Abbey Road Recording Console Used by the Beatles on Final Album for Sale

The custom-made recording console used on the Beatles’ last recorded album and the members’ early solo recordings has been completely restored and will be for sale on Reverb, the online music marketplace Reverb starting on Oct. 29, the site announced Tuesday.

The restored EMI TG1234 recording console will be for sale through the official Reverb shop of London’s recording studio experts, MJQ Ltd. The one-of-a-kind console was custom-built for EMI Studios in 1968 and used the following year to record “Abbey Road,” the last album the Beatles recorded together before their split in 1969.

“Abbey Road is one of the best albums that’s ever been made, and it sounds so good because of this recording console,” said Dave Harries, who participated in numerous Beatles recording sessions with the console in the 1960s. “Because of the way that Abbey Road was recorded, the album has a distinctive sound that hallmarked the future of pop recording.” The console was also used for the individual Beatles’ first solo projects, including John Lennon’s “Instant Karma!” single and “Plastic Ono Band” album, Paul McCartney’s “McCartney,”  George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” and Ringo Starr’s “Sentimental Journey.” According to Harries, George Harrison asked EMI if he could buy a console for himself — he was turned down for fear that it would be replicated and sold to a competitor. (While Reverb does not have photos of the Beatles using the console, it can be seen in a shot here. The console for sale is not the one used earlier in 1969 on the “Get Back” / “Let It Be” sessions.)

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“If you talk to the engineers who have used it, they’ll tell you the same thing: It’s a beautiful sounding machine…it enhances everything that goes through it,” said producer/engineer Mike Hedges, who worked on pivotal albums by the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees as well as U2, and was a principal client in studio 2 at Abbey Road Studios throughout the ‘80s. “I even once threatened to stop working at Abbey Studios after being told that they planned to switch from EMI to a different brand of consoles. That is how I managed to purchase the consoles. A deal was done for me to acquire the replaced consoles.”

According to the announcement, the console was disassembled and sat unused for more than five decades before undergoing a five-year restoration process under the guidance of Beatles collaborator and former EMI engineer Brian Gibson. He and a team of engineers and technicians managed to reunite the console with 70% of its original parts, working with expert British companies to reproduce replacements for the missing parts. According to Hedges, the console hadn’t been used since the Beatles’ solo sessions in the ‘70s until this autumn, when Reverb gathered artists and engineers at the former home of London’s Decca Studios to test the console.  

“This particular console is a one-off. It’s unique. You can’t replace it,” said Harries of the recording console, which was the first of just 17 consoles worldwide made by EMI. “It sounds so good that it holds up against any modern console and, in many respects, it’s probably better. Because in those days, it was built to a different standard, cost no object. EMI built this to be the best in the world.”

To learn more about the renowned EMI TG 12345 that will be available in the Official MJQ Ltd. Reverb shop, and to sign up to be notified when the recording console goes live, visit: https://reverb.com/news/the-abbey-road-console-preview.