Categories
Pro Audio Archive

The McCurdy SS8900 Mixing Console circa 1980

There seems to be zero information on the web concerning this particular mixing console, so i guess that’s where i come in.  Download a 4-page sales flier/spec sheet for the McCurdy SS8900 mixing console:

DL: McCurdy_SS8900

McCurdy was a Canadian – based manufacturer of broadcast audio equipment.  They seem to have had US operations in Massachusetts and Illinois at various points as well. It’s easy to find their modular mic pre amps and various metering units on eBay, but I’ve never encountered one of their consoles.  Anyone?

Click here to DL specs on their earlier 7700-series consoles via AmericanRadioHistory

Categories
Recording Studio History

Dig this c. 1972 Toronto studio ‘Manta Sound’

MantA_2SOOooo it’s been almost a month since I’ve written anything here.  Things have gotten quite busy around PS HQ, what with custom fabrication work for clients, sessions and equipment upgrades at Gold Coast Recorders and other assignments of which I will spare you the details.   Thanks to a few helpful contributors, I still have dozens of issues of the old DB mag and hundreds of pieces of obscure 70s/80s pro-audio and high-end consumer hifi literature to dig thru+upload for y’alls edification.  In the meantime, if you ever need a jolt of weird old audio flotsam, bookmark my Instagram and have a look.  I keep pretty active on there,,,

For you today: a profile of Manta Sound Toronro from DB mag way back in ’72.  According to this source,

“In the early 1970s, the audio shop was a Canadian recording pioneer thanks to its famous Studio 2 that could accommodate up to 70-piece orchestras. Studio 2 made it possible to do more complex recordings than had been done in Canada before, Potma says.  Studio 2′s rich history also includes providing the facilities in 1985 as the Canadian music industry gathered to record Tears Are Not Enough for famine relief in Ethiopia. Artists involved included Young, Bryan Adams, Anne Murray, Gordon Lightfoot and Platinum Blonde.   ‘It seems like a century or two ago,’ Potma says. ‘That was huge. That was probably the biggest thing that we ever did – our little part of that.’    More recently, Manta completed a James Brown recording for the Jackie Chan actioner The Tuxedo, filming around Toronto. *

Manta_3 Manta_4 Mant_Sound_1