Neve is a British company which was, for many years, the preeminent manufacturer of high-end audio mixing consoles. Until Solid State Logic (SSL) came along, Neve was the ‘Rolls Royce’ of mixing boards. They were (are) terrifically expensive, but the products really do sound great and a Neve console still is a great ‘magnet’ for both engineers/producers and recording artists. I have a pair of 1970′s Neve mic preamps in my studio and they really do sound fantastic. They get used on pretty much every session.
My former band made a few albums on Neve consoles. I can’t recall which particular models, but they were the older ’80′ series of Neves. The 80-series is what most people think of when they think of ‘Vintage Neve’ console. Neve did make later analog consoles, though, such as the 8108, pictured above from the original sales sheet. The 8108 is somewhat maligned, largely due to the fact that it has an active patchbay system which the mix buss and multitrack routing goes through. The channel strips do not have any buss assignment buttons – all of the bussing is assigned in the master section shown below:
This system is apparently prone to problems, and the forums are full of vague complaints about the sound quality as well. The 81-series is an attempt to introduce digital routing/switching control to an analog mixing console, and maybe Neve was a little premature in this move.
A client hired me to do some basic assessment/ maintenance on the 8108 pictured above. It had not been used for many years. Hard to say how many; but I would guess… 5 years? It powered up immediately, and other than some patchbay corrosion and dirty switches, the channels largely worked well. Based on my initial listening, the mic preamps and EQs sound great. Very, very powerful EQ. Seems like there is a of headroom. I have not gotten in the master section yet – I was just evaluating the input strips – so more on that later.
That’s it for the moment – but I will leave you with this circa 1983 (? – a guess) NEVE catalog that I came across. More on the 8108 to come.
Hi,
A friend recently reminded me that I worked at Neve in the late 70s and early 80s, so I started surfing and came across your site. Mike Oldfield’s 8108 was the last console I worked on as a test engineer in the test dept. before becoming one of Neve’s technical writers. I then wrote the user guide for the 8108 as more orders came in for them. Because there was no callout staff available one morning, I got asked to respond to an emergency call from an irate Mike Oldfield to fix his 8108 which wouldn’t switch on.
I arrived at his house in Denham where he was trying to mix down “Crises”. After pulling out every channel strip, rack card, – you name it – it turned out that some bright spark had decided to automatically switch on the aircon system using a spare relay inside the 8108 power supply rack that lived in a small room underneath the studio. The relay didn’t like it, so each time someone tried to turn the mixer on, the power supply shut down.
Five hours after arriving, I had the 8108 back together again, zeroed, and invited Mike to try playing back from the multitrack tape. I watched him grin as he brought the faders up, and was gruffly dismissed.
I then gave an 8108 training course to Dutch techies working for NOS in Hilversum, Holland. I can’t vouch for the desk’s sound, but I found the routing to be confusing, especially as you can’t see at a glance which channels are routed to which groups, like you can with an 80×8 with its block of routing buttons at the top of each channel strip. The metering was plasma bargraphs which ran pretty hot. Otherwise it was a nice desk to work on.
Hello,
I am writing from Paris, I am an audio technician, and I know a lot of console neve: 8108 V VR 54 33115 Melbourne ….
For several years, I put in racks, pairs of channels neve 8108, some very nice blue racks that sell well. I work in a studio, we had a Neve 8108 and I sold all parts in racks.
So I’m looking for channels to sell, and even if the maintenance was not done, I restored very well and PAMP eq … I remade the electronics of the output card, small-fader … So I’m looking for 8108 channels for sale. As you know ?
Sylvain .. we were in contact but I lost your info when my macbook was stolen a few weeks ago .. i have all the channels and parts from the 8108 that was in New River Studios in Ft. Lauderdale Fl.
everything is in beautiful condition .. please contact me again if you are interested .. there is a time factor .. please hurry
Dave
One of the dumber trends in recording history was and remains the parting out of these consoles for the channel strips. You can build a lot better unit in a 2U or 3U chassis than any strip because you have less constraints for space.