Over at our Tech Shop, we have the pleasure of working with some of the more rare pieces of audio gear from throughout the history of recording. With that being said, it's still always a surprise when something like this EMI TG12345 channel strip is carried through the door and placed on our bench. This very strip holds the keys to some of the most treasured recordings of the modern era of music.

Prior to decommissioning Abbey Road's famous REDD consoles, the studio's engineers and creative minds at EMI started to make plans in 1967 for a new type of mixer to replace their older desks. Their end result, the EMI TG12345, was a new modular solid-state console, which featured compression, limiting and EQ features on each of the desk's channels. The first make of the console was installed in 1968 and was used during the recording of The Beatles' Abbey Road.

This original console was followed by a few different versions with some modifications, one of which was used to record Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in 1972. Eventually, the EMI TG12345 consoles were pulled from Abbey Road Studios in December 1983 and would end up being shipped all over the world. Channel strips like the one currently in our Tech Shop have been stripped from their former console homes and sent as far away as Brazil and Japan.

Recently, Chandler Limited released a new version of the EMI TG12345 channel strip, which has been dubbed the TG Microphone Cassette. To learn more about this new take on the EMI TG12345, check out our interview with Chandler Limited's Wade Goeke and Adam Fiori to learn how they worked with the Abbey Road team to bring this classic back to life.