The Beatles started using a new SS mixing console from the Abbey Road. Here is about in from the book of Geoff Emerick "Here, There and Everywhere":
"As it happened, the first week of the Abbey Road sessions were quite peaceful without John and Yoko’s presence, though a bit tentative because of equipment problems. The new mixing console had a lot more bells and whistles on it than the old one, and it gave me the opportunity to put into practice many of the ideas I’d had in mind for years, but it just didn’t sound the same, mainly because it utilized transistor circuitry instead of tubes. George Harrison had a lot of trouble coming to terms with the fact that there was less body in the guitar sound, and Ringo was rightfully concerned about the drum sound-he was playing as hard as ever, but you didn’t hear the same impact. He and I actually had a long conversation about that, which was quite unusual, but after a good deal of experimentation I came to the conclusion that we simply couldn’t match the old Beatles sound we had become used to; we simply had to accept that this was the best we could achieve with the new equipment. Personally, I preferred the punchier sound we had gotten out of the old tube console and four-track recorder; every- thing was sounding mellower now. It seemed like a steр backward, but there was nothing we could do-there was an album to record and we simply had to get on with it."
