WELL WELL WELL...I guess I'll start in the vein of Dudge and set y'all up with some idea of the field I'm playing on...

WORKSTATION
AMD Athlon Compy (ehh...computer really ain't all that important...it'll get an upgrade soon enough.

Sony Vegas 5.0
- Waves Platinum Bundle

ACTUALLY IMPORTANT STUFF

MOTU 896 HD
Mackie HR 824's
Toft Audio EC-1
TAB Funkenwerk V78M(x2)
Sytek MP-4
TL Audio PA-2

THINGS THAT PICK UP NOISE

Studio Projects C1 (x2)
Studio Projects C3 (x2)
Studio Projects C4 (x4)
Audio Techinca ATM25 (x3)
Audio Technica 4050
E/V RE-20
SM-57
Peluso 2247LE (german)
ADK CE

IMMINENT UPGRADES

Another 896HD
Black Lion Modding of both 896's
perhaps a clock (need to do more research here)
Dynaudio BM6A's
Drawmer 1968 Mercenary Ed.

...quick update...

we've made the plunge: a pair of Dynaudio BM6A's are on their way from soundpure. they will be taking the place of my HR824's (which will be moved across the room to become a part of the video edit/backup audio workstation).

Also, we are now definitely getting a second 896 and will be sending it to Black Lion Audio to have Matt mod it. We'll then send our current one down, along with our Alesis 3630, as he offers a mod for that as well, and since it's sitting around gathering dust, we might as well see if modding it will make it worth two shits.

When these are in place, we'll also definitely order a Drawmer 1968 ME Compressor...which I can't wait to use with my TAB/Funkenwerk preamps on drum room mics...I get this sneaking suspicion that it will be incredibly fat and warm and possibly gi-huge-ic.

FURTHER TERM UPGRADES (WET DREAMS)

Vintech 473
API 3124
Neve 8816 Summing Mixer
Peluso CEMC6's
A Designs REDDI

Nice, i.! I've heard great things about those Dyns; I have the BM15A's and they sound pretty darn good. I can also vouch for the the API 3124, the CEMC6's and the REDDI as being quality pieces.


What sort of work do you do in your studio?

actually, 95% of our work is commercial production, radio spots, VO for TV, some light industrial video work, etc. Since we are a small shop we tend to work on the cheap end of the scale of things and it keeps us in business. Over the last 3 or 4 years I've really pushed hard to improve the sonic quality of the stuff that comes out of this room and I've been hearing more and more feedback that tells me I'm pushing in the right direction.

I have started pulling in some music projects here and there, a few singles for some friends bands here, a finish-up set of overdubs and vocals for an EP there, some pre-production stuff...not a whole lot as I'm also a full-time student. But, our plan is to have our studio out of the house after I graduate from college and, in addition to keeping our commercial clients coming in (and bringing all their friends along, too!), we want to put together a facility that will be able to compete with some of the larger studios in town but on a much smaller budget. Since the bulk of our work is commercial, we can afford to bill studio time out a little cheaper.

The other thing that we'll offer is a producer/engineer who gives a shit who runs the studio FULL TIME (i.e., yours truly). I've seen too many of my buddies drop WAY too much money on studio time to come out with half-assed product because (pardon the harshness of what I am about to say...) some half-deaf first-year recording school monkey says "recording? I know how to do that..."

My beef with a lot of the recording school kids is that yeah, they know how to run a fully automated SSL into a Pro Tools HD rig and can make that all work like clockwork, but they have developed no sense of sonic concept. I mean, they know how all their teachers told them to get sounds to tape, they know how to run the equipment, but they create product that souncs like shit because they don't know how to translate the idea they have in their head for how something SHOULD sound to all that fancy-ass gear and actually make the sound.

I don't claim to be the greatest engineer on the face of the Earth, or the most knowledgeable, but DAMMIT, the stuff I've turned out doesn't sound BAD...


Plus, I'm laying out the studio in such a way that it'll be very seperate front end to back end and will work the way I want it to.

