The Legendary Helios Olympic EQ.

  In the 60’s a gentleman named Dick Swettenham worked as an Service/Design Engineer for Abbey Road Studios and in the late 60’s he moved to work for the Legendary Olympic Studios, where he controlled Design and Maintenance.

  He approached the owners of Olympic stating, that if they allowed him to order the necessary parts he could build a desk that was far more musical than anything built at that time. They gave him the OK. When the desk was completed and commissioned most of the great legendary musicians which included the famous “Jimi Hendrix Masters” started to book time at Olympic.

 Most British and some American recording artists were now using Olympic Studios so Chris Blackwell of Island Records decided that if he built a studio around a Helios console he would save money and also have his own studio busy with artists wanting to record on the Helios. But he was a client of Olympic, it would be impossible for him to request that Dick Swettenham of Olympic to build a console that would be in direct competition with Olympic, so he put up the finance for Dick to go into business. And so Helios was born, seven console’s were built for Island which included Mobile Studios. 

 At this time Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” was selling well for Virgin Records, so Richard Branson had Helios build three console’s, one for The Manor Studios, one for the Manor Mobile, and one for Townhouse Studios. The Who built "Ramport Studios" around the Helios, The Rolling Stones built the legendary “Stones Mobile”, 10cc built "Strawberry Studios" and so the story goes on, even the Beatles built “Apple Studios” around a green Helios console, The Helios became known as the Musicians Choice of Recording Consoles.

 Here is only part of the huge list of other famous owners:

Apple Records x 2, Basing Street Studios x 2, Berwick Street Studios, Dawnbreaker Studios (Los Angeles), John Entwistle, Funky Features (San Francisco), Hansa Tonstudio (Berlin, W. Germany), LaMaison Rouge, Alvin Lee, Harry J. Records (Kingston Jamaica), Island Records, Ronnie Lane's Mobile Studio, Paul McCartney, Magritte Studios, The Manor x 2, Steve Marriott, Steve Miller (San Francisco), Musicland (Munich, W. Germany), Olympic Sound Studios, Ramport Studios, Rolling Stones Mobile, Eric Clapton, Leon Russell (Los Angeles), 10cc Strawberry Studios, Telemetropole (Montreal,