BARNSTONE / A&H GL2200 mixing console / sounds warm / eurorack jam

I bought this second hand A&H GL2200 desk in 2017. I only used it briefly as the endless features distracted me too much from what I was doing at the time. I've tried selling it for years, but I never got a bid over 200 euro, which is a ridiculously low price for such a full featured mixer (it even includes a flightcase). All this time it had been obnoxiously in my way.

I've been conflicted and frustrated by the limited features on eurorack mixers lately. I have a few really good ones in my system but all of them lack at least one feature that I want... so over the past few weeks I've been going back and forth trying to figure out of I can use the GL2200 for mixing my sounds... it's old, noisy, ... and by using it I've introduced my first groundloop in over a decade. I really thought I tackled that problem long ago by essentially powering everything from a single power strip. I guess not. I'm not sure if it's worth trying to solve it, but I do like the warm sound of this console. I've asked around about this and the 'warmth' is probably a side effect of the transformers used in the input/output stages. I can't pinpoint what it's doing - I can't see any difference on a spectrograph - but whatever it is, it's nice. I've tried mimicking the behaviour with a few plugins that claim to give analog transformer mojo, but it's just not the same.