A restored recording console from EMI’s Abbey Road studios will be auctioned this month with an asking price of £2.2 million.
The recording desk is a unique EMI TG12345 that was used, in its original state, to record The Beatles’ Abbey Road album, named for the north London recording studio where they did almost all of their recording.
It comes to sale via a school and a skip and an extensive restoration project.
The desk is one of 17 that EMI themselves built for their recording studios, and is itself unique.
It was built specifically for Abbey Road, and when it was superseded by new technology there was nowhere for it to go.
EMI reportedly refused to sell a version to George Harrison, who used it on All Things Must Pass, his smash hit solo album. In fact, all of the Beatles recorded solo works on the console.
Hamish (left) and Malcolm Harrison have worked for four years to bring the console back to life.
After it left the studios in St John’s Wood, the console was gifted to a school. Eventually it ended up in a skip.
A team of restorers, including former Abbey Road staff, and Malcolm and Hamish Jackson, a father and son team with their own studio equipment company, spent four years reconstructing the desk.
Hamish Jackson told the BBC how it was found. “It was the switches that someone noticed; they liked the look of the knobs and so pulled it out of the skip,” he explained.
Instead of ending up on a guitar as intended, the console’s switches have been rewired by a team including the Jacksons and former EMI engineer Brian Gibson.
They found 70% of the original parts.
The console is now for sale at music site Reverb, with an asking price of £2.2 million. It was previously listed for auction at Bonhams late last year.
There is no doubt that there is a huge, ongoing market for Beatles artefacts and collectibles, but this item is hard to categorise.
It is unique.
It is largely restored.
But it is a working item that contains something of the sound of the Beatles.
Who will buy it? A collector, or a working studio?
Reverb have promoted it as a working piece – gathering musicians to check it out.
The sale is open now, by closed bids.
