The SSL 9000J in Quincy

Twenty-eight Grammys, fifty years of hits, and a home studio that tells the whole story through its equipment.

The Scene

Rashida Jones and Alan Hicks's 2018 documentary Quincy does something rare: it shows a living legend's workspace in unguarded detail. Quincy Jones — producer of Thriller, arranger for Frank Sinatra, composer of dozens of film scores — sits in his home studio surrounded by the accumulated technology of a career that spans from 1950s jazz to 2010s hip-hop.

The studio is dominated by a Solid State Logic 9000J console, one of SSL's flagship large-format desks, with its distinctive black faders and orange channel buttons stretching across the room. Racks of Universal Audio 1176 compressors and Teletronix LA-2A tube limiters line the walls alongside Genelec monitors and decades' worth of outboard processing. Gold and platinum records cover every remaining surface.

The documentary also incorporates archival footage from the Thriller sessions at Westlake Recording Studios, where the equipment tells a different chapter of the same story: Studer A800 24-track tape machines, analog consoles, and the engineering infrastructure that made the best-selling album of all time possible.

The Gear

The SSL 9000J is Solid State Logic's premier analog recording console, introduced in the late 1990s as the successor to the legendary SSL 4000 and 6000 series. It features a fully analog signal path with digital recall, allowing engineers to save and restore every parameter on the console — a breakthrough that combined the warmth of analog with the convenience of digital workflow. The 9000J was the console of choice for major studios worldwide through the 2000s.

Jones's outboard collection represents the greatest hits of studio dynamics processing. The Universal Audio 1176 (introduced 1967) is the most widely used compressor in recording history — fast, aggressive, and capable of adding harmonic character that engineers describe as "making things sound like a record." The Teletronix LA-2A (1962) is its complement: a smooth, optical compressor that handles vocals and bass with an effortless transparency that no plugin has fully replicated.

The archival Thriller footage shows Studer A800 24-track tape machines — the professional standard for multi-track recording through the 1980s. Engineer Bruce Swedien recorded Thriller at 30 ips (inches per second) on the A800, a choice that maximized high-frequency response and dynamic range at the cost of tape consumption. The result was the cleanest, most dynamic analog recording of its era.

The equipment changes, but the ear stays the same. I've been chasing the same sound since 1956 — I just have better tools now.— Quincy Jones (paraphrased from interviews)

Why It Matters

Jones's career is effectively a timeline of recording technology. He started arranging in the era of mono tape and tube consoles, moved through the transistor revolution of the 1970s, produced the defining digital-era album (Thriller) on analog equipment, and now works in a studio that bridges analog and digital. His gear collection isn't just impressive — it's historical.

On the collector market, the Universal Audio 1176 is one of the most actively traded pieces of vintage studio equipment, with original "Rev A" blackface units commanding $5,000–$8,000 and later revisions selling for $2,500–$4,500. The LA-2A is even more valuable: original Teletronix units sell for $6,000–$10,000+. Universal Audio's modern reissues of both units offer the same circuits at lower prices.

For home studio users, Universal Audio's plugin versions of the 1176 and LA-2A are industry standards, and their hardware reissue line (the UA 1176LN and LA-2A) brings the authentic experience to project studios. The affiliate ladder here is strong: from $50 plugins to $3,500 hardware reissues to $8,000 vintage originals.

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