Quantum mixing console
Model #: QM-8-8EX
This shows my partly-completed rework of the patch bay (I have the original patch bay, but there's no documentation for it and it uses patch cables with nonstandard plugs -- approx. 3/16" diameter). The gouges in the arm-rest are from Bubba's late german shepherd Penelope.
Origin
Dan Dudley (of MoG) and I bought this jointly (each contributing $900 -- in my case, using "consumer credit") sometime around 1994 when we were trying to turn the Red House into a recording studio (I can almost remember the name of the guy we bought it from... Dave somebody... Edwards, I think? grey hair, 50-something). Later, I bought out Dan's share rather than have the board sold off (I don't remember when this was; if it was as late as 1998, then I had the cash to spare). Unfortunately it started developing issues faster than I could track them down and fix them, so I had to quit recording until being cajoled into buying digital recording equipment (again on credit) for the ill-conceived Xmas CD Project.
Dan says he confirmed with one of the members of R.E.M. (I think it was Pete Buck, but I'm not sure; might have been Bill Berry), whom he met in some popular Athens bar, that this was in fact the same mixing console used at Mitch's Drive-In to do the original recording of "Radio Free Europe" and one or two other songs. That recording was used on R.E.M.'s original cassette release but not on the Murmur album. It was, however, re-released on the Eponymous album, and apparently the band liked it better than the more "professional" version on Murmur.
- original cassette release
- Eponymous version: the video title implies this is the Hib-Tone single, but is actually the version from Eponymous which (according to notes on the above YouTube post) was actually Easter's proposed remix for the single -- which everyone liked except Hibbert (owner of Hib-Tone), who pulled rank and used his mix for the single.
This price sheet would seem to confirm that Easter did in fact have a Quantum 20-input console, although there's no way to tell if it was the same model number much less the same exact unit.
Status
This is currently sitting on one end, off the floor, in the Hypertwin Basement, because there's absolutely no way I have room to set it up anywhere.