Raindirk

Cyril Jones founded Raindirk in 1973 and built custom mixing consoles entirely by hand, one at a time, to the precise specification of the studios and engineers who commissioned them. He had no marketing department, no advertising, and no profile outside a small circle of serious recording engineers — and he didn't need one.

The Raindirk Series 3 installed at Olympic Studios in Barnes, West London became arguably the most-recorded-on console in British rock history. In the decade it sat at the heart of Olympic, an almost implausible roster of major artists worked with it — often without knowing, or particularly caring, what brand of desk was in the room.

Raindirk's obscurity is entirely disproportionate to its influence. The Series 3 was considered by Olympic's engineers to be as musically satisfying as any Neve they had used, and the Concorde — one of the first British in-line consoles — was owned personally by Pete Townshend of The Who. Deep Purple had originally commissioned Jones' work for De Lane Lea Studios, and the lineage ran directly from there.