A rack mountable MIDI Router with advanced routing functions, memory, MIDI and foot control, and easy to use UI. From my research it seemed to be the best option (no hard-wired power cable was a factor), but there are lots of Roland A-880s around and those seem good too (and designed by one of the Fairlight guys).

I really like them, though sometimes the buttons one one skip numbers and I have to be delicate with it. There's a big version with 16 ins and 20 out sI'd love to get, but they seems very rare (there's two revisions of those too), and the only time I've seen one for sale it was $$$$$$

I thought the battery was gone one one of mine, and I was putting-off changing it because it's a soldered-in CR2325 or BR2325 (the tab's welded over the first letter…). Screen would be scrambled when turning on, and the memory would reset after it was powered off. The manual says you can do a memory reset by holding the 1-8 buttons on power-on (I used a block of wood to make it easier), and that seems to have sorted things. Still getting a very low reading on the battery though . . .

I have two different versions both—plus Rev 2—a black one and a grey one. The grey one uses a funny plug which took me a while to figure out, but the one that fits in there is a smaller version of a regular TS audio one.
I thought the socket was busted for a while, couldn't figure out how the positive and negative would get to the right parts of the plug, didn't help that it came supplied with a real thin barrel jack

• JL Cooper MSB+ REv. II troubleshooting/fixing. - Notes on what's inside.