Radial SixPack: Build Your Dream Channel Strip

The Radial SixPack is a six-slot desktop power rack for 500 Series modules, delivering 1600 milliamps of shared current across six card-edge slots so you can mix and match preamps, EQs, compressors, and effects into a custom mono or stereo channel strip. Housed in heavy 14-gauge steel with a durable powder-coat finish and a built-in carry handle, it moves from studio desktop to remote session without complaint. For engineers who have outgrown a single lunchbox slot, it is the moment your rack finally keeps pace with your ideas.

Power That Refuses to Sag

Most compact 500 Series racks starve power-hungry modules the moment you load every slot, and a drooping rail shows up as noise and lost headroom. The SixPack draws from an external, shielded power supply that connects through a 5-pin locking XLR, feeding 1600 milliamps of shared current — an average of more than 265 milliamps per slot. That reserve means even tube-based modules that spike current on transients never pull the rail down, and built-in per-slot protection ensures a single malfunctioning card cannot damage the rack or the five modules beside it.

Card-Edge Connections Built to Last

The heart of any powered rack is the connection between module and chassis, and the SixPack mates each card edge to a double-sided EDAC 15-pin receptacle that follows the standard 500 Series pin format, so any compliant module drops in and locks to a solid, gas-tight contact. The 14-gauge steel chassis does double duty: it survives the knocks of transport and shields the audio path from the stray magnetic fields radiated by nearby power transformers and lighting rigs, keeping your signal clean even in a crowded rack room.

Patch, Feed, and Link Without a Patchbay

Rear-panel connectivity gives every slot an XLR input and output wired in parallel to 1/4-inch TRS jacks, so you can mult a signal or cross-patch one module into another to invent entirely new signal paths. A 25-pin D-Sub ties the whole rack into a workstation over a single cable, while two front-mounted XLRs route to the D-Sub or to inputs 1 and 4 for quick microphone patching. A feed switch passes one module directly into the next, a link switch combines stereo-ready modules, and the Omniport 1/4-inch TRS jack unlocks module-specific functions such as sidechain access or a second output.

From Desktop to Rack Without Compromise

The SixPack is built to live on a desktop or the meter bridge of a console, where its front-panel XLRs and carry handle keep patching and transport within arm's reach. When your setup outgrows the desk, an optional rack adapter mounts the same chassis into a standard 19-inch rack, so the investment follows you from a project studio to a touring rig or a permanent install. Either way you keep the full 1600-milliamp supply and every patch point the desktop layout offers.

Who the SixPack Is For

Build a three-plus-three stereo channel for mastering-grade processing, assemble a tracking chain of preamp, EQ, and compressor for direct and microphone sources at once, or run it as an analog side-car that warms digital tracks with class-A EQs and reamp loops. Recording engineers, mix engineers, and mobile producers use the SixPack as the powered heart of a modular rack that grows one module at a time. When your workflow demands more than one processor in series, the SixPack turns a shelf of loose modules into a finished console channel.