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...the black hole of music
even light couldn't escape (ok - a bit unfair)
Yes, the shed, in all its glory was a fully sound insulated (well, 4 inch thick polystyrene sheet all over),
dark dungeon of black interior illuminated by a 16 chanel computer controlled lighting system
(which I had built during lunch and tea breaks).
Furthermore, there was a fully 'moving baffle' sound dampened wall (with double glazing), which my great friend
Paul Fontana (where are you now?) and I had grafted on for days/weeks in order to provide a proper sound insulated control room.
the equipment
Ok, I was on a budget, so I did the best I could do with the resources available;
- Studer J37 1-inch (1964) retrofitted with 8-track Itam record/replay units and fitted with...
- Itam 8 channel record/replay unit
- Bel 8 channel Compander Noise reduction units + 1 redundant
- Alice 18:8 BBC spec broadcast mixing desk (1976) with built in 5-point jack field (rewired by me to support stereo inserts)
- Revox B77 HS 15-ips 1/2 track master configured for CCIR (ITU) 468 Noise Weighting
- Akai S1000 Stereo Sampler
- Roland SVC-350 Analog Vocoder
- Ensonique Mirage Digital Sampling Keyboard
- Boss dual compressors/limiters (one of which was my leaving pressy fron Boscombe Down - thanks lads:)
- Various Roland guitar synths (GR300 & GR700)
- MidiVerb Version 1 reverb unit
- Korg A2 Guitar Processor
- plus a multitude of other gizmos and magic
Incidentally, the Studer J37 was made famous by the Beatles who used two of these
(in original 1-inch 4-track format) to record Sergeant Pepper's with all the reverse effects etc...
the music
Whilst I slowly built up my collection of equipment (ideally for my own use), the big business idea was
to sell my services as a sound engineer/recording studio to local bands in order to help pay for the equipment.
This is where the whole thing started to become a lot more interesting...The Bands!
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