What piece of equipment do you have to show us today?
My TOFT Audio 32–channel mixing console.
How did you come across this particular item?
I have been lucky enough to work on a few TOFT consoles. My production mentor Tim Powles has one at his studio, Spacejunk, in Putney, so I cut my engineering teeth on his one and have wanted one ever since. By some good fortune one popped up on the Facebook classifieds in Brisbane and 2000 kilometres and a few ‘stop, revive and survives’ later I had my very own TOFT.
What is that you like so much about it?
The EQ section on this console is definitely my favourite feature. I love the way it works on drums, especially overheads. The right boost in the right frequency range can take even a flat and lifeless sound and turn it into something creamy and full of character. Of course just driving the inputs, the mic preamps on this console can take a fair bit of signal so it is fun to just see how distorted and gnarly you can make things sound.
How do you use it, and how has it shaped the way you write music?
Well, every sound that goes onto a Sun Sap record will have passed through this console at least once (twice if we’re lucky). Playing in a six piece band there’s always a lot going on when we get together for a recording / songwriting session, so having 32 channels means I can easily capture every instrument as it goes down without having to compromise on the amount of microphones used.
Any other interesting points/stories about it?
When I first started using TOFT consoles I began reading up a bit about them and the guy who created them, Malcom Toft, was an engineer back in the 70s and has engineering credits on albums by David Bowie and T-Rex. In many ways for me, music production hit a peak in the 1970’s that hasn’t been surpassed since, so getting to work on a board made by someone of that calibre is about as close as I’ll get to those amazing sounds.
Tell us a little bit about what you have coming up?
At the moment we’re piecing together our first full length album in between gigging up and down the NSW coast and planning an east coast tour of Australia in support of our latest single ‘Hanging Hearts’. We’ll reveal all dates soon.
