A console used to record the Beatles’ Abbey Road album and found discarded in a skip is due to be auctioned off after a four-year restoration project.
Malcolm Jackson and his son Hamish Jackson, who are both from Hertfordshire, have worked within a wider group to restore the one-of-a-kind EMI TG12345 console.
It was used to record the Beatles’ hit album in the north London studios, which was released on 26 September 1969. It was later donated to a school that discarded it in a skip.
It was subsequently found but left unused for years before the project was started, and will now be auctioned by online music marketplace, Reverb, on 29 October.
Mr Jackson Snr and Jnr run their own company, Malcolm Jackson Quipment, from Rickmansworth, where they specialise in selling studio equipment and helping to sell studio space.
For the past four years, they were part of the team restoring the console under the guidance of former EMI engineer and Beatles collaborator Brian Gibson, who had used it in the 1960s.
It was the first of just 17 consoles worldwide made by EMI, and it helped record the Beatles last album in the late 1960s before they split up in 1970.
The console was eventually donated to a London school, but a few years later it was dumped in a skip when staff reportedly did not know how to use it.
However, a musician walking by one day was quick to notice it.
“It was the switches that someone noticed; they liked the look of the knobs and so pulled it out of the skip,” Mr Jackson Jnr explained.
“The skip was outside a school in St John’s Wood.”
Mr Jackson Snr added: “He was a guitarist and saw the switches and thought, ‘It’ll look great on my guitar’.”
According to Mr Jackson Snr, 31 British companies helped the team restore parts of the console during the project.
Asked why the console was so unique, he explained: “The sound is so great; it’s special.
“Anybody who has this console will have the best studio in the world.”
His son added that the quality of the sound was “something you couldn’t describe”.
“You really appreciate it when you’re actually recording with it.
“You understand, ‘Wow, that sounds really different’.”
Mr Jackson Jnr said the restored console was “definitely” a piece of equipment that could be used to make music again, but equally could be a collector’s item.
“You’re buying into the story – it’s that lovely combination of being the perfect engineering quality as well as having all this very significant history,” he added.