Early in 1981 Derek Chalmers opened his first recording studio in Sauchiehall Street, Charing Cross, Glasgow. Built and financed by his mother and father it was as a result of his playing and recording days, and it was a tiny 4 track recording studio for his band to use and hire out. Looking back, it was a ridiculously small operation but great fun. He had a Teac 3340 4 track machine and a Teac 2A desk, barely enough to do 4 track recording (and probably battery powered) but he persevered and within a year had moved to 8 track and then to 16 with a Tac desk and an MS16 1" recorder.

By this time the quality of the recording had improved substantially and was attracting the bands who used the studio's rehearsal facilities, which was then known as Centre City Sound, and consisted of 4 fully equiped rehearsal rooms which were extremely busy on a 7 day per week basis. At around this time, the studio was frequently being asked to provide cassette copies of recording sessions they had undertaken and a decision was taken to purchase some duplicating equipment both high speed and real time to service the needs of the studio's clients. What we had failed to realise at that time was that we would be asked to do duplication work for clients outwith the studio clientele. This was a great surprise to us and before long it was as successful as the recording and rehearsal part of our operation.

At this point we were purchasing blank cassettes from other manufacturers and as our cassette business was growing strongly, we decided to purchase a cassette manufacturing machine. Someone we knew had an old loader that was being thrown out and offered it to us free of charge. We took it back to the studio and breathed some life in to it and at last we were making our own cassettes. The cassette side of the business continued to grow at such a rate that within a short time we had purchased a pair of King 790 cassette loaders, a plate making machine and an on body printer. We were well and truly in the cassette business with a daily capacity of around 10,000 units with clients including Stathclyde Police, BBC, several training organisations and high street banks.

Chow Productions continued to grow and began to offer such services as mastering and editing in its' earliest forms and also CD duplication prior to others taking that part of the industry seriously.These were the times when blank discs cost around £25.00 each and a duplicating system around £10,000. However, we felt that this was the way ahead and today are firmly entrenched in the duplication and replication business. All of this was about to change and in 1992 the premises below the studio caught fire causing serious structural damage resulting in the business being unable to continue at our original site, subsequently moving premises to our new home in Clydebank wherewe are to this day.

Today, after almost a quarter of a century we have a new recording studio which can accommodate up to 50 musicians and also operates as a video sound stage. We also currently have a mastering room, a video editing suite and are duplicating DVD and video formats.