EMI REDD 17 Tube Console (Vintage)

Rare REDD 17 tube console built for, and used exclusively by EMI/Abbey Road, in the pre-Beatles era.

The acronym R.E.D.D. stands for the in-house engineering division of EMI, known as the Record Engineering Development Department. One of the many tasks of this dept. was to create a custom recording console for use at EMI/Abbey Road studios. Only a handful of these all-tube consoles were built in the late 1950s, and were installed in all of the control rooms at Abbey Road. Since they were built in a modular fashion, they were also used as portable recording consoles for location tracking. The heart of the desk was the Telefunken V72s tube mic preamplifier.

BY the late 1950s, four track tape recorders were becoming available, and this required an upgrade to the REDD.17 desks, which were more suitable for two-track recording. Thus the REDD.37 console was designed, and this became the desk used on the first Beatles' album, as well as many of their subsequent recordings. This version of the console also used the Telefunken V72s mic pre.

The final improvement in the series was the REDD.51, which was used on the vast majority of Beatles' records. For this version, the Telefunken mic pre was replaced by the in-house designed REDD 47 mic pre.

Geoff Emerick, the Beatles engineer, has stated in his autobiography that he disliked the later transistor-based TG12345 console, which replaced the REDD desks at Abbey Road. According to Geoff, the solid state desk "lacked the aggressive edge of the valve consoles". The TG12345 desk appeared near the end of their reign, and the Beatles only used it on their final album, Abbey Road; all other albums were done on a REDD desk.

REDD.17 Features:

• 12 inputs, 2 busses
• Uses V72s modules (only used in REDD consoles)
• 8 main channels with 2 band fixed freq. Eq.
• 2 aux Inputs with no Eq. ( "4A" and "5A" )
• 2 channels that used to be "SPARE" and "TEST amplifiers". These are now Input 11 and input 12. No eq.
• Total of 12 input channels, 8 with EQ, and 10 with echo send.
• All Inputs are mic Inputs with fixed 30 dB of gain, with pad/attenuators allowing one to reduce line level to mic level to avoid overloading mic pre
• Old style 3 pin I/O connectors
• Internal Cross-patch/Test patchbay built-in to the right side amp module (connectors not included to make cables for this)
• Some normaling jumpers are installed
• 220 VAC; designed for 50Hz, but will work on 60Hz

Desk has 3 modes:

• "DUO" = This is pretty much MONO mode for use with dual track recorders. It is just a redundant feed to the 2nd track.
• "STEREO"= This would best be called "Dual Track" as there are No PAN pots at all on the desk.
• This is called "STEREO" because there are 2 dedicated sets, of 2 channels, (1 and 2, and 7 and 8) that have a "Spreader" available, when recording with Stereo Mic's, and the fact that the desk has 2 busses , LEFT, and RIGHT.
• "MONO" = This just sums the left and right to MONO.
• The 2 outputs for tracking that would have the Painton Level faders, and EQ's in line. "Main Left" and "Main Right".

You could patch from the output of each of the V72s Mic pre's, but these are fixed at 30dB of gain, your only level adjust would be via the switchable input pads, and there would be no EQ.

There is one aux send. ECHO. It is on 10 of the channels post EQ, post the Painton level faders.

2 MONO / (1 STEREO) playback channels. "PB 1" and "PB2"

The signal path flows from the BOTTOM of the channel to the TOP of the channel. The mic input jack ICON is at the bottom of the panel, closest to the engineer

"RED" Engraving = "LEFT". "GREEN" Engraving = "RIGHT". "BLACK" engraving on left wing gets summed to "LEFT". "BLACK" engraving on right wing gets summed to "RIGHT".

On the center section the "Spreaders" on/above channels 1 and 2, and channels 7 and 8 just do phase "correction" for stereo Mic angles, ( L-R / R-L ), for proper "Width".

On the center section The 2 switches under the plastic labels [ 3 1 2 ] and [2 1 4] just make routing the LEFT and RIGHT dedicated outputs to the input of a 4 track machine easier. No re-patching.

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