The Creative Music Recording Magazine

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Martin Hannett

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Joy Division, Buzzcocks
Bill Szymczyk
The Eagles, Joe Walsh, The Who
Richard Kaplan &

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Mike Pinder

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Malibu’s Indigo Ranch
Tanya Donelly
Belly, Throwing Muses, Solo
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Giles Martin
The Beatles Revisited
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Larry Villella
of ADK in Behind the Gear
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Music Reviews
w/ Jenny Lewis & The Delines
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Gear Reviews
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Issue No. 103

Sept/Oct 2014
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IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT SOUND

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 Hello and
welcome to
Tape Op
#103!
12 Letters
14 Larry Villella in Behind the Gear
18 Tanya Donelly
24 Bill Szymczyk
32 Martin Hannett

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42 Richard Kaplan I arrived at the profession of being
48 Giles Martin an engineer and producer via being
p a g e

a fan. Experiences as a listener and music lover sent me on

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54 Gear Reviews this path, and certain bits of music pushed me forward. The
80 Music Reviews tangible feeling I got the first time I heard the masterful
82 The Recording Game production of Joy Division’s song “Atmosphere” rumbling
through a giant stereo system at a friend’s house sent me on
Bonus Content: a quest to absorb more of their music, as well as a desire to

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Richard Kaplan on Bing Crosby’s Tapes learn how they were made. See our excerpts from Chris
Hewitt’s book on Martin Hannett in this issue for insight
Online Only Feature: into these iconic Joy Division recordings, and more. A
K-Mack

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music fan also has opinions, and while I’ve become more
relaxed in some of my stances, I still abhor the Eagles.
A “Poor Man’s Neve” But I do love Joe Walsh and The Who, so check out our
Refurbing a Cadac J-type interview with Bill Szymczyk in these pages! And what
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fan doesn’t love The Beatles? Check out the interview
here with Giles Martin, and see how he struggled with
his father’s legacy, Sir George Martin, while proceeding
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to make a name for himself. There’s far more in this

issue (did I mention I’m a big Tanya Donelly fan?),
so dig in and enjoy the mag! But first put on some
music you love… - Larry Crane, Editor
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c Don Lewis
right hand LPs courtesy Scott Colburn
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 The Creative Music Recording Magazine

Editor
Larry Crane
Publisher &!Graphic Design
John Baccigaluppi
Online Publisher
Dave Middleton
Gear Reviews Editor
Andy “Gear Geek” Hong
Production Manager & Assistant Gear Reviews Editor
Scott McChane
Contributing Writers &!Photographers

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Cover by JB, with endless props to John Van Hamersveld and Bruce Brown.
Garrett Haines, Kraig Mason, Jake Brown Lisi Szymczyk, Chris Hewitt, Gary Lipton,
Jeff Slate, Geoff Stanfield, Eli Crews, Alan Tubbs, Dave Hidek, Dave Cerminara,

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Scott Evans, Roy Silverstein, Greg Calbi, Adam Kagan, Adam Monk, Mike Jasper,
Dusty Wakeman, Steve Silverstein and Brandon Miller.
www.tapeop.com
Dave Middleton and Hillary Johnson
Editorial and Office Assistants

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Jenna Crane (proofreading), Thomas Danner (transcription),
Lance Jackman (accounting@tapeop.com)
Tape Op Book distribution
c/o www.halleonard.com

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Disclaimer
TAPE OP magazine wants to make clear that the opinions expressed within reviews, letters and
articles are not necessarily the opinions of the publishers. Tape Op is intended as a forum to
advance the art of recording, and there are many choices made along that path.
Editorial Office
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(for submissions, letters, CDs for review. CDs for review are also
reviewed in the Sacramento office, address below)
P.O. Box 86409, Portland, OR 97286 voicemail 503-208-4033
editor@tapeop.com
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All unsolicited submissions and letters sent to us become the property of Tape Op.
Advertising
Pro Audio, Studios & Record Labels: John Baccigaluppi
(916) 444-5241, (john@tapeop.com)
uk

Pro Audio & Ad Agencies:

Laura Thurmond/Thurmond Media
512-529-1032, (laura@tapeop.com)
Marsha Vdovin
415-420-7273, (marsha@tapeop.com)
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Printing: Matt Saddler

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@ Democrat Printing, Little Rock, AR

Subscriptions are free in the USA:
Subscribe online at tapeop.com
(Notice: We sometimes rent our subscription list to our advertisers.)
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Canadian & Foreign subscriptions, see instructions at www.tapeop.com

Circulation, Subscription and Address Changes
will be accepted by email or mail only. Please do not telephone. We
have an online change of address form <tapeop.com> or you can email
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<circulation@tapeop.com> or send snail mail to

PO Box 160995. Sacramento, CA 95816
See tapeop.com for Back Issue ordering info
Postmaster and all general inquiries to:
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Tape Op Magazine, PO Box 160995, Sacramento, CA 95816

(916) 444-5241 | tapeop.com
Tape Op is published by Single Fin, Inc. (publishing services)
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and Jackpot! Recording Studio, Inc. (editorial services)

10/Tape Op#103/Masthead
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Please Support Our Advertisers/Tape Op#103/11


