A big piece of music history is for sale. Reverb recently announced that the console that The Beatles used to record their final album, Abbey Road, will be available for sale beginning Oct. 29 at the official Reverb shop of London’s recording studio experts, MJQ Ltd.
“Abbey Road is one of the best albums that’s ever been made, and it sounds so good because of this recording console,” Dave Harries, who participated in numerous Beatles recording sessions with the console in the 1960s, said. “Because of the way that Abbey Road was recorded, the album has a distinctive sound that hallmarked the future of pop recording.”
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In addition to recording Abbey Road at the namesake studio, all four members of The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr—used the EMI TG12345 console for their solo projects. Afterwards, the console sat unused for five decades.
The console, which was custom-built by EMI Studios in 1968, was painstakingly and beautifully restored over five years by Beatles collaborator and engineer Brian Gibson.
The restoration team reunited the console with 70 percent of its original parts. They worked with British companies to reproduce faithful replacement parts as needed. Now, the console is now ready for decades more of recording.
“This particular console is a one-off. It’s unique. You can’t replace it,” Harries said. “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.”
A price for the console has yet to be announced.