My current fiancee was one of the "Bowie Kids" that i walked over as a gofer during the Young American sessions.i didn't know her then but when we met 20 years later it was truly a funny moment when she spoke of that yeah it ran way hot and no the auto track name function never worked but otherwise a damn skippy boardĪnd the sphere as seen on the cover of mix also the young american board, disco inferno,edgar winter, ojays, stylistics, spinners, flying burrito brothers, teddy p, labelle, robert palmer and many more The box on the producers desk are the group faders for the allison automation.this console was completed and tested just hours before the first live radio broadcast from WMMR FM on phase coherent phone lines. One of the electrodyne's in the "hit" room.you can see the uries where someone who worked at sigma philly said that there were big reds after this board left and the sphere was in.err no The superstar.umm tannoy SRM 12b's and look at the x850 remote Shag carpeted walls hah hah ha uhhhhh nooo Notice allison research automation in cart behind console.i used to have to lug that between locations for mixes THIS is the 400 series at our 309 south broad street location TOTALLY DIFFERENT BEAST Here is the custom board in NYC.the fader boxes are the 600 series tan as is the meter bridge and same machining, metereing scheme and layout as the stock 600 in the photo after it I remember you came down to try out the Nerve and didn't like it after all the time you spent on SSL'stutt heh heh the first allison automation had this "correction" pot with led's and ya had to keep tweaking the systemīTW in philly some of the engineers wrote automation "early" so when they were done mixing all day the delay from A/B track bouncing would tuck it back That said, a truly stunning array of diverse records were recorded on those consoles - it saddens me to think of what a remarkable place in time Sigma was, and how, like many other studios of that era, it no longer exists.Glenn, wasn't that one board a 536? personally i don't remember 400 series consoles there.that console had the sweep eq's you speak of.the 400's had detent 3 bands That said, a truly stunning array of diverse records were recorded on those consoles - it saddens me to think of what a remarkable place in time Sigma was, and how, like many other studios of that era, it no longer exists. In addition, the mutes and rides would "drift" over time, as you continued to bounce between two tracks, making remixing difficult, especially drum mutes. Unfortunately, the automation was not smpte driven, so two tracks of your 24 track master would need to be used to write and update automation. While the automation may have been clumsy for an outside engineer, the concept was ahead of it's time - there were presets available for instant "scene changes" which included grouping changes, as well as level. However, the bandwidth on all eq's were fixed. The MCI consoles were unique in a number of ways, not the least of which were that one could select frequencies on the channel eq's between the detents, making each band somewhat sweepable. Most of the 2 tracks were ATR's, modded for 1/2" tape. I recall a couple of Mitsubishi X-850's toward the end of the studio's run. The multitracks were 3M's, again gradually replaced with Studer A800 (Mk II's?) and Otari's. Gradually, the consoles were replaced with SSL 6000 E's in two of the three rooms. Initially, all three rooms in NYC had MCI custom modded 400 series boards, all with a unique Allison automation system (continuous plastic bands instead of faders). I hate to say what the guy that bought the studio did to it. We might have had a studer in nyc.i know my dad was more pro otari for quality and price the big ampex washing machineand a bunch of x 850's Scully 8 track, mci 16 track and 24 track, 3m 24 trk iso loop, otari mtr 90. Tape machines were ampex 300's 440's 3m 2 trk and 4 trk iso loops ,atr 102 and 104's, mitsubishi x 86's I know SSL took some of our techs design stuff for their monitor sectionĪnd the Lynx syncronizer was created in our NYC tsd room by Jerry Block a sigma recording engineer Glenn rosenstein who is on this site knows more about the nyc boards. Studio 9 philly was a sony/mci 600 from studio 2 then a protools rig the center section sagged and was held up by hydralic was one of 3 made Then neve 8078 52 in 8 buss modded to 24/32 buss with massenburg automation Then a second electrodyne based custom board with more inputs summer 71 We started in 1968 with electrodyne modules and custom console designed by my dad and built by dave hughes and installed by him my dad and a crew
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