Allen & Heath Zed60-14fx Mixer

ounded in 1969, the Allen & Heath company is based in Cornwall, England. A&H made a name for themselves initially by building a custom quadraphonic mixing console for Pink Floyd; the unit can be seen in the famous Floyd film, Live At Pompeii. These days, they're known for producing high quality sound systems and a wide range of mixers.

Pitched as the perfect mixer for smaller bands, the Allen & Heath Zed6014FX is a versatile unit with a huge number of features. As the 60th addition to the UK-based audio engineers' well-respected ZED series, the 14FX has been touted as a companion piece to the recently released 10FX mixer. Immediately, it's clear that a lot of love goes into Allen and Heath's Cornwall-built machines, as the unit comes in an eye-catching dark green with nice maroon side plates. All faders and pots are organised and everything is in it's right place, although drummers everywhere will probably throw their hands in the air in frustration when they realise that Allen and Heath had guitarists in mind when they were putting this particular mixer together. Two of the eight mono channels provided have high-impedance jack inputs that can take a normal level from a standard pickup – the idea being that the guitar can be plugged straight into the mixer without the addition of a DI box. The desk also comes with an AmpliTube 3 free software package for guitar processing, which includes 50 'gear credits' to add to the small but quality range of stomp-boxes, amps, cabinets, microphones and rack effects already featured here.

As far as inputs go, we're looking at eight balanced XLR, two instrument and six line inputs. Basically, if you're a guitar band looking at buying your own mixer for practise or recording – you're in luck here. Another feature of the 14FX is the classy range of onboard effects. The delays and reverbs all sound great and none of them have that strange glassy quality you can sometimes experience with mixers of this size and price. We did some pretty lo-fi recording with the unit and were extremely happy with the Ambient (echo) setting – especially on the lead vocals. The effects centre itself is easily located and not intrusive to the overall aesthetic on display. It even has a USB input, although many have complained that Allen and Heath have left out a matching cable for some reason. No matter – everyone seems to have spare USB cable lying around these days. It was slightly disappointing, however, that we were only dealing with USB 1.1 and not 2.0 - maybe an idea for the next model. In summary, this would be a great addition or jumping off point for anyone in need of a smallish mixer for live or recording needs.

The focus on guitar and addition of the AmpliTube software is a nice touch and, with clean and easy levels on all inputs, the 14FX is a package that's hard to fault.