Abbey Road recording console used to make the final Beatles album is being put up for sale

The unique EMI TG12345 console was custom-built for EMI Studios in 1968, and just a year later was used to record one of the most important albums of rock history – Abbey Road – the last album that The Beatles recorded before they split up in 1969.

“Abbey Road is one of the best albums that’s ever been made, and it sounds so good because of this recording console,” said Dave Harries, who was part of the recording sessions. "Because of the way that Abbey Road was recorded, the album has a distinctive sound that hallmarked the future of pop recording.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Reverb.com (@reverb)

“If you talk to the engineers who have used it, they’ll tell you the same thing: It’s a beautiful sounding machine…it enhances everything that goes through it,” said producer/engineer Mike Hedges. “I even once threatened to stop working at Abbey Studios after being told that they planned to switch from EMI to a different brand of consoles. That is how I managed to purchase the consoles. A deal was done for me to acquire the replaced consoles.”

Shortly after recording Abbey Road, and the recording of early solo material from members of The Beatles, the console was disassembled and sat unused for more than five decades before it underwent a five-year restoration process, with the help of Beatles collaborator and former EMI engineer Brian Gibson. Variety reports that, alongside a team of engineers and technicians, he managed to reunite the console with 70% of its original parts, working with expert British companies to reproduce replacements for the missing parts.