Type 69

The Type 69 was the console that defined the sound of early British hard rock. When Jimmy Page was at Olympic tracking Led Zeppelin's first three albums, when Jimi Hendrix was cutting Electric Ladyland there, the Helios Type 69 was the instrument shaping what those microphones and instruments became on tape. The same console architecture — installed in the Rolling Stones Mobile truck — later captured Led Zeppelin IV at Headley Grange, and Exile on Main St. in France. No other console of its era occupies so many rooms in the history of rock simultaneously. Technically "Type 69" refers to the channel-strip modules — transformer-coupled discrete circuitry with the distinctive coloured knob set — which would carry on into every Helios console that followed (the mid-70s Model 1167 stock unit, the Custom Console builds, and the Broadcasting Helios installations). What this entry covers is the original Type 69 console era at Olympic / Island / Apple / Stones-Mobile.