Re: Rolling Stones Mobile
Date: April 5, 2005 10:43
And what sort of van contained MRU?
The recording unit is mounted on a BMC (British Leyland Laird )
The Rolling Stones had the option of mounting the recording unit on a Mercedes for 5000 pounds or a BMC for 2000 pounds. They went for the BMC because they thought the truck would only do about 10,000 miles but it ended up travelling over 100,000 miles.
The studio itself was specifically designed on the systemused at Olympic. It had a Helios console. These were highly regarded because the electronics were simple, and everyone loved the clean sound that came from tghe desk. The monitors were four whopping Tannoy speakers, each about four and a half foot tall, situated in the very narrow width of the truck. Nowadays only two tend to be used unless it's for Dolby Stereo. The console had only twenty channels as opposed to more than 100 used now for top level live recording. A special type of tape-recorder, a Unitrack, was being built and had been sold to the Stones, but it never appeared and so they put in a 3M machine instead. The sixteen-track machine was used for Exile, along with an eight track Ampex. this was later upgraded to a dual 24-track system.
Information taken from Mick McKenna - Exile by Dominique Tarle.
ROCKMAN