My thought is to assemble a collection of all the great colors/flavors of preamps/microphones at the front end. I've got the TABs and those are a great start, and I'm really interested in the Vintech 473 as it really seems to fit my application well, and naturally the API, but down the road I'm thinking about adding stuff like Helios, A Designs Pacifica, Chandler TG and Germanium, UA 610, etc. Basically all the great and classic flavors of preamp to really do the lion's share of sonic sculpting, and then mixing the back end for a combination of ITB/OTB mixing (via something like that Neve summing mixer, but that's the one that seems to offer the most complete features for what I want...) so I'll have some outboard and some software and hopefully find that compromise between the digital and analog worlds in a more completely integrated way than most studios I've seen around town.

I'm not neglecting mics, BTW, just have put a lot of thought into how I want MY workflow to flow. I really think I'm coming up with an elegant and versatile solution...and hopefully I can convince some other people of that as well!

okay...I need to settle down but I'm wetting my pants with excitement!!!

I just heard back from Matt at Black Lion and I'm no longer just having him mod my 896s (of which I'll have another by the end of the week)...I've had this POS Rolls RP220 sitting around forever that I can't really find a use for because it's sludgy and kinda limited in its bandwidth and just dirty and poopy (IMHO, YMMV). But Matt does a mod for that and he'll also be doing up my Alesis 3630 that has been sitting around forever because it's really not all that hot, either. SO...I get more stuff that if nothing else will sound BETTER than it did before...

plus, Matt said he revamped his 896 mod and figured out a way to really get in and increase the slew rate...from roughly 15v/ms to 350v/ms. Sounds like black magic to me...but I'm down.

BTW, for those playing the home game, that mod increases the slew rate 23.33 TIMES. that's not a percentage. That's TIMES.

...and then the day came...and a light shone down from the heavens...and inserted itself into my racks...

I just got the Drawmer 1968. As yet I've only gotten a chance to use it for voiceovers, but MAN OH MAN is it an improvement for this application over the Toft EC-1. It's not that the Toft is BAD, it's just that this comes closer to the sound I've been hearing in my head. Of course, it also helps that there's more glass and iron in the signal chain, which now looks like this:

Peluso 2247 LE (EF14) -> TAB Funkenwerk V78m -> Drawmer 1968ME -> 896HD

I'm super impressed already...I can't wait to try it on some other source material...

IN OTHER NEWS:
My neutrik patchbay is on its way in...we picked up another 3630 and are having that one modded as well (with the crunch mod...so we'll have both Black Lion mods)...will be re-cabling everything with Mogami...

It's gonna be a busy March for this little boy!

UPDATES

The modded 896 is on its way back from Chicago. Black Lion had some issues with some parts shipments that put them way behind schedule, so my 896 and 3630 have been held up. It's all good, though...I'm still waiting for my mic input panel from Redco and my guy here in town to finish making all my mogami + neutrik interconnects and patch cables.

Once the first 896 is back, the other will be on its way out the door to get the same treatment as the first, PLUS his new clock. So I'm getting a faster front end with a cleaner clock. That's the sort of news that makes this homely whiteboy smile. I'll also be getting the other 3630 and the Rolls RP220 done up...which means that when it's all said and done my front end will look like this:

CONVERTERS

2x Black Lion Modded 896HD

PREAMPS

2x TAB/Funkenwerk V78M
Sytek MP4
TL Audio PA-2
Black Lion Rolls RP220
Toft Audio EC-1

COMPRESSORS
2x Black Lion 3630's (4 Channels)
Drawmer 1968 ME (2 Channels)
Toft EC-1 (1 channel + EQ)

---------

In other news, I'm going to give analog summing a shot on my next big project. I'm still waiting to firm up the dates, but Daybreak, a local band that just signed to an indie here in Minneapolis, wants to do a full-length with me after doing a single I put up in the Music Station a while ago. As I was tearing apart our old racks, I saw that we had a Mackie line mixer and it hit me like a ton of bricks: I can use that stupid thing as a 16x2 mixer to try out this whole analog thing and see if i like it...i figure it like this...if I do some compressing/EQing during recording (and force myself to commit to some sounds during tracking...), I can re-use my stuff during mixdown, plus I've got some outboard reverbs (An old ass Korg DRV-1000 and a Digitech TSR-24...nothing spectacular but the price was right...as they have been laying around the studio for ever...) that I can patch in and save myself some processor...

Not that processor is going to matter a whole lot in a week or two. New compy is finally ordered.

