Power Station NE was fortunate to have Ed Evans involved in the 2017 expansion. Evans is one of the key original contributors behind New York's Power Station, the iconic studio PSNE is modeled after. As the Chief Electrical Engineer at the original Power Station, Evans brought details and info to PSNE not only from his stint at PSNY but from 35 years of experience and dozens of other studio designs and installations. The Neve installation incorporated a number of updates and modifications to the vintage 8068 that were engineered by Evans.

"I am quite careful to not change the character of the original 8068, since it is one of my favorite designs by Neve. My goal was to add some needed functionality to make it more compatible with the way people work today," Evans explains.

Some mods to the console include the addition of Switchable Phantom Power, Discrete Buss outputs, Dim function to the monitors, EMT remote control, and wireless Talk Back integration. These, as well as ideas that were carried out by Vintage King, like side car Buss inject, multiple external monitor and speaker select, and expanded multitrack metering, make this a dream console.

“Since I knew the original Power Station pretty well, I was asked to spearhead the wiring upgrade” Evans continues. “It made perfect sense, since the console & patch bay were a complete rewire anyway. Dave Berliner from Redco was invaluable in seeing this through.

“We modernized and added wiring to augment existing Mic panel paralleled signals with direct wiring, and expanded the standard stereo powered headphone system and Private Q to include Hear Technologies 16 channel system.

“Tie lines were both simplified and expanded for line level, guitar speaker level, and CAT6, future proofing for things like Dante. Now all are patchable to send pretty much any signal anywhere.”

To finish the vintage vibe, the Big Red speakers were updated and reinstalled.

“The originals were great for their time,” Evans continues, “though some would argue that they were a bit lo-fi. I was able to modernize and update these venerable units. I don’t want to give it all away, but they are bi-amped. The full details are as much a function of the installation and tuning process as the gear, so Power Station NE is preserving some secrets.

“As they say, the job isn’t over ‘till the paperwork is done, and I am compiling a complete service manual for the console, as well as an Ops manual for the studio itself, as the tie lines, and upgraded systems might be intimidating to an unfamiliar engineer. He’ll have something to read on the plane!”