Boss BX-600
A six-channel stereo mixer that sold for the price of a decent stompbox — and did the quiet, unglamorous work of getting a whole keyboard rig into one pair of outputs.
Overview
Six high-impedance inputs, two high-impedance outputs, a peak LED, and a stereo effects return. That's the entire pitch for the Boss BX-600, and it's enough to explain why so many home studios in the mid-1980s had one sitting on a desk between a drum machine and a Portastudio. DB Magazine (November 1986, p.59) described it plainly as a compact six-channel stereo instrument/line mixer, and noted the per-channel control set: input gain, effect level, pan, and level on every channel. That's not a stripped-down toy — it's a real mixer topology in a footprint small enough to disappear into a crowded tabletop.
The headline number for most buyers was the price. DB Magazine (November 1986, p.59) listed the BX-600 at $240.00, which put a stereo six-input mixer within reach of someone who was already stretching to afford a four-track cassette machine. Contemporary dealer listings in the UK press show the same mixer moving at a range of prices — one Electronics & Music Maker advert from the period quotes the BX-600 at £125, while another in the same publication lists it at £225, and a third at £135. Collectors reading old price lists should treat those spreads as dealer discounting and currency-era noise rather than as evidence of different versions; the model itself is consistently described the same way across the listings — a six-channel stereo mixer with headphone provision.
What the BX-600 was built to do is straightforward: take a pile of line-level and instrument-level sources — synths, drum machines, a bass DI, a cassette deck, whatever — and sum them into a stereo pair with enough control to keep things balanced. The high-impedance inputs suit keyboards and pedals well; the high-impedance outputs are the kind of thing that plays nicely with the average home recorder's inputs without drama. The peak LED is the only metering on the unit, and that tells you a lot about the design intent. This is not a console for surgical mixing. It's a utility box for people who need to get six things down to two and get on with the take.
The stereo effects return is the detail that separates the BX-600 from a plain summing amp. With a per-channel effect level control feeding a shared stereo return, the mixer can do the classic mid-80s trick — one reverb or delay on an aux send, blended back into the main mix — without needing a separate outboard mixer or a patchbay. It's also the feature that makes the unit useful today for anyone running a handful of synths into a single interface input pair.
Build and serviceability are the usual Boss story: compact and generally repairable, though the BX-600 is old enough now that the usual caveats apply. The BX-600 is not a collector's trophy in the way the company's better-known pedals are — it's a working tool, and it's priced accordingly on the used market. That's arguably the best thing about it: a genuinely useful piece of 1980s Boss engineering that still changes hands for less than the cost of a modern boutique pedal.
The rest of the BX line is worth knowing for context. The BX-400 is the four-channel sibling, and the BX-800 the eight-channel version; both appear alongside the BX-600 in period dealer listings, which is the clearest evidence of how Boss positioned the range. Modern Recording (October 1985, p.71) covered the BX-800 in the same roundup that included other small mixers of the day, describing it as an eight-channel stereo mixer with eight high-impedance inputs — the same design language, one size up. Buyers who needed more inputs went to the BX-800; buyers who needed fewer went to the BX-400. The BX-600 sat in the middle, which is usually where the sensible choice lives.
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