- 3 gig Dual Core Athlon
- 4 Gigs of RAM
- 800 Gigs of SATA hard drives
- DVI Vid Card (which is great, because I just got a 21" flat panel as well...goodbye CRT and that awful RF that you tossed into my guitars...)

So I think this April is going to be as nutty as March....more install and (more importantly) learning how to work in my completely new environment...this will be either really interesting, or really disastrous...or both...stay tuned!

I keep forgetting to put this up as an addendum to everything else...

INSTRUMENTS

1965 Fender Tremolux (head only)
1966 Fender Bandmaster + 2x12 w/Jensens
Carvin VT50 + 4x10
Carvin Legacy 4x12 Slant Cab w/Greenbacks
Cornford Harlequin (in black trim, one of two that I know of...)
Gibson Skylark w/Tremolo (currently Out of Commission)

Also have easy access to (through my buddy/partner/assistant):

Soldano SLO (with all the mods, clean/crunch, SRV, Warren Haynes, Depth, etc.)
Soldano SLO 4x12 w/V30's
VOX AC30 (somewhat unsure of vintage...probably 70's somewhere)

Fulltone Full-Drive
Keely TS9
Keely Blues Driver
ProCo Vintage Rat
Ross Distortion (ca. 70's, black box)
Danelectro Daddy-O
MXR Phase 90
Boss OC-2
Boss DD-5
Boss Super Chorus
Dunlop 535Q

Fender Mexi Tele w/Ashtray Bridge, Brass Saddles, bone nut, and Duncan Antiquities, re-potted and capped.
Fender MIJ Foto Flame Strat w/ Duncan Vintage Staggered in bridge (had a coil ground out on the original), re-potted and capped.
Kramer Focus w/ DiMarzio neck, Duncan Custom Custom & Cool Rails (neck), re-potted, coil tap, NOS Sprague cap.
Schecter C7, w/Bare Knuckles Nailbombs, re-potted, NOS Sprague Cap (waiting for new bridge to come in, will also have nut replaced soon)

Ovation 30th Anniversary
Ovation Celebrity (shallow body)
Alvarez Classical (pawn shop steal...$100...solid top...)

Tobias Toby Pro 5

Premier AXP 5-piece (12, 13, 16, 14x22)

AM ALSO CURRENTLY USING:

Tama Rockstar (10, 12, 14, 16x22)

-------------

At some point I'll be getting a small collection of very good cymbals...probably Zildjian A's (18" thin Crash, 16" Thin Crash, 14" Thin Crash, 21" sweet ride) and a set of Paiste 2002 Medium hats...stuff to swap in in place of some of the crap cymbals that get brought in.
-------------

Further updates as events warrant.

yes, that is a picture of me. yes, I'm playing bass. Yes, I've put on a few pounds since then.

---begin transmission---

In thinking about the posts above, I'm finding that I've really done a lot of work in the past year, and in that short year I've come a very long way. I went back and listened to stuff I did a couple years ago, the first few things I did and it's almost frightening the jump I made this year. My recordings have begun to show the depth and weight I've always intended them to have. My bad days now sound better than my best days a year ago. I know that part of that is better gear. I've upgraded my interfaces, and that has made an ENORMOUS difference. Absolutely night and day. The other half of it is I've been interested in mic technique, and have really worked and trying different things with micing and am really starting to get a handle on what does what, and how I can use mics in combination to achieve the sounds I imagine. I've learned better stereo mic technique, and have a couple pairs of mics that I can use for that exact purpose (I am now a HUGE fan of blumlein pairs...).

I've also begun to do some mixing with hardware, and am learning that everyone else was right...hardware sounds better...especially in the realm of compression. I don't mind ITB eq, and I think that ITB reverbs are far more versatile than outboard ones, and one of the bast uses of CPU, I need a couple more analog EQ's and compressors. I'm working with 1 outboard EQ right now, and even that has become a huge boon to me. Kick and Snare tracks have become so much more immediate that I can't go back. Snares are both brighter and thicker, with less EQ surgery. Kicks are quicker and punchier with better ass end. I'm liking where this all is going.

In gear slut news...

I think that by about next Feb or so, I'll be able to order a Shadow Hills Equinox. 2 GAMA preamps (with 3 selectable output x-formers), monitor selector/volume control, and a 32 channel summing amplifier with 3 selectable output x-formers. It looks like it blows that neve clean out of the water for my application. I think it'll be a great addition to the studio.

