In 1939 Godfrey Jones and his wife Norah Jones moved into No 2 Morden Park Cottages, London Road, Morden.  

The grounds were originally part of Morden Manor and included a sizable yard and a very large greenhouse garage and outbuilding.  There was plenty of room to park his two loudspeaker vans and mobile recording van. 

The First Studio: Morden Park Sound Studios

Godfrey Jones built a small recording studio on the ground floor of the cottage.  

The setup was basic – In the control room there were two mono valve mixer amplifiers with tone correction, two early acetate disc cutters, and a twin 78RPM Turntable deck. The studio was acoustically treated and fitted with sound proof doors and windows. Studio equipment included Vitavox “A” type microphones, STC and a BBC designed AX Marconi ribbon microphone. There was also a Broadwood upright piano 

 Recordings were made of solo artists, small bands, sound effects for theatres, radio plays for America Forces Overseas radio station as well as wedding ceremonies from microphones connected via cables to the adjacent St. Lawrences’ Church.  

Advertising and public service announcements were also recorded to be relayed by RG Jones loudspeaker vans. At that time all recordings were cut directly to disc as there were no tape recorders at that time. 

R G Jones already operated a mobile recording van fitted out with two disc cutters. Many mobile recordings were made including Winston Churchill receiving the freedom of the city of Blackpool, Paul Robson singing in St Pauls Cathedral as well as school choirs, dance orchestras local authority and company meetings etc. On one occasion during the war, a recording was made of the wedding for an Australian army officer. It was cut to seven double sided 12inch 78rpm discs which were then sent to his parents in Australia.  

1950s Godfrey wanted a larger studio and also a store for his sound equipment which he hired out. So he converted the large garage and an outhouse located on the site into a recording studio, PA Hire equipment store and also a well equipped workshop including a fully equipped paint spray plant.  

A new recording mixer was designed and built in house and two new MSS Disc cutters were purchased and installed. It was during this decade that both Ferrograph and Vortexion tape recorders became available and were purchased by the studio.  

In the early 60’s the studio was becoming busy. A better quality mixer was urgently needed so Godfrey asked EMI Electronics to design and build a custom studio quality fully transistorised mixer for his Studio. At that time if echo was required it was added using a German machine fitted with one record and three playback heads using a recording tape loop. This was soon replaced with a much better but far more expensive German EMT reverberation plate. This was a very large box housing a large suspended steel plate with transducer on one corner and pickup sensor on the opposite end. The plate produced excellent adjustable length quality echo for recordings and became an industry standard.  

 Other equipment installed including PULTIC state of the art equalisers and a Marconi Limiter Compressor. The Limiter compressor was designed to be used with broadcast transmitters but it was used to maximise volume whilst protecting the expensive cutting head from blowing on sound peaks when cutting discs. The limiter Compressor was also very useful for producing special effects.  

 The continued investments in high quality audio technology attracted a stream of mod, beat, and blues acts from across the South East, it became one of the few independent studios in the UK offering recording, mixing, mastering and disc cutting under one roof.