Soundcraft 6000 Recording Console
Photo by Grant White
BIG EGO Demo
Arriving on the scene in 1988, the British-made Soundcraft 6000 recording console was released into direct competition with legendary designs from Neve, API, Trident, AMEC/TAC, and Neotek. Everything at BIG EGO runs through this console.
Configurations ranged from 16- to 56-channels, each sporting four band EQ with sweepable mid-range, line & mic pre-amplification, phantom power, hi-pass filter, phase switch, six auxiliary sends, mute, solo in place, and signal routing matrix. In the late 80’s a fully outfitted Soundcraft 6000 could cost upwards of $40,000 USD. Today, however, Soundcraft is known mainly for their budget live sound mixers while their incredible console history has been researched by only a small handful of studio owners and engineers (Evergroove Studio in Denver, Colorado, for example).
As KUSH Audio designer/founder, Gregory Scott remarked:
“It has actual headroom, you gotta peak at +14 before it even begins to break a sweat on the bass transients. It’s got zero crosstalk, what goes left stays left. The EQ is broad, musical… The damn thing sounds big and analog… I still miss the long throw P&G (Penny & Giles) faders though, they felt great and tracked beautifully.”
Available in 16- or 24-buss formats, the Soundcraft 6000 is a split design console, which offers a number of unique routing & bussing functions. Personally, I’ve set up the console with even channels panned hard left and odd channels panned hard right. This way, each of the individual sixteen channels receives an accurate readout on the LED meter bridge. Final pan positions are handled on the busses or tape returns. This is a little more confusing in concept than practice and you can get a better idea of how it works by watching the board in action. Most tracking at BIG EGO is done using API or Empirical Labs preamps but it’s good to know I have an extra 16 pres if needed.