I'll be able to afford that piece because of an audio sweetening project we'll be doing for a series that will appear on the History Channel. If all goes to plan, we'll to the mixing and sweetening for 13 episodes...and if things work our, Leonard Nimoy (mr. spock himself) will be coming in to our studio to read the voiceovers. It'll be a great addition to the resume, and a good paycheck (and I get to work with Spock).

---end transmission---

Dude, you have some seriously cool stuff.

Make sure you post how your mods go with Matt, I'm curious about that. I have an Alesis compressor just sitting here and I may pick up a MOTU or two soon. I'm curious what you think on those.

-A

Well...the 3630 I have is a way different compressor than what I'm used to, I can tell you that much. Let's just say that I haven't tried it on a whole lot of source material because I already have a couple compressors that I REALLY like...but...it's very transparent...like...so transparent I'm not always sure that it's actually doing something. Obviously, it is...but it's not agressive like the Toft or Drawmer...but it does some things...I'll be really interested to hear one that crunches a little more...I really don't much care for super-clean compression...I like a few artifacts and a little crunch.

In other news...I just found the Roll Music Systems Folcrom analog summing box at Soundpure and I'm more intrigued by that than I am the Equinox because it would allow me even more output buss sounds than the Equinox. And it's only $750. INTERESTING.

I'm coming down the home stretch with this album I've been mixing...I've got about a dozen mixes to print (3 or so for each track) and it's pretty much just getting the donkey work done at this point...I've got most of the mixes in the kind of shape I want them in, though I have 2 that really need to be torn down and re-mixed from the bottom up...should be interesting going...but I deliver everything to mastering tomorrow morning at 10:00 in the a.m.

It's weird putting a full-length project like this one to bed. I've been working on this for the past year...sitting with the songs...besides producing the album (which has meant that I've been an arranger, sometimes composer or collaborator), I've engineered the whole thing, and I played 2/3 of the guitars on the album. Through the midst of this project I've mixed an EP for another band...I've started tracking on another album...I've done one-offs and demos for my band...it's going to be weird living without this project on my desk. There's been that consistently nagging "you know you should go take care of some of those things for that project" voice in my head for the past 6 months...now it's not going to know what to do with itself...though I'm definitely looking forward to the breather that I'm going to get with school coming back around.

HERE SHE BE!!!

The Console, in toto...

Master Section


First 8 Channels and EQ's


Other 4 Channels, Talkback and Logic controls


Channel Assigns and Echo sends


Kepex, Gain Brain, and Echo Returns

Power Supply

OMG Tons of Iron

Amp Card Racks

Me, Pops, and the Prize!!

I also need to thank my buddy Andrew, who helped me lug this heavy bastard from its previous home and begged his pops to use his F350 so we could get the big bastard home. Now comes the fun part...making this MF do something other than weigh my garage down!


A pretty high buck film and audio post house (CineSound 2) in town closed when the owner died unexpectedly in August. They have a bunch of AMS/Neve Audio File systems that they were going to either give away or throw away, so we figured we'd better go down and look. We were searching for manuals and such in a storage room and on a shelf I noticed a green three-ring binder that said "Quad 8 Console" on the side. I said, "oh, he had a Quad 8? That's cool." "Oh, we still have that!"

"WHAT?!? WHERE?"

"It's in storage in another office in this complex...I don't have the key, but I'll get it on friday...I was just going to get rid of it..."

I damn near shit my pants saying "NO DON'T WE'LL TAKE IT OFF YOUR HANDS!!!"

We chatted for a bit and set things up to pick it up on Friday. Well...the guy with the keys didn't show on Friday, so we had to wait over the weekend...I was tense, to say the least. I didn't want this thing walking away from me...it was WAY too rare a score to see go away...so we sat on our hands over the weekend. I headed down to Minneapolis for class this morning only to get stuck in traffic because of 3 accidents. What is a 20-25 minute drive in clear conditions (and a half hour to 40 during rush) took an hour and ten minutes. Needless to say I skipped out and came home...I ditched my second class of the afternoon as well. I got home right about 9 a.m. and called our gal at the studio.."Yep...it's out of storage...come on down and pick it up!!" So my buddy Andrew grabbed his dad's F-350 and we trucked it down there (pun completely intended) and spent a good hour wrestling that SOB into the back of the truck. YAHOOO!!!

