Yes good point- the eq are totally useless
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My rule of thumb would be the best and most versatile I could afford. I do my own repairs so a bigger/older desk wouldn’t bother me but you do have to factor maintenance or the occasional repair into the mix (excuse the pun). There are some bargains to be had but that goes for pitfalls too. Little things can point toward quality…separate channels that can be removed from the mixer frame means you’re not stripping the full thing down to get to a crackly pot etc.
I’ve youve got the time have a browse on some of the pro audio forums… any foibles that exist for these older desks will be documented by now. Plenty of useful info to be found if you’re patient 
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Actually I think a dj mixer would be much better- a Xone or a Master Sound would be ages better than any current Mackie model
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What mixer you using for your gear? Like I said the last mixer I had was a sound craft thing about 2005 then before that a small mackie… been using audio interfaces (cheap ones) but did the job but I’ now wanting to sculpt the sound live and actually play.
I do really like the features on the 1642 tho, the ProFXV3’s look good but some features not there.
How many channels do these have tho? Dj mixers normally 2-4 no? No good to me but probably have great features
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Stay away from the FX mixers, you’re better off with having the extra sends for your own FX.
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I went balls out of the bath and got the StudioLive32. They were blowing the blue ones out with hefty discounts when the black ones came out. It’s ideal for me as it integrates with StudioOne so it’s a Control surface as well as a mixer. It was that or buy another two 8ch interfaces as well as an analogue desk. The SL can run as a stand-alone mixer when I’m not using the DAW too. Not for everyone but as I say it suits my setup.
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Yeah my thoughts exactly. I don’t need FX on the mixer as I use pedals.
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If I were to get a dj mixer I’d definitely be eyeing up that A&H Xone 96
Yeah they’d be much better quality. The built-in FX don’t have things like midi or even tap tempo in half the cases and are generally just poor quality. Hey if all you do is drunken karaoke then I’m sure that’s the best use for them.
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All 3 of my pedals have midi which are fab IMO, well I have 1 on the way but the other 2 Boss pedals DD/RV500’s are my fav’s.
I’m definitely leaning toward that 1642 VLZ it seems to have all the connections I need for my gear. My thoughts were also to feed a pair of outputs in to my MPCX for sampling as well as feeding the audio interface dumping sounds to my mac
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A pal brought me his to repair. Intermittent faulty on one channel. Wow, those things are truly built like a tank. They’ve got a chassis within a chassis. That said the buttons are brittle and prone to break (several of his were broken and you could see they’d all snapped at the same point.) repair was easy enough once I got to the output board. I’m not sure they’ve got the flexibility for the OP’s needs but hey, I wouldn’t want one thrown at me! Heavyweight! 
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A question you might want to ask yourself is how many things are you typically going to be mixing at the same time? That number might be a reasonable place to start in how big the mixer at the front is. Then a nice patch bay (not expensive) could allow you to keep a wide range of things plugged in, which you can then patch changes to when you want. I’m thinking a normalized patch bay here.
Just a thought.
Yeah the control room on the mackie is pretty flexible for this purpose. Send the master to your interface via the master outs and monitor your sound that way, and send the control room outputs to your sampler.
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You could use aux 3 for the MPC and use a pair of channels for the MD500 return. You can hit phase issues if you use modulation as a send FX. I prefer to use it an a insert FX and sort the wet/dry mix on the FX unit. Reverb and delay are fine as send FX.
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You know I don’t mind what kind of mixer it is really, all I really wanted one for is the sends/returns as I’m more of an FX guy, love my pedals. I probably won’t use all my gear in one go, have to have Octopus hands lol but I’d definitely have at least 4-5 going at any one time.
Like I say I’m more wanting the sends/returns more than anything else. Something that’s gonna last too.
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I had it…decided mixers unnecessarily complicate things, add extra wires. so I replaced with a nice 8in /8 out I/O, and go straight in.
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Yeah I have an audio interface with 8 I/O, and another 8 with the ADA8200 does the job was just thinking for live stuff plus my interfaces don’t have FX sends/returns as they’re the cheapest Behringer ones.
Wanted the mixer for live stuff too