Own A Piece Of Pink Floyd History
Charity auction selling off one of Floyd\'s legendary mixing desks
One of the two remaining mixing desks used by Pink Floyd on their Momentary Lapse of Reason and Division Bell tours is being auctioned for charity.
The consoles, a customized Midas XL3 quad console and a Britannia Row Productions custom-built quad panning device, are being sold by their owner, Britannia Row Productions (BRP), the sound company originally formed and owned by Pink Floyd, which has been independent for the last 26 years.
The hand built device used on the Momentary Lapse of Reason tour has a Bonhams catalogue price range of £5,000-£7,000k, while the more technically complex, and also specially commissioned, Midas XL3 Quad mixer used on the Division Bell tour has a catalogue price range of £25,000 – £30,000. Both items are unique and were designed and engineered specifically for each tour.
Every Pink Floyd tour since the late 1960s featured quadraphonic sound among the many live sound and lighting effects pioneered by the band.
Sound effects including helicopters, the famous chiming clocks, cash registers and gongs of Dark Side Of The Moon and many more, were whirled around massive arenas and stadiums using banks of loudspeakers positioned in an approximate diamond layout, with one stack at the rear facing the stage, the two side stacks to either side on a line slightly behind the mixing desk position, with the main left-and-right PA handling the front ‘point’ of the diamond. The effects were sent to the speakers using one of the special hand-built quadraphonic (‘quad’) mixing desks.
Only six generations of quad mixing desks or external quad panning devices were made during the band’s performing history between 1969 and 1994, each using the best audio technology available at the time.
Britannia Row Productions Mike Lowe comments: "We’ve treated these historic audio artifacts with great care because of their special place in the Pink Floyd live performance legend.
"Both tours played to over 5 million people worldwide, from Tokyo to London and from Los Angeles to Sydney and each desk was at the heart of its respective tour.
"Now, with the advent of digital technology, the ways to deliver quadraphonic sound have radically changed and we felt the best outcome would be to offer these unique vintage devices to collectors at auction and in the process make a donation to Stage Hand.”
Stage Hand (aka the PSA Welfare & Benevolent Fund) is a UK registered charity, supported by the Production Services Association (PSA), a trade body for concert and event crew. The Welfare & Benevolent Fund offers financial hardship support and retraining grants for those in the industry who are unable to work through illness or injury.
Get more information about the auction and charity at the link below