This is a Quad Eight film dubbing console. All the MM310 Mix Channels are line level only. It's a QE Model 1241. (12x4x1 (yep, it's mono)).

Another most excellent thing is that this console's former owner was a complete gearhead. He has original blueprints for the console, and schematics for every component in the damn thing, not to mention the Q8 sales brochure from that year, cut sheets on 3 different consoles...schematics of those consoles...price lists, notes of wiring modifications...basically enough documentation to build this thing from scratch. No joke. It was built in 76 and decommissioned in 1990, when it seems as though it was cannibalized a little bit. It was SUPPOSED to have 2 712 graphic EQ's (think API 560) and 2 227 Mic preamps, as well as a few QE compressors, all of which are notably missing. HOWEVER, the Kepex and the Gain-Brain don't appear anywhere in his docs, and are pretty frickin' cool things to find on the board.

I'm really excited to dig into this project, as it also looks like we'll have a facility outside the house by next summer or fall. Hopefully I can figure out how to make this thing functional...as there are some definite challenges. Namely that as far as I can tell, this board has a mono master section. anyone else notice the alarming lack of pan knobs? Took me 3 hours to figure that out. Plus the console frame straight up sucks. So...it basically needs a new summing/master section and pan pots on all the channels. That may mean a new buss assignment section (which I'm okay with, so long as I get to keep the echo sends). I'd also like to dig up 4 more mm310 strips so I could have a legit 16x2 summing mixer (with 16 channels of passive, inductor-based EQ), and 2 aux busses (that I'd really like to put a spring reverb and tape delay in). The frame will be rebuilt, with a few minor ergonomic changes and a space for a keyboard, mouse, and display. I'd like to add some stuff to that upper channel that houses the master secion and the Gain-Brain and Kepex (like a couple 3 more gain-brains and a couple Kepexes)...maybe convert a small section of it to 500-series size and put a few 500 size modules up there. there's an 11-U 19" rack to the left of the channels, and there's ample room for another on the right. If I can lose the logic section, I can make room for another 19" rack on the right, and have all my preamps and outboard 19" stuff (or at least most of it) on the desktop, which would be pretty frickin' cool. I'm also really exploring some other options...we'll see what happens in the months to come...I'll definitely be updating as events warrant

------------

...look at them...posing for my camera...

Some new acquisitions...flanking the outskirts of this lovely display are 6 Karma K-Micros. The next mics in are 414-EB's. The large Tylenol looking hog is a Shure SM-5, and the one that looks like a U-87 is actually a U-87. I talked to Klaus Heyne and to Neumann and its serial number puts it out Neumann's door in May of 1970. The EB's are both brass-ringed CK-12 variants.

The use they've seen so far hasn't been super extensive but that U-87 is one of the fattest, fullest sounding mics I've ever played with. The 414's aren't far behind, either, in terms of girth, though they aren't quite as "exciting" as the U-87. I'm still sorta learning them.

also, as a side note...I went out and picked up a pair of Groove Tubes 12AX7M's for my Drawmer...it had ECC83's in it, and I wanted to see what the 12AX7M's would do. I know that they tend to be a more complex tube in terms of harmonics, though not necessarily the highest gain tube around. I popped them in and after doing a couple listening tests found that generally, they are a little less excited in the presence ranges, which, for me, is a good thing...the drawmer seems to be a touch smoother throughout...the lows feel a little rounder and the highs feel a little more open. It's like someone grabbed the frequency response curve and shook some of the lumps out of it. I didn't think the upper mids/presence felt congested, but I think I just learned otherwise.

Posting porn is against the rules, i.



Seriously, sweet sweet scores man!

I just got my first finished, packaged album yesterday. I spent a great portion of last year working on this album for a friend's band, and just finished and mastered it in August. They got their discs replicated and did a FANTASTIC job on the artwork and packaging...I'll have to put up some pics because they really did a tremendous job. It's really gratifying to see something that I worked so hard on and spent so much time with get finished. I'm uber excited.

Congrats Ian! Nice to see it come together in CD form with graphics and all.

BTW...damn nice score on the desk. If I were closer, I would help ya get it up and running again.

yeah, congratulations on both. do you have a link to the band's site or myspace?

Shoeleather Faith