Neve VRP-60
A large-format console built to switch between scoring stages and post suites at the push of a button, and booked around the clock because of it.
Overview
Studios bought the VRP-60 when they couldn't afford to be a music room *or* a post house - they had to be both. The desk's big trick, repeated across the period trade press, is an internal switching matrix. It lets an engineer jump between film, video, and multitrack recording modes without repatching. A facility watching the door swing between a tracking date and a network promo session needed exactly that.
The console's reputation rests on that matrix and on its automation. Neve's own advertising in the pages of Mix billed the VRP as "a true multiformat console, with complete recall, capable of switching from video post operation to music recording - literally at the push of a button," and paired it with Flying Faders, which the company pitched as "the friendliest and most efficient automation system in the business."
The VRP-60 is a 60-input frame. The number in the name is the frame size, and the same console turns up in facility listings as a "VRP 60-input" desk. It shows up doing the mixed work it was sold for. Power Station installed a new Neve VRP 60-input desk in February, as reported in the N.Y. Metro Report column (Mix, May 1992, p.137). Post Logic's Studio B in Hollywood ran a VRP60 booked around the clock for the four major networks, film and home-video projects, and music dates. The ad copy for that room reads like a case study because it essentially is one. The Hit Factory's Broadway room listed a 60-input VRP with Flying Faders alongside a Studer A800 Mk III and a pair of ES 1.11 synchronizers. Martinson Sound in Alhambra ran one with recall and Flying Faders automation.
The documented record does *not* include a tidy spec sheet for the VRP-60. Anyone chasing channel-by-channel EQ topology, mic-preamp design, or bus counts will find the period coverage thin on hard numbers. The trade press wrote about these desks as installations and bookings, not as bench-tested hardware. What survives is a 60-input Neve with recall and Flying Faders that worked in rooms where the next session might be a jingle, a film mix, or a record.
eBay Listings
As an eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support our independent vintage technology research.