I'm assembling a history of all 13 Trident A-Range consoles, their studios and albums recorded on them. I believe there's a lot of misinformation that's been put out there -- by Trident, Malcolm Toft, MTA, PMI Audio, and even UA and Softube. I feel bad for Sound Techniques, who had their "A Range" console name stolen and usurped by Trident, and now the trademark for it is owned by PMI Audio.
Index
I - Sound Techniques, Trident Studios II - Cherokee, Quad Sound, Smart Studios III - Le Studio, Bennett House, New Monkey IV - Sweet Silence, Avast!, Bomb Factory and more V - The Barn, American Recording/Emblem Studio
Unlucky 13 There were 13 original Trident Studios A-Ranges. Allegedly
only 5 or
6 survive.
According to
this comment there were 2 production runs. The first 6 and second 7. This is in line with the 2 different schematics for the Trident A-Range. A 1038 channel strip from 1973 (
gutshot,
schematic, and a 2038 channel strip from 1975 (
gutshot,
schematic).
- #1 40 input/. Trident Studios, London, UK '71 > Matrix Studios -'76/77-? > Cherokee '83-? > Long View Farm Studios, North Brookfield, MA '00-'09 > Studio 3, EastWest, Hollywood, CA '09-present (Source, Source)
Gwyn Mathias says the original desk went to Matrix Studios, London. Ken Scott said it ended up in pieces in Vermont. See bottom of post for more info.
- #2, 1st production Trident A-Range - Crown Records, Tokyo - current fate unknown Source
The first "Production" A Range was built for Crown Records in Tokio, and I believe the EQs were tweaked for that, and then the design stayed. I think the Crown desk may also have had the old-fashioned telephone-style (STC ?) illuminated mute switches (Source)
The mute switch is an STC/Plessey standard telephone-type switch. These were used in the first couple of B Ranges, too, and just might have been used in the first production A Range for Crown Records, Tokyo (Source)
- #3, 2nd production Trident A-Range - 28 input/8 bus. Le Studio, Quebec '74 > Bennet House, TN > Elliott Smith's New Monkey, Van Nuys, CA ~00/02-present (Source)
- 20 input. 24 out. Sweet Silence Studios, Denmark Spring '76-'23 (Source) > Kungsten Studios, Gothenberg, Sweden '23-present (Source: email from Flemming Rasmussen)
- 30 x 24 Trident A-Range mixer. 2038 channel strip. Chipping Norton ~75/77-80 > Henry Hirsch @ Waterfront Studios (It's been referred to as the Lenny Kravitz's A-Range, but he never actually owned it) ~'93-98 (Source) > Takeshi Kobayashi in Tokyo, Japan ~'02 > AES Pro Audio ~08 > Paul Stacey ~09 > 5db Studio, West London '21-present (Source)
- Richie Goldberg (Johannesburg - can't remember the name of the company/studio) - it's possible that this is the very one Cherokee bought through a broker, currently unconfirmed
- 48 monitor. Trident Remix room console/Trident Studio A > Image Recorders, Santa Monica Blvd ~'00/01 (Source) > Formula One Studios, Phoenix, AZ (Source) ~'00/01-04 > sold to a friend ~'04 (Source)
- 32 input (Source) 1975 Studio Rosenberg in Denmark (Source) > Bomb Factory, LA, CA (Source) > Control Room A, Studio Bell, National Music Center in Calgary, Canada (Source)
- Cherokee ( the first Cherokee console). (Source)
- 48 input/24 bus. Cherokee's 1st A-Range - Studio 3, still at Cherokee Studios, LA. (Source, Source)
In the Produce Like a Pro Cherokee Studio tour
Bruce Robb says he believes their modified 48 channel console is the first Trident they bought, whoever
this comment says the South African broker sold Trident A-Range was the one that was modified and expanded.
- Cherokee's South African broker bought w/ additional inputs added, Cherokee's 3rd Trident Studio 1, still at Cherokee Studios, LA
- 36 input Cherokee's 2nd Trident > unused for 10 years > Olympic (Source) > Studio A, Avast!, Seattle, WA (Source)
- [#13] 40 input/24 bus. "Old Blue" Cherokee's 4th Trident @ Studio 2 '75-83 > Quad Sound Studio, Nashville, TN '83-99 > Smart Studios, WI from '99-10 (Source) > private buyer in LA as of ~'12/13 (Source)
- 40 input. Randy Bachman's 'The Barn' Studio, Bellingham, WA > '85-'12 American Recording, Calabasas CA '85 > Emblem '06-'12 > renamed American Recording '12 (Source)
What is in a name? A brief history Sound Techniques started as a recording studio in Chelsea, London in 1965. The Sound Techniques' A-Range was built by Geoff Frost and John Wood from 1964-1971, only 14 were ever made. (
Source)
The original Sound Techniques A-Range at Trident Studios was used to record "Hey Jude, 3 tracks off of the White Album, all the early Elton John stuff, all the early Bowie stuff, all the early Queen stuff, Rolling Stones Carly Simon, America"
from Ken Scott himself.
