OVERHANG

The Otari Concept 1 is here after 6 weeks of waiting, and it was well worth it. For all of you who haven't heard, Matt Newport, owner of Black Lion Audio, has graciously given permission to us to start an after-hours studio in the same space as his business. Michael (a fellow Black Lion Audio employee) and I immediately started surfing the web for large format mixing consoles to help pull the extremities of our current outboard gear together in a setup that would easily compete with other Chicago studios. We quickly found an Otari Concept 1 on eBay and placed a bid.

To give those of you who could care less about geeky topics, you may appreciate this: it originally cost over $80k in 1996 and only had a single owner before us (near perfect condition). Blam! And we only paid $5k for it. Ka-ching!

"So what's the catch?" you may be asking yourself. It was located in the rolling hills of rural Connecticut, and at 60mph in a Chevy Tahoe with hitch and trailer, it was a 48 hour round trip. After getting over the shock of the mere 10mpg at $4.50/gallon, it wasn't so bad, until we arrived and had to lift the 800lb board down a narrow stairway. Broken dry wall and snapped hand railing aside, the move was a success.

Back in Chicago, after opening it up, Matt of BLA informed us that the op-amps are some of the most coveted op-amps of that particular flavor, and the channel compression was basically an SSL clone (very top-end gear). Needless to say, it sounds amazing.

We are currently working on setting it up, including a re-cap and thorough fader clean, and hope to have the studio fully operational in another month or two. It's difficult being patient, but as life has been teaching me, good things take time.

- Nate

p.s.

Lucky for us this expert Otari technician lives in Chicago and stopped by to help set up the board...

...more pictures of the board--the power supply...

a mixing board action shot...(not a stunt double)