Allaire Nabs a Piece of Recording History

Allaire Studios, located in upstate New York, announces the acquisition of one of the world’s most coveted recording consoles: the Neve ‘Air Montserrat’ console.

Designed by Britain’s leading designer of recording equipment, Rupert Neve, the desk was created with input from famed Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick and producer Sir George Martin. It is one of three desks specified by Martin for Air Studios. These consoles also have the distinction of being the last three to be created by Rupert for the Neve Company, and the Air Montserrat edition will be the only one in the United States - the other two reside at The Warehouse in Vancouver, BC, Canada and at Air Lyndhurst in London, England.

While similar in appearance to Neve’s classic 8078 console, the Air Montserrat desk represents a departure from earlier designs incorporating remote-controlled microphone preamps and toroidal transformers coupled with integrated circuits that afford frequency response to almost 100K before significant roll off. This last feature may have been predicated by Geoff Emerick demonstrating to an astonished Air Studios maintenance staff that he could sense irregularities in one of the studio’s Neve consoles at approximately 50kHz!

The desk enjoyed an enviable reputation at Air Montserrat Studios where it was used to record classics like Synchronicity and Ghost In the Machine by the Police (Andy Summers is seen dancing on the console in the video for “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic”) and Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits. Artists who used it at Montserrat include Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Elton John and Eric Clapton. The console was subsequently purchased in 1987 by A&M Records. Herb Alpert & Jerry Moss with Jimmy Iovine & Shelly Yakus had the foresight to pluck this jewel from its island home and make it the centerpiece of their newly remodeled recording complex in Los Angeles. At A&M the desk was used by artists including U2, Don Henley, Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones and Patti Smith. Reorganization at A&M resulted in the ‘Air’ console being warehoused for years before beginning its third tour of duty at Allaire Studios, the state-of-the-art residential recording studio in New York’s Catskill Mountains.

Embracing thirty year old analog technology might seem an odd choice in our digitally fixated era: “Not really,” opines Allaire’s studio manager, Mark McKenna, who manned the Montserrat console for Don Henley’s classic “The End of the Innocence.” “We all know that digital workstations are a part of virtually every music recording scenario, but most performances start out in the analog realm. We provide our clients with the best sounding means of capturing those moments. That means inspiring recording spaces, great mics, an accurate control room and, at the center of it all, a great console. This console is not an anonymous work station; it has a signature, like a Telefunken tube mic or a ’58 Les Paul. What artist, producer or engineer wouldn’t want to use a desk that was designed specifically for George Martin and Geoff Emerick?”

The Air Montserrat console will arrive at Allaire this October where it will be painstakingly refurbished by Ken McKim, Allaire Studios’ chief technical engineer. Once completed, this veteran of thousands of legendary sessions will delight yet another generation of musicians, producers and engineers.