Mix Blog Live: The High Cost of Being a Celebrity

Mix recently published an article reporting that the EMI TG12345 mixing console used to record The Beatles’ Abbey Road is up for sale (again). You can read the details here, but suffice to say that the desk was used to make recordings that anyone who has ever listened to music has likely heard. No doubt, that’s a mixing console with some serious street cred, and I’m sure it sounds amazing. It’s currently for sale on Reverb at a price north of USD $3 million. Yikes!

I can’t help but wonder, how much of that three mil is for the console and how much of it represents provenance? I’m inclined to think that around 75 percent of the asking price is for the provenance. 

Given the history of the desk, it may not be a lot of money for a serious gear collector to fork over, but, unfortunately, the number of operating studios that could afford such an expense is, shall we say, rather limited. My one hope is that the desk doesn’t wind up in the living room of a collector, never to be used again for recording purposes. That would be a shame. 

The Abbey Road console is not the first or only piece of music equipment that seeks to fetch (or already has fetched) high numbers. The guitar collection of David Gilmour brought in $21.5 million, including a particular black ‘Strat that commanded $3.9 million alone. Heck, if it was indeed the guitar Gilmour used to play the solo on “Comfortably Numb,” I’d consider buying it. Oh, right, I don’t have that kind of money. Anyway, I’m happy to know that proceeds from the auction were donated to ClientEarth.

A similar auction took place earlier this year when Mark Knopfler’s guitar collection brought in more than $11 million. That collection included a ’59 Gibson Les Paul Standard that sold for $876K, and an ’83 Les Paul that Knopfler used to record the famous “Money For Nothing” riff pulled in almost $749K. I’m happy to report that some of the proceeds went to the Teenage Cancer Trust, British Red Cross and other charities. I’m a big fan of Knopfler’s music, but I have to admit I was shocked by the prices at which these guitars sold. 

While some of these guitars and the Abbey Road desk do indeed have the provenance of royalty, I think that the high auction prices can be attributed to people who have a lot of cash and want the bragging rights that come with owning, for example, the mixing console used to record Michael Jackson’s Thriller or a guitar that Clapton used to play the solo in “White Room.”

What I don’t understand is the often laughable asking prices of audio gear (some of it quite common) that comes from the studio of a popular recording artist. I love it when I get an email from Reverb touting “(insert name of somewhat famous artist) are selling their gear! Check it out.” 

And I do—because you can’t help but visit a train wreck—only to find that items like an Alesis 3630 compressor are selling for 750 bucks simply because they came out of so-and-so’s studio. Really? Similarly, I sometimes see gear that belonged to a “celebrity” engineer being sold at grossly overinflated prices.