However, dedicated producers such as John Hawkins at Zodiac, Wahanui Wynyard at Astor, Viking’s Ron Dalton and Jimmie Sloggett from James Productions (all in Auckland) helped revolutionise the recording process, inspired in large part by people like Joe Meek, George Martin, Phil Spector, the Motown producers and Shel Tamly. In Wellington the changes were driven by the UK-owned HMV company, whose management underwrote a team of fulltime in-house producers from 1965 onwards and equipped these increasingly skilled men with more and more sophisticated studios, where they created a decade of finely honed pop music which the nation purchased in substantial quantities. Many of their artists became household names as part of a thriving singles-driven pop industry, the equal of which New Zealand has not seen. Indeed, the recordings from the HMV and, later, EMI studios in Wakefield Street and Lower Hutt still stand as some of the perfectly realised recordings ever made in New Zealand.