The legendary, one-of-one EMI TG1234 recording console that The Beatles used to record the Abbey Road album will be for sale on Reverb, starting on October 29. The announcement reads:
The EMI TG12345 console has been painstakingly and beautifully restored—ready for decades more of recording—and will be available through the official Reverb shop of London’s recording studio experts, MJQ Ltd, starting October 29.
[…] “Abbey Road is one of the best albums that’s ever been made, and it sounds so good because of this recording console,” said Dave Harries, who participated in numerous Beatles recording sessions with the console in the 1960s. “Because of the way that Abbey Road was recorded, the album has a distinctive sound that hallmarked the future of pop recording.”
While the console only recorded one full band Beatles project, all four members would go on to use it for their solo projects. Some of these projects include John Lennon’s standout single “Instant Karma!” and his John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band record, Paul McCartney’s McCartney, George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, and Ringo Starr’s Sentimental Journey record.
According to Harries, the console’s sound was so superior and distinctive that George Harrison asked EMI if he could buy one for himself, only to be turned down out of a fear that the console would be replicated and sold to one of their competitors.
After being disassembled and sitting unused for more than five decades, the recording console underwent a five-year restoration process under the guidance of Beatles collaborator and former EMI engineer Brian Gibson. Gibson, along with a team of audio engineers and technicians, managed to reunite the console with 70% of its original parts, working with expert British companies to faithfully reproduce the replacement parts to seamlessly work alongside their older counterparts.
After years of work, Gibson and his team were able to bring the console to almost exactly the same form as it was when it sat at EMI Studios (known as Abbey Road Studios only after the success of the album). According to Hedges, the console had last been used during the Beatles’ solo sessions in the ’70s until this autumn, when Reverb gathered artists and engineers at a legendary London studio that was reopened just to put the recording console to the test ahead of its October sale.
“This particular console is a one-off. It’s unique. You can’t replace it,” said Harries of the TG 12345, which was the first of just 17 consoles worldwide made by EMI. “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.”
Learn more at Reverb, where you can also enter to win a sweepstakes with replicas of the instruments The Beatles used during their legendary rooftop concert. You can also watch a new 18-minute video on the console by Reverb below, and learn even more about the console at AbbeyRoad.com.
There’s also a new Beatles documentary by Martin Scorsese coming to Disney+ on Thanksgiving weekend.