Neotek Elan II 36 Channel

The Neoteks were originally Chicago-built in the 1980's and have had an extremely loyal following including Steve Albini and the Beastie Boys. The new boards 
represent much-improved component quality and manufacturing refinements and a 
re-commitment to high engineering standards in the production of this cost-effective and 
impressive mixing system. 

The new Élan occupies a substantial, all-alloy frame with integral legs The input modules are housed in alloy extrusions and are 
elevated and slightly angled relative to the fader modules. A beveled frame member between 
the two sections offers a surface for writing track/mic layouts. The Élan shares the Élite's interconnect system design. An 
extra blank panel is included in all frame sizes, and consoles may be ordered with more. 
Since Neotek is a custom console manufacturer, custom modules can be added later, making 
the Élan more future-proof than non-modular consoles. 
The Élan is an in-line monitoring, "American" style console with 24 balanced multitrack 
buses, balanced inputs and balanced stereo bus outputs. A TT Bantam all-metal patchbay 
includes one complete row for outboard gear. There are 40-LED segment bar graph meters 
for each of the 24 buses and both standard VU meters and bar graph for the stereo mix
output. There is a global peak/VU changeover switch for all the meters as well as individual 
touch-sensitive switches located on each meter. 
The Élan uses the same microphone preamp section as the Élite, a discrete transistor DC 
servo amplifier circuit--no problematic electrolytic capacitors, and you are not going to get the 
same sound as everybody else these days recording with an IC chip mic stage. Gain range is 
from +20 dB to +60 dB, and there are -20dB pad, phase flip and 48-volt phantom switches. 
Neotek says that the noise floor of the mic pre is within 1/4 dB of the theoretical minimum. A 
small LED clip indicator signifies +16dB clip level. A switchable highpass filter offers a fixed 
80Hz corner frequency and a 12dB/octave slope. A switchable -6dB line-level pad is provided 
to compensate for super-hot digital tape levels that may overload successive stages, 
especially when under massive EQ boost. There is no line-level trim pot.