the cat visconti trident project. only a couple of 151 fabulous 1970’s TRIDENT TSM consoles  have ever washed up on these fine NZ shores. after being circuitry flavour for albums from artists like david bowie, ringo starr, and cat stevens. also metallica, elton john and the beatles (hey jude)  many many more –  even tony visconti had one in his good earth london studio where he mixed one of my all favourite records .  diamond dogs.  dam.

well the guts of it is… i just played my copy of diamond dogs thru my experimental cat visconti rig ..   and the trident sound is indeed awesome.  and rich.I reckon that-  in its day – musicians loved that 1. it sounded really good. – BIG – 2. and the eq was  wow wow selective. 3.  the big consoles had a engineers end 4.  a producers end. 5. AND 6. you could switch the switches and use all gazzillion chanels in-a-row for extra massive stereo mix downs. 7. have a real 70s mix down party where 8 or 9 people take on a few  instruments and mute buttons each.  rehearse some moves over few takes and tokes and then ….    to nail yet another iconic mixdown to a two track master tape.  fuck. those were the days. anyway – these consoles are huge. and need their own river mounted hydroelectric plant.  there are so many chips and the power supply is so huge that they present a real threat to the ecology and power line voltage drop. so my client who has the before mentioned gazzillion channels is needing to cull the desk channel electronics right down to bare sexy bones without any coke snorting steroid add slash hang ons – buffering amps – and non essential chains of integrated circuits. oh . and not to forget the numerous very unglamorous electronic switching. this trident and all the other chip desks of the day are awash with chains of chips.  too too much. so ive connected the output of the mic amp directly to the eq and then to the channel fader and output amplifier. and avoided about 30 chips!. (i mite be exagerating there)  the eqs need new pots and i dont think the fader boost cut controls were ever quite precise enough.  so the next stage is to design and build the prototype high breed cat visconti trident TSM channel version one point one. with all new metalwork and layout and that old fashioned klangenschmitt functionality .   i  love my job.