Hugh Padgham accidentally created gated reverb in 1979 using an SSL 4000 B talkback mic, compressor, and noise gate while Phil Collins played drums.
Key Takeaways
The accident happened at Townhouse Studio 2: a heavily compressed talkback mic picked up Collins’s kit; Padgham routed it through a noise gate, cutting the room decay abruptly.
Peter Gabriel exploited the sound on his third album’s opening track “Intruder” rather than fixing it.
Collins then popularized it globally on “In the Air Tonight” (1981), tracked in Townhouse’s literal stone-walled room for natural long decay.
The AMS RMX16’s “Nonlinear” reverb preset (1981) made gated reverb reproducible without a stone room; Prince fed a Linn LM-1 into it for his 1982-1987 records.
The sound returned in the 2010s on Lorde’s Melodrama, Taylor Swift’s 1989, and Carly Rae Jepsen releases; today it is available as sample packs.
