A long time engineer and reputed innovator at EMI's Abbey Road studios has died. Mike Batchelor joined the London studio in 1949, and aside from his work on numerous albums there, was especially known for his audio inventions which, according to Music Week, included the universal tone control, the disk de-clicker, the DDD disk defect detector and the TG12345 mixer, all used in EMI studios around the world. He worked at Abbey Road until 1987, when a heart operation required him to take early retirement aged 59.
Paying tribute to the sound engineer, Brian Kehew and Kevin Richards, who have been researching a book about one of the studio's most famous inhabitants, The Beatles, told Music Week: "His name was so common with Abbey Road's revered equipment, that it became one of our quests to know more about him and which pieces he had created - his thinking and approach were obviously far ahead of others in his field. Invariably, when we turned up anything connected to his name, it would be one of those vintage devices that modern studios would kill to have around".
One of Batchelor's Abbey Road colleagues, Ken Townsend, confirmed his constant technical innovation, adding: "Mike Batchelor was [a] pioneer, to whom everyone owes a debt of gratitude for the sheer brilliance of his work particularly in the field of mixing consoles, limiters, compressors, curve benders and a host of similar devices".