1604

API's first production large-format console — 16 channels, 4 buses, built entirely from 312 preamp modules, 550A EQs, and 525 compressors housed in the modular 500 Series frames Walker had invented. Fewer than 100 were built. The first commercial unit was shown at the AES convention in autumn 1969 and sold to Sound Ideas. A custom example commissioned by Chet Atkins (ordered 1968–69, completed 1969–70) was installed in Studio D — a mix and overdub room in the Studio B building at RCA's Nashville campus — where the Nashville Sound era continued under Atkins' direction. That console later moved to Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in 2016, where it remains on display. A 1972 example with modules traced to both Sunset Sound (Los Angeles) and Record Plant NYC documents the console's presence at the centre of early 1970s American recording.