SSL SL-4056
A 48-channel SL 4000 E Series desk that shows up in the trade press as a room credit, a broker's asking price, and not much else.
Overview
The SL-4056 is one of the frame configurations of Solid State Logic's SL 4000 E Series, a 48-channel desk. It is a large-format recording console built around SSL's Series Computer and Total Recall automation. Owners and studio directories write the designation loosely - "SL 4056 E Series," "SL 4056 G Series," "SL 4056 Series," even "SL 4056 Gl Series" in one trade listing. A buyer chasing one has to read the fine print on which computer and which channel strips are actually installed.
The paper trail is mostly room credits. Recording-Engineer (August 1988, p.36) ran a Nashville studio directory that listed The Castle with an SL 4056 G Series, 48 channels, and an SSL G Series Studio Computer with Total Recall. It listed Sound Stage with a pair of SL 4056 E Series desks - one at 48 channels, one at 46 - both with the SSL Studio Computer and Total Recall.
A later trade item rounds up SSL console contracts. Studio Marcadet in Paris, Blue Canyon in Los Angeles, Yamaha Studios in Tokyo, and Le Studio in Montreal all took SL 4056 G Series desks. Master Mix Studio in Rio de Janeiro took an SL 4056 Series board. The same announcement lists Wisseloord Studios in Hilversum with an SL 4072 G Series and Mosfilm in Moscow with two SL 4040 G Series. That puts the 4056 in the middle of the 4000-family lineup, bigger than the 4040 and 4048, smaller than the 4072.
The desk also turns up in EQ as installed furniture. Fantasy Studios in Berkeley is described running an SSL SL 4056 with G Series Total Recall alongside two Neve 8108S consoles with Necam automation and a Trident Series 80. The Church, Dave Stewart's London room, is described with an SL 4056 G Series in Studio A. A later feature on a Stewart live compilation notes the project was mixed entirely on that desk by Olle Romo over about two months. The surviving documentation doesn't settle whether the E and G labels are the same frame under different revisions or a family of related consoles. They appear side by side in the secondary market, which suggests the two were sold concurrently rather than as a clean generational break, at least as far as brokers were concerned.
A 1990 broker listing priced an SL 4056E fitted with 48 channels, VU meters, and no Total Recall at £100,000, but how much it weighed and what its channel strips actually contained — none of that is documented here. The 4056 exists in the record as a model number, a handful of studio credits, and a broker's asking price. For a console this size, that's its own kind of statement about how the pro audio trade documented its own history.
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