Beatles’ “Abbey Road” Console Up For Sale

London, UK (October 23, 2024)—The EMI TG12345 MkI Prototype recording console used to record The Beatles and other acts at London’s EMI Studios in the late 1960s and early 1970s will be put up for sale online starting October 29.

Installed inside EMI’s Studio 2 from 1968 to 1971, the console captured the Fab Four’s 1969 classic album Abbey Road and some of the group members’ 1970s solo endeavors like John Lennon’s single “Instant Karma,” Paul McCartney’s McCartney, George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, and Ringo Starr’s Sentimental Journey. Other artists recorded with the EMI TG12345 Mk1 include Cliff Richard and The Shadows, The Hollies, Marky Hopkin, Doris Troy and Billy Preston. The desk was removed from Studio 2 in September 1971 and moved to Studio 1, where it was later decommissioned the following year.

The desk will offered for sale through the online Reverb shop of MJQ Ltd., though it won’t be the first time the EMI TG12345 has been proffered in recent years. Most recently, the console went under the hammer in a 2023 Bonhams auction—a move reflecting the growing trend of using rockstar gear as alternative investments—but the desk didn’t meet its guide price of “a seven-figure sum.”

For memorabilia hounds, it might not be a clear-cut investment, but for audio pros, the EMI TG12345 is something of a grail piece. Sporting 24 mic inputs, compressors on every channel and eight outputs, the console was the prototype for the mere 17 desks that EMI produced. More importantly, it is also fully functional and working, having undergone a five-year restoration under the guidance of Beatles collaborator and former EMI engineer Brian Gibson.

While the desk was disassembled for more than 50 years, Gibson and his team reunited the console with 70 percent of its original parts and crafted reproductions for the missing elements. The result is a working desk that was used for recording as recently as this past summer, when it was demoed at London’s Decca Studios prior to heading to 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 “The TG Man” Hedges, who was the principal client in studio 2 at Abbey Road Studios throughout the 1980s.