[edited because of a high probability of stupidity on my behalf]

Wheatstone is a division of Audioarts. They are now pretty much a digital product, mainly for broadcast use. I had an analog model (model#?) a couple of years ago that I bought from a local CBS affiliate that was transitioning to a Sony digital. It had 24 channels, some mic/line, some just line. The mic pre's were noisey, the EQ was meek, and the headroom was non-existent. It DID have 27 VU meters (!), MOST of which lit up and bounced around. It made an interesting work desk for paperwork, but not much else. I paid $600 for it. I paid too much. I got lambasted by some of the TV people about it, too (Remy, TVPost). They were right, it sucked.
I ended up throwing it in with a bunch of other stuff when I shut down the room it was in. The guy that bought it thought that it looked "cool". More power to him. $10K is probably too much, too.

Here's an SP44 on ebay for $3000. (starting bid)
http://cgi.ebay.com…

I used to work on a 32 channel eight bus Wheatstone board.
It's mic pres were relatively quiet and sounded pretty good and the board had beau coups headroom. The eq was pretty mild, if you needed more that just general tone control, you needed to go outboard.

The board I used was made as a recording desk before audio arts bought them and they went to making only broadcast consoles.

If you need a board for recording I wouldn't mess with the SP44.
There was a great old mci 400 on ebay a while back., I think it went for around $10k...

George :-)