Trident Studios Trident Studios started in 1967 in St Anne's Court, Soho, London.
Their Sound Techniques' A-Range - the
5th A-Range console made by Sound Techniques. It was built in late 1967. Installed at Trident in early 1968.
According to Ken Scott it lived in the recording room for around 18 months before being moved to the mix room, being replaced by another Sound Techniques A-Range.
Everything at Trident Studio from 1968 to 1971 was also recorded
AND mixed on this desk. Afterwards and until late 1976, everything was mixed on this particular Sound Techniques desk. (
Source)
In 1971 "the [Trident] engineering team at the venerable studio facility decided to create their very own console" (
Source,
Source)
All original Trident produced Trident A-Range consoles featured an aubergine colour (
Source%20color)) and a Belclere (not Bellclaire) Zutt012a input transformer. (
Source,
Source)
The original Trident A-Range desk "had 24-way McMurdo Red Range connectors on the channels." (
Source)
"the Trident studio board - really the prototype and with 24 -way McMurdo Red Range connectors on the channels instead of the later 32-way ones on the production boards )
I prototype-wired the first "proper" A-Range channel, physically designed and made the Loom board for the manufacture of the input channel looms, moved on to wiring the console frames, and ended up responsible for the manufacturing wiring shop at the North Road factory..." (
Source)
"From memory it had Seidel (sp?) faders... Subsequent A Range boards all had P & Gs."
(Source) "I asked Malcolm about when the A and B Range consoles came out and he said... "the first A Range was in fact manufactured at the end of 1971." (
Source)
"Malcolm has helped me as well with some good input on this, but more details change the date a bit. There were once claims saying 1970, but I have been digging very deep into A-Range history. While they may have completed some circuits/modules for the desk in 1971, the finished console seems to have been completed later in 1972, and was installed mid/late 1972 at St Anne's Court, to replace the Sound Techniques console. There is a December 1971 photo of the chassis being wired, so some circuits were complete, but not the whole console. In summer of 1972, they had done press about the "just completed" desk with new photos before the install. It seems quite unlikely to wait 8-10 months to install something like that. Bowie's
Aladdin Sane was one of the first records done on the new console, October 1972." (
Source)
"Trident installed the first A-Range in the main studio in 1972 and moved the Sound Techniques A-Range console that was in that room into the mix room." (
Source)
Albums and timeline 1968 - The Beatles - Hey Jude - recorded at Trident Studios on the Sound Techniques' A-Range.
1971 - America - Self titled album
1971 - Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson
1972 - Harry Nilsson - Son of Schmilsson
"There is an announcement of the new console in May of 72 at APRS Convention in London"
1972 - David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
- In a MIX Magazine article from 2009 (I believe the March issue) Ken Scott said Ziggy was recorded on Trident's A-Range and mixed on the ST A-Range. (Source)
1972 Savoy Brown - Lion's Share (
Source)
1972 - Elton John - Honky Chateau
- We did a few more overdubs at Trident after we finished in France. For the overdubs, we would have used a Sound Techniques board (Source)
Actually tracked on the Trident A-Range: 1972, October - David Bowie - Aladdin Sane (
Source,
Source)
"By October 73 the Trident console is already installed at Trident"
1973 - Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
- Overdubs. Tambourine on "All The Girls Love Alice", orchestral parts on 6 songs and the first 1m40s of Funeral for a Friend recorded at Trident possibly on the Trident A-Range, but certainly mixed on Sound Techniques' A-Range (Source, Source)
1973 - Chris Darrow - Self titled
1973 - Home - Alchemist
1974 - Jimmy Webb - Land's End
1974 - Mick Ronson - Slaughter on 10th Avenue
1974 - Peter Hammill - The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage (
Source)
1974 - Supertramp - Crime of the Century
1974 Trident visited AES in New York
- "Malcolm further added to the allure surrounding the A-Range desk in 1974 by attending the AES convention in New York City." (Source)
- "The first of the "Production" A Range modules to be exhibited at a show with 32-way connectors on the channels was actually a mock-up, wired any and every which way - as the AES was literally in a day or two and Barry Porter had no time to make any sort of draft wiring documentation out for it . Hence although switches had the correct number of wires on them etc., and all the circuit board pins had wires soldered to them, the wires went nowhere in particular...
