I recently purchased an inexpensive battery operated radio shack audio mixer.

What are the major differences in an inexpensive mixer as opposed to some of the expensive ones (besides the connectors and meters) ?

This one does exactly what I'm trying to accomplish - mix multiple mics/lavs with my Seinheiser wireless unit.

I don't know much about mixers and thought I'd ask if there's any pitfalls in using an inexpensive battery operated mixer.

My experience is that the knobs, sliders and switches on every Radio Shack product I've owned fail very quickly. This has been such a consistent pattern that I stopped buying they products several years ago. In the case of a mixer I'd expect that the pots will get noisy after a bit of use, and even if you aren't mixing live you may find there are bad spots on the sliders where you'll get intermittent noise and have to wiggle them to make good contact. Same thing will probably happen to the input/output jacks.

I actually have a cheap Radio Shack mixer myself which I got maybe 7 years ago. It has seen very light use, but worked OK the last time I tried it. I'd be hesitant to use it during something critical where it might ruin a live performance that couldn't be duplicated though. But since you already have such a mixer why not see how well it holds up? Maybe their build quality has improved over the years.

Thanks for the tips Boyd. I'll keep a close eye on it when I need to use it and monitor with headphones jic.

It's almost a rite of passage. If the mixer works for you and you're satisfied then great. If you need (or just want) more then you haven't really lost that much and it will have been a learning experience.

Jim- Which mixer do you have?

It says on it "Four channel Stereo Microphone Mixer" Worked well in my tests ... $20.00 from a friend of mine who bought it a year or two ago.

So for the price of a two four of good canadian beer you can some fun and hopefully a useable tool.