Dr. Dre Updates His Studio: Nuthin’ But an SSL Thang

Los Angeles, CA (July 8, 2025)—Dr. Dre, a lifelong user and owner of SSL consoles, has upgraded the main room at his Aftermath Entertainment studio facility in Los Angeles to a 96-input Solid State Logic Duality Fuse.

Dr. Dre, whose influential debut solo album, 1992’s The Chronic, introduced G-Funk to the world and defined West Coast hip-hop, has owned or worked on every model of large format SSL analogue music console since the E series. “The first love of my life was the SSL board,” comments the multi-Grammy Award-winning hip-hop artist, producer, record executive and entrepreneur.

Aftermath Entertainment’s head engineer, Quentin “Q” Gilkey, has worked with not only Dr. Dre but also many of the artists on the label’s roster, including Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Anderson.Paak, The Game and Earl Sweatshirt. He began working with Dr. Dre 15 years ago, becoming Aftermath’s lead engineer in 2014. The Duality Fuse, it turns out, fits squarely into the facility’s everyday workflows.

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Gilkey says, “Because Dre mixes utilizing the whole board—in our case, all 96 channels—we require a method that allows us to recall at a fast pace, and Total Recall offers this.” The fact that multiple people can work simultaneously to recall the console’s previous settings was a major influence on Dre’s decision to purchase a Duality Fuse, he says.

Secondly, he continues, older analog consoles inevitably require maintenance, resulting in downtime while issues are resolved. “With the Duality Fuse, we knew we were not going to have to deal with that issue. In today’s studio, things move much faster than when tape was involved. Now, we’re able to retain that analog sound—without the analog maintenance that once stood in our way—and remain creative.”

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​However, the biggest factor for choosing the desk, says Gilkey, was, of course, the sound: “There is nothing like the depth you get from mixing on an SSL. Duality Fuse has somehow taken that to a new level, and we hear it. That is the biggest difference to my ears—when everything is spread out and mixed on the Duality Fuse, you can really accentuate and elevate the height, width and depth, compared to when mixing in-the-box.”