MCI JH-542B
A big-frame MCI recording console that changed hands for $25,000 in 1985 and $17,000 by 1990. The classifieds tell the story better than any brochure.
Overview
Almost everything the Archive can confirm about the MCI JH-542B comes from the used market. That fits a board that spent its working life in professional rooms and then moved through them as secondhand iron. The most repeated description in period listings is a console with 28 I/O modules and automated plasma meters. The phrase shows up again and again in the classified columns of the mid-1980s trade press, attached to a specific seller and a specific asking price.
The clearest snapshot is a Mix Magazine (August 1985, p.153) classified offering an "MCI JH-542B Console with 28 i/o modules, automated plasma meters" for $25,000 or best offer. The same ad copy appears in the September 1985 issue too - a seller in New York, reachable at a 212 number, calling the board a "sacrifice" at that figure. A console being sacrificed at $25,000 in 1985 was a serious piece of professional gear being moved, not a bargain-bin curiosity.
Five years later the price is lower. A Blevins Audio Exchange listing in Recording-Engineer (December 1990, p.113) carries an "MCI JH-542B-32 VU" at $17,000, flagged among items that "MUST" be sold by year's end and offered as a bank guideline rather than a firm price. The same model line shows up at a lower figure and with a different configuration designation. That says the JH-542B came in more than one I/O count, and that the professional console market softened considerably between the mid-1980s and 1990.
The Archive has no documented production year, no original list price, no circuit topology, no channel-strip detail, and no independent bench review in the sources available. The console is known through its marketplace footprint - who was selling one, how many modules it carried, what metering it used, and what it fetched - rather than through a spec sheet. Collectors chasing a JH-542B today are working from the same classified columns the Archive has. The module count and the plasma-meter automation are the details that identify a machine.
The "automated plasma meters" descriptor is the most distinguishing feature in the record. Plasma metering was a visible, characteristic part of how these large-format MCI desks presented themselves to an engineer, and listings lean on it as a selling point. The "automated" qualifier suggests the board carried some form of automation, though the sources do not specify which system, how many channels it covered, or how it was implemented. Owners and sellers describe the automation as a feature. The Archive has no documentation of its depth or capability.
The 28-I/O figure is the other anchor. A 28-input board was a mid-to-large professional frame in its day, enough to track a full band with room for returns and effects. A later listing designates a "JH-542B-32," implying a 32-input variant existed alongside the 28-module version. Whether those were factory options or simply different frames sold under the same model banner is not documented in the available sources.
eBay Listings
As an eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support our independent vintage technology research.