- I know this because I did an allnighter and wired that channel myself, with Jeff King the #2 in R & D staying and feeding me coffee.... This wasn't an easy job at all, because wire colours had to be chosen to make it look credible, and it had to be able to pass muster against inspection by pros. I had to hand-lace the loom in situ with waxed lacing twine - the later looms were all made on the loom-boards with nails, which I made after the wiring had been finalized.
- The dummy channel was then taken more or less the next day for its first outing at the AES in LA." (Source)
- "I sat up all night first with Barry Porter , and then with Jeff King ( #2 in R & D) faking-up the wiring of the very first A Range channel taken to the AES in LA. It was a total dummy - switches had to have the appropriate numbers of wires in the appropriate places, but were going via the Loom to random destinations. This was a really hard task to make visually credible actually - necessitated by the fact there was no time to get a functional channel sorted before the AES date as the parts were delivered at the last moment." (Source)
Production started - Crown Records, Tokyo "this was the first "production" A Range board built at the North Rd factory after the original first A Range had been built at Trident Studios and installed there" (Source)
- 1974 (Source) Le Studio. Morin Heights Quebec, Canada. The "second of the production consoles" (Source)
- 1976 Spring (Source) Sweet Silence Studios, Denmark
- Either 1975 (Source) or 1977 (Source) Chipping Norton. 30 x 24 Trident A-Range mixer
- Richie Goldberg (Johannesburg - can't remember the name of the company/studio)
- Trident Remix room console ( this has to have been the one referred to in an earlier post as being in " Trident Studio A" - after the Sheffield brothers had sold the studio I went there and did some overdubs and mixes on it for The Ruts, which would have been probably 1981-82, and the board was still upstairs in the remix room at St Annes Court then).
- Cherokee (the first Cherokee console). (Source)
1976/77 Trident Studios remodeled, original tracking Trident A-Range desk sold to Matrix Studios (
Source) and replaced it "with a TSM, and also the Sound Techniques in the mix room with a bigger TSM"
- On a funny note, as we were ripping out the mix room (this was the first time it had ever been re-equipped) we discovered that the ST desk was plugged into a 13amp wall socket with the fuse replaced by a sawn off 6 inch nail. Talk about potential fire hazard, but it obviously got the job done, right? (Source)
1981 closed as of November (
Source)
1983 Trident opened under new ownership (
Source)
1985 - The Cure - Close to Me
1986 - Blow Monkeys - Digging Your Scene
- "Those were the two records that shaped my career, so the A-Range is always special to me" - Adam Moseley (Source)
Fate of Trident's original two Sound Techniques A-Range consoles "One of them (I didn't know there were two) was in pieces in cardboard boxes in a corner of the production area of the Trident North Road factory for years." - Gwyn Mathias, former module wireman @ Trident Studios (
Source)
Fate of the original Trident A-Range "I am positive that dealer Don Larking had the prototype from St Anne's Court at one point and sold it. I think that original A range was the one in Matrix in Little Russell St near the British museum. I recorded on it several times at Matrix, and can remember having to swap out a monitor module as the bass end was non-existent on it, but I can't remember how many pins the connector had. I will ask Don Larking and see if he remembers anything about it!" (
Source)
"The original, and I do mean ORIGINAL, the one from Trident, is in pieces in Vermont." -
Ken Scott I’ve always wanted to start at a beginner level for fencing. I’m in Middle TN- most listed I can find from google are difficult to contact.
Would anyone have a contact or knowledge about fencing classes in the Nashville, Gallatin, Murfreesboro?
I was turning onto Briley Parkway from Gallatin pike, coming from Madison. A driver in silver F150 was also turning onto Briley coming from the East Nashville side.
We are converging at about the same point where the two lanes become one. I am half a length ahead and thinking I have the right of way but in that same instant I see him staring at his phone and realize a collision is imminent. I swerve and accelerate avoiding the collision.
He then accelerates hard and gets right on my bumper. I accelerated to get away. He comes up beside me, flips me off. I make a hand gesture of hanging up the phone.
Then he points a dessert desert tan gun at me.