Bob Joneson
New member
Thought I'd start a thread on this restoration project. I just completed a restoration and commission of an Auditronics 36 channel 700 series console for a friend's studio this year, and really fell in love with these things. I've been keeping an eye out over the last few months for a "candidate", and this board fit the bill to a T.
This a mid-70s Auditronics "Grandson". Auditronics bought Spectrasonics I believe in the early 70s, and their first console was based on parts from a Spectrasonics board that listed for $36k, and was called "Son of a 36 Grand". This board, the 110 was the next set of consoles they came out with known as the "Grandson".
The vast majority of these boards were 4 bus consoles, and generally short loaded with 8-16 channels.
As an 8 bus board, fully loaded with 24 channels, and 16 channel monitoring facilities, this would have been the "Cadillac" of grandsons, and I've only seen one other example in existence. That, and it includes the optional patchbay as well,
Aside from being built like a tank, with fantastic components and fully modular, the inductor based EQs in each channel and Jensen iron coupling all ins and outs make this thing a sonic wet dream as well.
I purchased the console from a husband and wife in a tiny town in Southeast Missouri, who had it sitting in there house for nearly a decade unused. They had hopes of building a studio around it, but never got around to making it happen. Previously it had been owned by an API tech in the Phoenix area who had several of these boards, and allegedly this was his "personal" console.
For it's age, it's in pretty marvelous condition. There's definitely a lot of restorative work to be done, but it's clearly been cared for.
I've got it back at my place, and have begun the process of unloading the frame to give this thing a thorough cleaning. I immediately noticed something peculiar about the input modules. All of the jensen input trannys had been replaced. 8 of them with API AP2164s, another 8 with Melcor 400-16s, and the remaining with an array of Beyerdynamic. The stock jensen are still found on all of the outputs. I'm such a fan of the Jensen iron, I'm not sure how I feel about this yet, but it does tell me someone spent a lot of hours tweaking on this board.
Much work ahead!
This a mid-70s Auditronics "Grandson". Auditronics bought Spectrasonics I believe in the early 70s, and their first console was based on parts from a Spectrasonics board that listed for $36k, and was called "Son of a 36 Grand". This board, the 110 was the next set of consoles they came out with known as the "Grandson".
The vast majority of these boards were 4 bus consoles, and generally short loaded with 8-16 channels.
As an 8 bus board, fully loaded with 24 channels, and 16 channel monitoring facilities, this would have been the "Cadillac" of grandsons, and I've only seen one other example in existence. That, and it includes the optional patchbay as well,
Aside from being built like a tank, with fantastic components and fully modular, the inductor based EQs in each channel and Jensen iron coupling all ins and outs make this thing a sonic wet dream as well.
I purchased the console from a husband and wife in a tiny town in Southeast Missouri, who had it sitting in there house for nearly a decade unused. They had hopes of building a studio around it, but never got around to making it happen. Previously it had been owned by an API tech in the Phoenix area who had several of these boards, and allegedly this was his "personal" console.
For it's age, it's in pretty marvelous condition. There's definitely a lot of restorative work to be done, but it's clearly been cared for.
I've got it back at my place, and have begun the process of unloading the frame to give this thing a thorough cleaning. I immediately noticed something peculiar about the input modules. All of the jensen input trannys had been replaced. 8 of them with API AP2164s, another 8 with Melcor 400-16s, and the remaining with an array of Beyerdynamic. The stock jensen are still found on all of the outputs. I'm such a fan of the Jensen iron, I'm not sure how I feel about this yet, but it does tell me someone spent a lot of hours tweaking on this board.
Much work ahead!