Shure M268
A four-channel mic mixer built for paging racks and tape decks — and priced so a church could actually afford one.
Overview
The M268 was the cheaper half of a two-mixer launch from Shure, and the company's own advertising was refreshingly blunt about who it was for: public address and paging in hotels, schools, churches, community centers, and hospitals, plus the serious tape recording enthusiast and anyone who needed an add-on mixer to expand existing equipment. Where its sibling M267 was aimed at broadcast and recording professionals, the M268 was the utility box — the one that lived in a rack closet and just worked.
The feature list reads like a checklist of things that annoy people about cheap mixers. Four microphone-level inputs, each selectable for high or low impedance, plus an aux-level input with its own volume control. A master control governs total program output, and the unit provides both microphone-level (high or low impedance) and aux-level outputs. A mix bus jack allows simple interconnection with other mixers — including, per Shure's literature, other Shure M-line products and the SE30 gated compressor/mixer. Modern Recording (July 1983, p.12) noted that each of the four microphone/instrument channels carries two jacks — a ¼-inch phone jack for high-impedance microphones and a standard connector — which made the M268 a practical submixer for electronic keyboard players as well as for rock, jazz, and country groups needing up to eight additional microphone inputs.
Power flexibility is where the M268 earns its keep in installed systems. It can run from a 120-volt AC line, an external 30-volt DC supply, or an optional external battery pack, and a regulated power supply means it is unaffected by line voltage fluctuations. Simplex power is available on the microphone inputs for condenser mics. An automatic muting circuit prevents the clicks and thumps that would otherwise come through the speakers at turn-on and turn-off — a small thing that matters enormously when the mixer is wired to a house amplifier and the wrong noise at the wrong moment sends a room full of people out of their seats.
Shure positioned both new mixers as inheritors of a decade-old legacy: the M67 and M68, introduced ten years earlier, had set what the company called the industry standard for compact portable microphone mixers, and the M267/M268 were pitched as the new standards with lower noise, reduced distortion, a mix bus, and simplex power added to the familiar formula. Shure's advertising in Mix Magazine (1981, p.14) and DB Magazine (1981, p.5) ran the same "Twice again: Shure sets the standard for the industry!" copy — a figure that moved around in the trade press, with DB Magazine (1981, p.10) quoting a $250.00 user net price and Modern Recording (1983, p.12) listing $257. Collectors comparing notes today should expect that spread to reflect dealer pricing, options, and the passage of a couple of years rather than a single fixed number.
What the M268 is not is a studio console. It is a four-input problem-solver with a mix bus, and its reputation rests on being rugged, quiet enough, and cheap enough to install by the dozen. Shure's own copy leaned hard on the ruggedness and reliability inherited from the M67/M68 lineage, and the design choices — regulated supply, muting circuit, battery backup — all point at the same priority: keep working when the conditions are less than ideal. For a vintage audio collector, that means units turn up in church surplus lots and school auction piles, often filthy but frequently functional. The mix bus jack is the detail worth checking on any example, since it is the feature that makes the M268 useful as an expander rather than a standalone.
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