Around The Shop: Neve 8068 Console

Since the beginning of our company, we've always had an affinity for the classic consoles that have made a historical impact on our favorite albums. From Neve to API and Solid State Logic to EMI, we've serviced some of the most famous consoles in the world right here in our Ferndale, Michigan-based Tech Shop.

As a part of Around The Shop blog series, we're going to begin taking a more in-depth look at the consoles that we are currently working on. This week we delve into a servicing project of a Neve console from the mid-seventies being worked on by our Lead Console Technician, Rich Hunt.

This beautiful Neve 8068 was owned by Bruce Hornsby and was recently decommissioned from his home studio where it resided for over a decade. It was purchased by Gerhard Buchbauer, the owner of Prime Studios, in Austria, who has bought several other consoles from us including an EMI Abbey Road console and a 32 channel vintage Neve console.

As with many other vintage consoles, this one has seen some wear and features a few changes since it was born in the Neve factory. The desk was modified to have an extra eight inputs and features a number of other modifications that our team chose to leave in place. Working around these mods and fixing others, Rich and his crew cleaned, corrected and documented anything that wasn’t working, ensuring that everything was correct inside and outside of the desk.

"Our normal restoration hours for a large format desk like this is between 400-500 hours," says Hunt of the hours he has put in with co-worker Jeff Spatafora. "This particular desk has taken longer due to some problems with the previous modifications along with adding some mods of our own."

Several hundred man hours in, this 8068 was nearly complete when we visited the Tech Shop. The team is ready to begin final testing on the console, but is just waiting for some last minute cosmetic touches before it’s run through a few tests and then prepared for shipping.

If you're interested in finding out more about our restoration process and seeing some of our completed desks for sale, please head over to our consoles page to see what else we've been working on over the years.