Crafting “Europa”: A Custom Centerpiece for Rhoten Studios

At the heart of every great recording studio is the console. It’s the cockpit, the creative hub, and the physical anchor of the room. When California’s Rhoten Studios approached us to design a custom mixing desk to house their Solid State Logic U-Series controllers, we knew we weren’t just building furniture—we were building an experience. Today, we are thrilled to present Europa, a bespoke creation concepted, built, and available exclusively at 2Egress Sound & Design.

The core mission for Europa was the seamless integration of SSL’s powerhouse trio, the UC1, UF1, and UF8. These controllers deserve a home that feels intentional rather than accidental. To achieve this, each controller is meticulously embedded to sit perfectly flush with the desktop surface. We carved a subtle, surrounding detail line around the gear, giving the equipment a dedicated home and creating a striking, premium aesthetic.

The entire desk is designed around a natural, fatigue-free ergonomic workflow, leaving ample and intuitive space for a monitor controller, keyboard, mouse, and a central studio display. To keep the focus entirely on the music, we engineered hidden cable management routes throughout the rear of the desk, keeping display cabling and system wires completely out of sight.

A desk like Europa is built to be touched and worked on for hours at a time, meaning the tactile experience had to match its visual appeal. Every single component of this desk was individually hand-sanded and finished with three coats of premium clear lacquer by the team at 2Egress. By fine-sanding between each and every layer, we achieved an incredibly smooth feel and a rich, satin look that beautifully showcases the natural grain of the wood.

If you’ve followed our work for Rhoten Studios, you might know that Europa isn’t alone in the room. This desk was custom-tailored to sit perfectly between two of our previously commissioned studio equipment racks, Voyager I, which is a single bay rack, and Voyager II, a double bay rack. To honor the retro aesthetic of the studio space, we gave Europa a distinct, vintage-inspired side profile that bridges the gap between classic studio warmth and modern digital workflow.

The naming convention for this studio setup is a nod to the cosmos and the spirit of exploration. Just as the historic Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft journeyed out into the solar system to capture stunning data from Jupiter’s iconic moon, this desk sits proudly between its sibling racks. We can’t wait to see the incredible music that takes flight from the cockpit of Europa at Rhoten Studios.

Europa is a bespoke creation handcrafted exclusively by 2Egress Sound & Design. If you are interested in commissioning a custom desk or rack setup tailored to your specific workflow, please contact 2Egress Sound & Design today to start your build.