This week’s Gear That Made Us features the EMI RS144 Premix Box.

Described by EMI as a 4-way mixer, this unit was established in the early ‘60s as a means of adding more mic inputs to the REDD mixing desks.

Four individual faders were built in, because engineers not only needed more inputs, but also a way to balance them as they would on the main console.

The extra mic signals would go up through a Siemens patch bay in the control room, be fed into special Tuchel sockets at the back of the REDD desk and then go out to the RS144 allowing control of the four additional inputs.

Sometimes RS144s were used to combine guitar, bass and drums. Sometimes they were used to combine several room mics on an orchestral recording. But according to Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew in their book Recording The Beatles,

“In the hands of the Beatles’ engineers, the Premix became a drum mixer, a simple way of combining up to four drum mics into one channel.”