I bought a Mackie 24x8 for our church back in the mid 90's. It is still
working fine. I agree there are much better 8 bus consoles, but not for
$2500-2800.

Our only issue was rf interference getting into those hot and broad
preamps that the older Mackies had. Maintaining good shield connections
throughout the audio paths, especially through the snake (32x8) controls
this problem.

I also have a 24x8 in a small teleproduction studio. That console is
having trouble with sticky/noisy switches, but I think we have a
humidity and dust problem that is contributing to that situation. I
picked up some cailube mcl that is helping.