Lost: What happens to one piece of pioneering recording technology when innovation moves onwards at such a rate as it did in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s? A studio like any other business has to always be at the forefront of new demands, new technology and a new generation of artists. There is no time for looking back or treading water so it is often out with the old and in with the new. Does the old get thrown out in the skip? Sometimes yes. Sometimes it is sold on or acquired by forward thinking individuals.
Found: Sound Techniques: The Part’s You Don’t Hear met Engineer, collector and musician Greg Latham at his storage facility near Bristol to discuss his very own ‘Ferrari in the Barn’. Not long ago, Greg placed the long ago thought lost Ferrari (or Aston Martin!), on eBay. The Sound Techniques A-Range had been in storage for over forty years, sitting and waiting to hopefully be a part of making music once again. The response was immediate, keyboard fingers worldwide began clicking in frenzy to buy a re-discovered piece of British recording history. Soon, a buyer in the United States emerged.
This Sound Techniques A-Range desk was hand built by Geoff Frost and his team at the Sound Techniques factory in Mildenhall, England, in 1971 and was the desk installed in Studio One at De Lane Lea Wembley, London. There, it was used with artists such as Queen, Fleetwood Mac, Harry Nillson, Lou Reed, ELO and Deep Purple to name just a few. The desk is now in a cargo ship and on its way to the US where it will be restored and return to work in the one of the greatest studio complexes in the world…. Sound City Studios (now Fairfax) in Van Nuys, California. In a beautiful and almost fifty year history, it will have come full circle. Sometimes you have to look back to look forward…
