Geoff Tanner, born 16th March 1946, in Watford, Hertfordshire left school in 1962 to pursue a career in Electronics. He worked as an indentured apprentice in the Research and Development Laboratory of Watford Electric & Co. Ltd whilst studying further education and obtaining the City and Guilds of London Institute Full Technological Certificate, with distinctions in the Application of Semi Conductors and Electronic Control Systems. He also took a course at Cambridge University on the Applications of Micro Processors.
After leaving Watford Electric in 1968 he worked for British AeroSpace in their Precision Design Department designing guidance systems and components for the aerospace industry. A further career move in 1970 involved transferring closer to home and working as a design draughtsman for Dymar Electronics, manufacturers of mobile radio telephones.
In October 1971 Geoff moved to Cambridge and joined Rupert Neve & Co. Ltd. in Melbourn, near Royston, Herts., as an Electronic Design Draughtsman. Progress and his thorough understanding of the products manufactured (complex broadcast and recording consoles) led to his promotion to Head of the Electrical Design Drawing Office less than 12 months later.
In an effort to rationalise the design of the complex circuits he produced thirty "Technical Information Sheets" which gave precise design rules to ensure consistent technical specifications from the many different console designs (Over 70% of the audio control consoles were built to custom requirements). The Tech Sheets became a "bible" for other engineers designing and assembling other similar products within the company.
In 1978, Geoff moved up into the Sales Engineering Department of Neve Electronic Laboratories (as it was then renamed) and liased directly with customers to provide design input for the drawing offices. In 1980 a new role was offered as "Special Orders Manager" leading a team of wiring and metal technicians to design and build virtually any custom product that a customer might require. This could be anything from a 36 channel music recording console to a tiny 2 channel tape transfer unit for the Metropolitan Police.
The Special Orders Department was very successful and was expanded to include the Spares Department and the Special Projects Department. The former because of our intimate knowledge of the products manufactured and the latter because other companies were so impressed that they were asking Neve to make products for them, unrelated with audio!
The annual turnover of this relatively small department approached £500,000 and a very high profit margin was maintained. Unfortunately, the company was involved in take overs first by ESE, then Siemens, and the new management were only interested in producing standard products. The profitable custom business was down graded and, as a result, it became very hard to run an independent custom department against the general motivation of the new management. Thus, in 1985 Geoff left Neve Electronics (after fourteen years) and branched out on his own as a freelance engineer.
Geoff independently continued his work with Neve consoles, their upkeep, repair and maintenance. He built monitoring/duplicating consoles for CBS Records in Aylesbury and a similar console for Audio Productions in Croydon. He has flown all over the world fixing consoles including trips to the USA, Japan, Israel, Spain and Ireland. In 1994 he designed and built the huge 56 channel 24 track recording console at Great Linford Manor in Great Linford, Milton Keynes…. That now resides in Steakhouse Recording Studios, in North Hollywood, USA.
Geoff has established a company in the USA (Aurora Audio) to continue to look after these beautiful consoles and to manufacture new products of similar quality to the Neve range that he knows so well.
