George Chkiantz

Who is George Chkiantz?

George Chkiantz is a recording engineer based in London who has been responsible for the engineering on a number of well-known albums, many of which are considered classics, owing in part to the high quality of the recordings.

Chkiantz was the recording engineer of the Small Faces album Small Faces, recorded for Andrew Loog Oldham's Immediate. Chkiantz was a staff engineer at Olympic Studios at the same time that the Jimi Hendrix Experience was recording Axis: Bold As Love. During the session with the Small Faces, Chkiantz engineered the song "Green Circles", which represented the first use of mono phasing on a pop record; he subsequently perfected the technique on their landmark 1967 single "Itchycoo Park".

Upon hearing the result, Jimi Hendrix and his engineer, Eddie Kramer applied Chkiantz's concepts, creating stereo phasing on the songs Bold As Love and Little Wing. Deciding to utilize Chkiantz' abilities more fully, he was hired by Hendrix for Axis, for which he customised the studio's equipment to provide a wide range of new sounds.