London, U.K. (October 23, 2026)—Jonny “Famous” Williams recently switched to an SSL Live L650 mixing console for the latest tour dates with Rod Stewart, for whom he has been FOH engineer for two and a half years.
Williams, who has also worked with RAYE, Central Cee and Thundercat, has additionally outfitted his racks with SSL’s Super 9000 and Revival 4000 channel strips, the UMD192 digital audio interface and The Bus+ compressor.
Williams first began using SSL mixing consoles about eight years ago, he says, and previously owned two that were installed at his home in the U.K. “When I had the opportunity to switch to SSL, I only really had two choices—either the L550 Plus or the L650, due to the capacity I needed. I went for the L650 because I like its layout.”
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The L650, supplied to the tour by Sound Image, a Clair Global Group company, offers three fader bays across the full width of the console. “I like the three fader banks because I’m very hands-on with the faders, even with a lot of automation involved; the transition from my previous console was also very straightforward,” Williams explains.
“One of the great things about SSL Live, a platform I know inside out, is its flexibility. You can put almost anything, almost anywhere. Every Fader Tile can be configured in the same way, allowing me to scroll through banks and layers to access whatever I need. In the very unlikely event that I lose a fader or even an entire tile, I can still access that path elsewhere on the console. That’s a really cool feature.”
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In his FOH rack, Williams has four SSL Super 9000 SuperAnalogue and three Revival 4000 all-analog channel strips. “I like having physical controls for important things, so all of the Super 9000s are for vocals. I’ve got the Revival 4000s on kick and snare, and on bass. And there’s an SSL The Bus+ compressor on the drum group.” A UMD192 supports multitrack recording and playback and an SSL 18 interfaces with Williams’ SMAART rig.”
“So I’ve got lots of fancy SSL toys in this rack,” he says.