Main monitors were huge Tannoys mounted in 26mm blockboard which was the front of a brick housing of about 2 cu metres.
I put my control room into service with a pair of Tannoy Gold Belveders. I had an octagonal speaker loft with 8 trapezoidal positions tapering inwards at the top. When I did the design I did not know which direction sound reproduction was going to take. Remember quad? The center position was filled with 3/4" ply covered with a decorative cloth. The Tannoys were in the adjoining spaces. The spaces on the sides were finished identically to the center space. The three rear spaces were covered only with cloth, with the loft stuffed with fiberglass. The mixer sat 7 feet on axis from the center of each Tannoy. I love the point source clarity of the Tannoy dual concentric design. I could achieve levels well in excess of 110 dBSpl at the mix position. With a continuous baffle between and beside each speaker the snare and mid-range instruments sounded real and solid. A back reflection and cancellation pattern can make them sound hollow.
The console sat on a one foot high platform covered with 3/4" ply over 2x12s I had a hole pattern drilled in the ply to create a highly adsorptive Helmholz resonator centered on about 125Hz, but we stuffed the spaces between the joists with fiberglass to broaden the Q, covered it with a thick jute pad and plush carpet. The result was an almost totally absorptive floor. I made the floor disappear, acoustically.
The studio owner had an excellent aesthetic sense and we collaborated on the finish of the room. He bought a ton of solid 3/4" walnut and we finished everything below the loft with 2" rounded walnut slats on about 2" centers, sculpted all around the room, including doors over storage spaces. Any parallel surfaces were close to 100% absorptive. The back of the slats was covered with charcoal colored felt with fiberglass behind.
The console was articulated, with the output assigns and Vu Meters above the hinge and with the Echo Return and Monitor sections seperate sections that could be either arranged in a line that continued the line of the input section or could be swung around up to 60 degrees. The rearmost section of each section could be raised up about 45 degrees for mixing. In that configuration, the mixer could reach and adjust every control without moving the center of his/her head except in pivot.
The chief problem was the fact that I lost the argument over how wide to make the room. Too late he realized that I had been right. It was quite a ride. At one point he had over $80,000.00 cash money invested in the console and it was all in bags and boxes of parts in my second bedroom "office" in West L.A. One of the more dramatic moments was when I inserted one of 72 10 position Switchcraft push button switch assemblies into one of 72 ~8"x10" double sided printed circuit boards with plated through holes and it fit. There was one such assembly on each side of each of 36 output assign modules.
As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
