Altec 9200 16 Channel Console (Vintage)

Product Description

Console History

Built for Owen Bradley’s studio, Bradley’s Barn in Nashville, Tennessee, this beautiful vintage console from Altec has been used on sessions featuring Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Bob Dylan and many more. Fans of country music and beyond will be aware of the contributions made to popular music by Bradley, as his efforts in crafting the Nashville sound throughout the 1950s and 1960s are undeniable. This Altec desk was built in the mid-1960s and utilized by Bradley throughout the remainder of the decade.

Housed in Bradley’s Barn until around 1970, the Altec console was removed just in time, as the studio space eventually burned down. It was stored away for years in a shed until Kevin Augunas found the console during his search for a desk that showcased the classic Langevin and Altec sound. Once Augunas purchased the console, the desk was completely refurbished and restored to its former glory.

Since finding a new home in Studio A of Fairfax Recordings (formerly Sound City Studios), Augunas set straight to work on the desk by mixing The Lumineers self-titled debut album featuring the hit “Ho Hey.” In the time since, the producer, engineer and mixer has worked on a wide range of projects on the console including sessions with Lenny Kravitz, Booker T., Mike Snow, Dave Grohl, Gotye and many more.

Console Specifics

The main Altec board has 16 inputs, 12 of which have preamps and four of which are line input. There are four busses on the console, and each channel can go to only one buss. Depending on which buss is selected, you get the echo send for that buss. For example, if you have three channels assigned to buss 1, all of their echo sends get combined into one signal, available at a patch point. On every individual channel, there is a post fader send to the echo buss.

There are passive inductor-based EQs on each channel, and you get a choice of 40 or 100 Hz on the low end and 3K, 5K, 10K or 15K on the top end and it’s +12dB, -16dB, in increments of 2dB. These EQ's provide very broad, musical brush strokes.

There are two pan pots on the left side of the Altec console to allow you to pan a signal between two busses. You can patch into them with a mono signal, and select which two busses you want to pan across with the switches directly above the pan pots. Both pan pots feed the same two selected busses. For example, for LCR mixing, you could use bus 1 for L, bus 2 for R, and bus 3 for C, where the output of bus 3 would patch into a pan pot to be split evenly between busses 1 and 2.

The console has a fully-normalled patch point post-mic preamp and pre-EQ/channel fader. This is the direct out, and the signal comes straight off a 9470a mic preamp to the patchbay. There is no volume control before the patch point, and the 9470a is a fixed 45dB gain preamp, so you need to use an external level control. Over towards the right part of the Altec board, there are 8x 600 Ohm rotary attenuator knobs in a vertical line which are convenient for this purpose, on XLR pig tails and patchable.

There is an echo return on each of the 4 busses that will sum into your buss signal before the buss out patch point.

There is 45 dB of gain in 9470a preamps. There’s no pad, there’s no phantom, there’s no polarity reverse. There’s a talkback switch that can be manually engaged that provides talkback at a patch point. There are three different playback sources for the control room monitors, selectable via switch, and a volume control. Those sources are mirrored for studio playback, and a separate volume control is provided.

There’s a meter pad knob, so you can pad the four buss meters from +24dB to +4db to in increments of 2dB. There are four echo buss meters that are horizontal VU's and two very sweet-sounding 9062A graphic EQs built into the meter bridge of the main Altec board.

The monitor board is 16 channels with an additional mono echo return. There is left, center, right panning on switches, no pan pots.

All faders are Gliss faders, and the monitor board has two mono sends per channel; one post fader for echo and one pre fader for cue.

The monitor board is transformer isolated on input and output, uses passive summing, and uses a pair of Altec 9470 amplifiers for makeup gain.

Restoration work was done by Ken Hirsch at Orphan Audio.