Marking the 40th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on June 1, EastWest announced that its Fab Four Virtual Instruments ($395) is shipping. The result of more than a year of research, equipment acquisition and recording, Fab Four Virtual Instruments—which is unaffiliated with nor endorsed by Apple Corps. Ltd.— presents a faithfully executed and comprehensive collection featuring the same kinds of instruments and recording equipment used by The Beatles.
Sessions for this library took place in EastWest’s Studio 3. Engineer Ken Scott, who worked on Beatles albums including A Hard Days Night, Help, Rubber Soul, Magical Mystery Tour, and The Beatles (aka The White Album), engineered the recordings. Guitarist Laurence Juber and drummer Denny Seiwell, both of whom were members of Paul McCartney and Wings, played the same kind of instruments as those used by The Beatles.
Neumann, AKG, Cole and STC microphones like those used at EMI/Abbey Road Studios were used to capture the sounds, while vintage amplifiers— including a 1963 Voc AC30, 1967 Fender Showman and DeLuxe, 1963 Fender Bassman and Tan Showman, and 1966 Vox Defiant, 730 and 7120—were used with the electric guitars.
Recording desks and preamps, including a very rare EMI REDD tube desk, EMI TG12345 desk, and EMI REDD47 preamps, were used to record all instruments through Fairchild limiters and rare EMI RS124 modified Altec compressors, which were used for dynamics control. As with many Beatles’ recording sessions, a Studer J-37 4-track tube-based tape machine was used to record everything.
Fab Four Virtual Instruments also includes a software version of ADT (Artificial Double Tracking) with built-in tape simulator, created and programmed specially for this project. All instruments are newly recorded multi-samples for this collection; no sounds came from any Beatles recordings.
For more information, visit www.soundsonline.com.
