackie Onyx 1220 and it was equally terrible, so I returned it and I'll keep the 1202 vlz and try to find another direct-to-board solution.

Thanks guys.