Nigel Gray was a doctor, whose hobby was music, and he built his studio (Surrey Sound Studios) using mostly secondhand gear. Starting with a 16 track Alice desk and an Ampex MM1000 16 track tape machine, a young band with no money came in over a 6-month period to lay down tracks for what would become their debut album, Outlanods D’Amour, featuring the hits single Roxanne. Yes, this studio’s one real claim to fame is that it recorded the first three Police albums, all of which were done in a village hall converted to a studio.
Soon after the release of Outlandos D’Amour, Nigel Gray upgraded Surrey Sound Studios to a brand-new MCI JH-400B console and an MCI 24 track recorder. None of this was funded by the success of Outlandos D’Amour as he only ever received £2,000 for the recording.
Effects at Surrey Sound Studios were pretty light on too, although he did have an EMT 140 plate reverb, and a few other compressors, a DBX 162 and possibly others, and an AMS delay. He may have been a doctor by trade, but clearly Nigel Gray had skills in recording and producing, and along with his modest recording studio managed to output three truly great albums.
