The promise that you can “own a piece of history” with the purchase of this or that item of vintage recording equipment has almost become a cliché, but in the case of a rack of Neve modules currently for sale on one auction site, history was made twice.
Producer, engineer, musician, composer and author Michael Beinhorn recently announced the availability of his rack of 16 Neve 1057 mic preamp and EQ modules on the online consignment, private sale and auction site, ANALOGr.com. The modules came from a 16-in, 8-out Neve mixing console shipped to the manufacturer’s reported first US client, Sound Studios in Chicago. Beinhorn subsequently purchased the modules and used them to redefine the sound of hard rock — drums, in particular — while recording some of the most iconic albums of the Nineties by the likes of Soundgarden, Marilyn Manson, Hole, Ozzy Osbourne and Korn.
In his notes accompanying the ANALOGr auction listing, Beinhorn reveals that he first encountered the rack of 1057 modules while recording Soundgarden’s Superunknown album at Southern Tracks in Atlanta in 1992, where he used them to record the drums. “By the time Superunknown was completed, I was on a mission — I had to own these modules at any cost,” he writes. But the owner, Tom Wright, initially refused to part with them. MORE@MIXONLINE
