The second-longest-running recording studio in New York City after Electric Lady, EastSide Sound has installed one of the first Harrison 32Classic analogue mixing consoles anywhere in the world. Additionally, EastSide has integrated two Solid State Logic controllers, a UF1 DAW control centre and a UF8 eight-fader DAW controller, which sit on the 32Classic’s deep front bolster. The UF1 provides transport control of Pro Tools, Andres Pollak says.

The studio, established on Manhattan’s Lower East Side by Lou Holtzman in 1972, featured a Harrison SeriesTenB for more than three decades and has hosted the likes of John Zorn, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, John Lurie, Les Paul and the late producer Hal Willner.

The longstanding relationship with Harrison Audio includes Holtzman’s participation in the development of the Series12 console, and was a factor in the decision to purchase the new 32Classic.

According to producer, engineer and musician Andres Pollak – who acquired ownership of EastSide Sound in late 2022 – Holtzman continues to work at the facility. ‘Harrison has been a very important part of the studio,’ he agrees. ‘This console has an inline architecture that is based around the modern type of work we all do now. Some of the other consoles we were considering didn’t have that option.’

Prior to purchase, Pollak visited the Harrison factory in Nashville to test drive the 32Classic. ‘We have some of the mic preamps at EastSide, so I know that they are really good but I had never worked with the EQ before.’

The four-band parametric EQ of the new 32Classic builds on the design of Harrison’s classic 32C console of the 1970s. ‘We brought some tracks with us, and I tried to push the EQ very hard to see when it was going to crack. It never did, and it sounded smooth and very musical.’

‘We don’t want to colour the pure sound that’s coming from the microphone unnecessarily,’ he continues. ‘We don’t want it to sound thin, but we don’t want to have excessive colour, because you can always add colour. So, thinking about that, I was very pleased with how the console sounded.’

The Harrison 32Classic features integrated onboard professional grade A/D and D/A converters, along with a Dante interface to connect over a single ethernet cable to the DAW. Pressing the InLine button on any input module selects the associated Dante input to that channel’s monitor path.

‘It surprises me that many people are going into Pro Tools but they’re only monitoring the 2-bus,’ Pollak says. ‘We don’t work like that. We have all the tracks laid out. Then you can give the client a nice mix to take home to listen to later or use. It can make stems very fast, so we can also give them stems. We have a lot of outboard here and, if I were a client, I certainly would want to have the pure tracks and also have some stems going through a Shadow Hills or Rupert Neve Designs compressor.’

‘The thing about Dante is that you can integrate many things,’ says son Nicolas “Nico” Pollak, who is also an engineer and musician. ‘For instance, we do videos at the studio and we could use Dante to clock all the sources. That avoids a tremendous amount of work you otherwise would have to manually do some other way. That’s a game changer for the future.’

The Dante network can also be used to introduce a 12-wide (7.1.4) Atmos feed into the console’s monitor section. ‘We want the meat and potatoes of analogue for tracking, because it’s really the main thing we do, but we also want to expand our mixing capabilities,’ he says.

With the 32Classic now installed, Pollak Sr is working to advance a project to create a hub for New York’s community of Latin American musicians at EastSide Sound. ‘I’m working with some local New York Chilean artists right now,’ he says. ‘I’m half Israeli and we also have a very close connection with the Israeli musicians in New York. Nico and I are both musicians; we speak Spanish, Hebrew and English and we love sound and music. We’re not just some gear nuts – having this studio is a cultural project.’