Los Angeles, CA (October 13, 2023)—While he’s known as the keyboardist of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, as well as for his work with David Bowie, Stevie Nicks, Bob Seger, Jackson Browne, Meat Loaf and others, Roy Bittan also has another rock history claim to fame: He owned the legendary L.A. studio Crystal Sound. Over the years, more than 100 Platinum and Gold records came out of the facility, including pivotal records by Stevie Wonder, but while the studio is no longer here, Bittan still owns its vintage recording gear—and now he’s auctioning it off.
Music industry marketplace ANALOGr is supervising the online auction for Bittan; up for sale is the Crystal console’s modules; Telefunken, Neumann, Sony, Sennheiser, and RCA microphones; Teletronix LA 2As; EMT and dbx Compressors; Custom Crystal EQ and Mic Pre-Amps; and keyboards and loudspeakers.
Wonder’s Grammy Award-winning producer/engineer Bob Margouleff explains, “With that console at Crystal, I worked on hit albums by Steve Wonder, Weather Report and countless others. It sounded wonderful and to this day, I still haven’t heard anything better. The passive gain structure is very unusual and the sound is unique in its clarity and transient response. I love those big knobs, so easy to read. The studio’s designer/builder Andrew Berliner had a brilliant mind.”
Bittan elaborates on the legendary Crystal console, “It was created by a rather eccentric audio engineer who built the studio that I bought. When I was working on Human Touch and Lucky Town with Bruce, we rehearsed in those incredible rooms. Later on, when I was continually on the road with Bruce, I dismantled it. It was time to move on, but I kept all the gear, including all those mic pres and the EQs, along with those legendary API op-amps.”
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Bittan had the console modules racked up and has been using them ever since, he said: “Every time I record, we go, ‘Wow, these are just fantastic.’ They were hand gold-soldered and incredibly well built. When we were taking it apart, I was like, ‘This is insane.’ These particular EQs and mic-pres were used on over 100 Gold and Platinum records. These were the ones; these are not made from schematics, they were in the original console that I dismantled and rack-mounted to be able to use at home or to move around. I also kept a bunch of vintage outboard gear and mics from the studio. These blue cases were actually the original ones we had for outboard gear at Crystal. The way they all work together just creates a fantastic sound.”
