Innovation in sound has been part of the Abbey Road story since the studios first opened in 1931, from the patenting of stereo to the invention of countless pioneering recording techniques. A dedicated EMI department - Record Engineering Development Department (REDD) - was created in 1955 by Abbey Road Technical Engineer Len Page to devise and build the world class equipment required by the Abbey Road engineers as they responded to the needs of artists breaking boundaries with their creativity.
This puzzle's image shows a section of Abbey Road Studios’ EMI TG12345 Mk III mixing console. The TG desk was originally designed in 1967 by Mike Batchelor at EMI Central Research Laboratories. In 1972 Batchelor was promoted to the position of Chief Technical Engineer at Abbey Road Studios.
The TG desk, delivered to Abbey Road in 1968, was EMI’s first solid-state (i.e. transistorised console) and superseded the vacuum tube-based REDD range of desks. The TG was the first console to include a limiter/ compressor, EQ and metering for each channel, and the smooth, clean sound of the TG can be heard on legendary albums such as Abbey Road by The Beatles and The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. The Mk III TG12345 photographed for this puzzle, as well as a very similar Mk II version, are still available for use on recordings at Abbey Road today.
