Beatles mic pre's?

[Scriabin]

Hello everyone,
in the upcoming months ill offically be in the market for a nice mic pre in the $1000+ range. I was wondering if anyone knew what type of mic pre's the beatles might have used for their latter recordings ie. white album ect... and are there any similiar clones out on the market?
thanks in advance!

 

[anonymous]

Thats a good question...

While we wait for someone to tell us what desk was used.. (EMI with Telefunken V76 pre's???I dunno)

...have you looked into the mic pre comments on the "hot gear" thread?

 

[Scriabin]

nope but ill check it out
thanks

 

[anonymous]

Up to, and including Rubber Soul, it was the EMI REDD-37 desk with V-72S modules. After that, when they worked at Abbey Road it was an EMI "TG" series desk, or when they worked at Trident Studios an "A-Range"...and at Olympic studios, a desk that was custom built for Olympic that later went on to become a company called 'Helios'.

That said, the only thing that was constant between all 3 of these facilities were large rooms, and the fab 4...everything else is up for grabs.

 

[audiaudio]

Actually, the Trident A-Range desk was designed and built in the early 1970s, after the Beatles had broken up. When recording at Trident, the Beatles would have used a Sound Techniques desk.

BTW, the A-Range was designed by Malcolm Toft of Trident Audio Developments (formed as the manufacturing division of Trident Studios) with lots of input from the redoubtable Trident engineering staff (Ken Scott, Roy Thomas Baker, Barry Sheffield, et al).

Fletcher's quite right about Olympic. Its desk was designed by Richard Swettenham, who went on to form Helios Electronics.

 

[anonymous]

I got me 4 of those Helios pre/eq's.

 

[anonymous]

Originally posted by audiaudio:
Actually, the Trident A-Range desk was designed and built in the early 1970s, after the Beatles had broken up. When recording at Trident, the Beatles would have used a Sound Techniques desk.

I stand properly corrected...thank you.

My actual point was that there was no "one mic-pre" that made that sound. It was a collection of everything involved with the entire process, and how everything related to each other. There was more to the tone and texture derived from the writing and arranging than the hardware used to capture the sounds. It was all excellent hardware, so capturing the sounds wasn't all that difficult a task...it's not like they were sitting around with a Mackie and Pro-sTools trying to make records, they had real equipment.

 

[Scriabin]

thanks for the replies people!

 

[miketholen]

http://www.tab-funkenwerk.com