Patch bay or Mixer for Guitar Preamps?

I have 7 different guitar rack preamps. I'd like to be able to select anyone of them to record through.

1. I have a 1U Peavey 16LM rack mixer. I can patch each pre-amp to a seperate channel on the mixer and then leave the mixer outputs patched to a pair of inputs on my Delta 1010LT audio interface. Or

2. Use a Tascam PB-32P patch bay and manually patch in whichever preamp I want to use to the Delta 1010LT.

Which approach is the better one? Or are they the same?

3. Now it gets a bit more complicated. I also have two effects units that I would like to use. What is the best way to add them to the signal path?


Guitar --> preamp --> mixer/patch bay --> FX 1 --> FX 2 --> Delta 1010LT 0r

Guitar --> preamp --> mixer/patch bay --> Delta 1010 then use effects loop out to FX 1, FX 2?

or should I insert the FX unit right after the guitar preamp?

NW Smith


When you reference FX 1 and FX 2 - Are you referring to the the FX loop in your preamps? Or are you talking about AUX 1 or AUX 2 on your mixer? I sometimes use Guitar Preamps into my Mixer - and in my case it would be this: Guitar --> Preamp --> Patch Bay > Mixer (Mixer AUXs for FX) --> Soundcard

Neither.  The FX devices are dseperate 19" rack units.  I was either going to hard pacth them in the signal chain or use SONAR's FX out via the audio interface to the the units and back in.