Our Last Fairlight

January 4th, 2013 § Comments Off on Our Last Fairlight § permalink

Sometime in early 1987 Dee and I were well and truly not enamored with the Fairlight CMI III.

John Jones and Dee Long. Studio 5 at AIR Studios Oxford Street London, UK

It made us £30,000 pounds more in debt when we moved to AIR Studios, and that was after trading in our Series IIX.

And by that time we were mostly using Akai S900’s with our Apple Mac SE and Performer software, not the Fairlight. The stereo was out of phase on the Fairlight! Can you say £60 THOUSAND POUNDS!

Malcolm Atkin and John Burgess and Sir George Martin wanted the Series III in AIR Studios. It was a great selling point. We complied.

Gerry Stellard and Dee Long - Studio 5 - AIR Studios

By the time we were buying our third S900, Akai were at our door offering their latest design, the S1000, for the two of us to create a sample library for. And that’s when we knew we had to give up the Fairlight for good!

All we really wanted was our Series IIX back! Please!

So we sold our Series III to JJ Jeczalik of the Art of Noise. I wonder if he still has it?