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Tuesday, June 30, 2015

The Les Paul Console: The First True Multichannel Recording Desk

Guitarist Les Paul is noted for many inventions but one of his biggest was "sound on sound" recordings using two full track mono tape machines in the 1950s.

Les realized the limitations of bouncing from machine to machine and soon conceived the 8 track recorder, which he asked Ampex to build for him. When the new tape machine (which he called "The Octopus") was delivered to him, Les realized that he needed a way to mix the tracks together and commissioned Rein Narma Audio Engineering to build the first true multitrack multichannel recording console.

The Les Paul Original 8 Track Console image
The Les Paul Original 8 Track Console
The console featured 8 inputs and 3 outputs with equalizers on each channel, was modular, and had a full patchbay.

Keep in mind that Les had the first true home studio way back in 1956, and had 8 track recording about 12 years before it became popular in most commercial studios!

You can see more pictures of the Les Paul studio at this page on the AES Historical site.


2 comments:

Rand said...

The great Les Paul; absolute genius and the versatile, musical da Vinci of our age. We all owe him so much.

Les Paul said...

Guitarist Les Paul is noted for many inventions but one of his biggest was "sound on sound" recordings using two full track mono tape machines ... elespaul.blogspot.com

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