Vocals and mics into a Teenage Engineering TX-6

One drawback of the TX-6 is that it lacks a way to provide phantom power for microphones. I found a couple great ways to get around this which are simple and use gear that most artists likely have or could get for very low cost.

For dynamic microphones I was lucky enough to be sent a free XLR male to 3.5mm female adapter. The idea here is to connect a male 3.5mm cable to the TX-6 and to the adapter. From there you could plug the microphone directly into the microphone or use an XLR cable to extend it, if needed, then connect to your dynamic mic. This is perfect for SM57 mics and other dynamic mics that don’t need a ton of gain to get up above the noise floor.

If you’re dealing with a condenser microphone then you could use a field recorder like one of the Zoom units or a Tascam. I own a Tascam DR-40x which lets me record 4 mics at once (2 internal and 2 external) with the option to provide the mics 48v phantom power.

For these condenser situations I’d set up the recorder in a way you normally would if you planned to record directly into the recorder except you simply turn on input monitoring without recording and send the audio out via the 3.5mm headphone jack into one of the TX-6 inputs. Now you can record condenser mics without buying a dedicated tool like an iRig just to get phantom power and little else. Check out the short video on this for more info.