David Richardson (sound engineer)
English record producer and sound engineer
David Richardson (born in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, England) is an English music producer, audio engineer and musician. He founded Sky Studios with rock band Jethro Tull, the studio later became leading facilities house, Sound Recording Technology (SRT).
History
Richardson learned piano from the age of four and developed a passion for electronics and sound recording. By his teens, he was already recording top Jazz artists of the day; this included names such as Kathy Stobart and Ian Carr. As a young producer, he had production contracts with major labels like CBS (now Sony Music) and George Martin's Air label, distributed by EMI. Apart from early roots in Jazz and Rock music he also produced Pop records with artists that included Jet Harris and The Tornados, the SRT label was founded as an independent in the early 1970s. Many of Richardson's productions as vinyl pressings are much sought after, such as Grannie, which according to Record Collector is one of the most valuable original pressings of all time.
The original SRT Studios were based in Guildford Street, Luton, where bands such as McGregor's Engine recorded. It was this band, with local guitarist Mick Abrahams, drummer Clive Bunker and bassist Andy Pyle that formed the foundation of Jethro Tull which, with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Ian Anderson, went on to sell over 60 million albums. Andy Pyle was featured on many early SRT recordings and later became a member of Wishbone Ash.
The SRT studios moved from Luton to Shefford, Bedfordshire where facilities included mastering lacquers for vinyl manufacture.
“David Richardson (sound engineer)” enters the record as english record producer and sound engineer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what David, Richardson and sound can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 3, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5239043. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “David Richardson (sound engineer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.