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I have a nice Yamaha M916 16 channel board i just bought which is in good shape and sounds great. The only thing i don't like is the lack of mutes. There is a cue button under each channel which, when pressed, sends the channel to a cue section (basically a solo but goes to specific bus). That is fine but not nearly as useful as a mute would be.
My question is, is it possible to create a mute out of that cue button? I know Mackies have the dual Mute / Alt 3-4 button so perhaps it could be done in a similar way. Is there a way to just add wires to the existing switch (leaving the cue wires intact) to ground out or kill the channel signal when pressed?
I won't die if i lose the cue function but minimal impact to the wiring would be ideal. Your help is appreciated! Thanks.
With some poking around i was able to figure it out. I was able to just have the switch connect the send to the return on the fader and that did it!
In case anyone is curious, i added the green and white wires. the switch had only one side of its terminals in use and it is one of the switches that has independent sides so this worked perfectly. I don't know why Yamaha didn't just make this a mute/cue switch. Did people not need to mute things in the early 80's?
Re: Adding a mute button to old console / converting cue button. [message #1945 is a reply to message #1712 ]
Thu, 29 April 2004 19:17
John Klett Messages: 468 Registered: April 2004 Location: Carmel, NY
Active Member
awesome - I love it when people figure out stuff on their own
you're right mutes were not invented until 1989 I believe
anyway it may be that, as a P.A. console, you would not to cut a channel by accident? maybe it's to make turning something off more deliberate? I'm only guessing.John Klett / Tech Mecca http://www.technicalaudio.com
Yeah. You are probably right. It has 2 rows of inputs on the back so you can have 2 different "scenes" on each channel. So i think it was intended as sort of a theatre / recording board and that might be slightly bad to hit a mute during a crucial scene. Unless it's opera. Then it's never bad.
Thanks for the reply. I'll have harder questions soon.
M916 Mute Button:
Back in the day when engineers used this console in sound reinforcement applications, everyone that I knew used the "M1, M2" button as the mute. This console was unique in that each channel had 2 XLR inputs. The "M1, M2" button switched from one XLR to the other. If you had nothing plugged into the second XLR input, it acted as a mute. Also, in the M2 position, a yellow light is illuminated so you knew that channel was muted.
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Re: Adding a mute button to old console / converting cue button.