I love Tape Op. I can’t believe you got
Al [Schnier, of moe., Tape Op #102]. I was at a
music festival a few weeks ago and somebody
mistook me for Al because we have the
same receding hairline. Thank you.
Tommy McKaughan <pizzat@gmail.com>
My wife and I drove 18 hours back from our
vacation in Florida to our home in Ohio. We got in
While I too dream of a
DAW that needs no
upgrades and stays
stable for decades, I
disagree on the criticism
of the “mental
paradigm” that you
believe we “promulgate”
with Tape Op. I think that
many times the division of labor on a recording project
can be a good thing. Sure, a blurring of the lines
constantly occurs (I regularly engineer, produce, mix,
and perform on my studio sessions); but when it comes
to the tasks involved in record making, often hiring an
expert can vastly improve the project. Bringing in a
better guitarist than myself is an obvious win. Hiring a
mixing or mastering engineer with more experience
than oneself can improve tracks immensely. Sometimes
I read several issues ago about Larry Crane
wishing that CDs came with credits in the metadata
for the engineer, producer, studio, etc. When I
create a PMCD [PreMaster CD] for pressing purposes
there is no place except the comments block to add
this information, which is character limited, so
only a fraction of the info I edit in is retained. Also
other info, such as publishing, copywriter, etc. is
not retained after burning the PMCD (I use
MediaMonkey). Is there any other way to add this
info to the metadata that will be retained after
burning the disc? Or am I just pissing up a rope?
Jeffrey Simpson <www.birdlandstudios.com>
You are not alone in wondering about metadata on
CDs. Although it is possible to add credits in the comment
section, there are some limitations to this approach. First,
CD Text data is only seen when a disc is played in a CD

at 3 a.m. Our son had put the mail on the floor, and
before we went to bed I saw the newest issue of
Tape Op. My wife said, “Come on, we have been up
records are made in isolation by a single person, and
this can lead to some fantastic, unique results or it can
result in an unbridled mess. Some records are made by
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Text-enabled car or home player. Portable players and
computers do not read information from the disc (they
pull data from databases, such as Gracenote). The
second, and perhaps more important concern, is that

for 20 hours.” I said, “I will be in there in a little
bit.” I couldn’t put the latest issue down! I read it
from beginning to end, and finally crawled into bed
at 5 a.m. Honestly, that was my favorite issue yet,
and I am going to do some recording tomorrow.
Thanks for the inspiration!
selecting the proper group of talented individuals. But
even inferring that there is only one way to record
music is to miss the point of all the opportunities that
are out there. -LC
I enjoyed John Baccigaluppi’s hammer analogy.
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there is no guarantee that a disc manufacturer will “carry
forward” all of the metadata from the submitted master.
While many plants do pass CD Text through to the
production copies, it is not a universal practice. Even if
you manage to stuff all the comments in, it may not

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Kevin R. Bowdler <kbowdler@fuse.net> [“Give Me a Hammer” Tape Op #102] I would only make it to the finished copies. Presently there is no ideal
add that the carpenter’s clients probably don’t ask solution. This explains some of the recent attempts to
On the one hand, I completely agree with Mr. which brand of hammer he uses... launch album credit sites. The best advice I have is to find
Baccigaluppi’s recent back page. I am constantly Frank Dickinson <go90east@verizon.net> someone who is a Gracenote partner and have them enter

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ranting that I want Cubase and Pro Tools finished, the data for you. Some labels, mastering engineers, and
goddamnit! I want them to be like real musical Issue #102 showed up in my email yesterday. I
love your gear reviews, so I went there first. In my publishers have enhanced access to production fields in
instruments: perfected. Sure, one violin or piano the Gracenote Database. While anyone can submit song
sounds different from the next, and there’s always latest project I have been struggling with two
on
titles and artists names, via applications like iTunes,
room for improvement; but they all work the same guitars recorded through a Line 6 Pod 2.0 amp Gracenote Partners have enhanced access to data fields
way. Same goes for everything, from Stratocasters to simulator that seemed okay when I cut the tracks, (e.g. native language, band website, record label, sub-
drill presses. At some point, the consensus was, “This but are harsh sounding as I mix. I can barely tame genres, etc.). In particular, we can enter musician,
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thing is fully baked.” On the other hand? I can’t the sound with compression, EQ, and de-essers. It’s engineering, writing, and production credits for entire
stand where DAW is today. None of them are what I either too harsh, or too dull, plus the rhythm and albums, or even individual songs (very useful on a
imagined when I started 15 years ago... which is a lead guitar have the same frequency range of compilation release). I believe feeding production credits
desktop music publisher. None of them are as flexible splatter and were tough to balance. I read the
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into Gracenote is currently our best bet. Even if AES,

as video or desktop publishing programs, in terms of review on bx_refinement and within the hour it was NARAS, or some other body manages to push standards
simply manipulating objects the way Word, InDesign, downloaded and in operation. Even my wife could through, online vendors such as Apple, Pono, or Streamer-
or Finale let one cut/copy/paste. None have hear the difference. While I’ll be wary of using the du-Jour will more than likely want to pull from an
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particularly great undo. None have version control. Pod in the future, I now have a valuable tool that established data source. In summary: not only are you
None have an import/export worth a shit. And none can really clean things up. Thanks for the pissing up a rope, but you have to get in line to do so.
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offer any reasonable guarantee that you’ll be able to heads up on a great product. It came But so do the rest of us.
open an older project cleanly. I think we are still along at the right time to rescue my mix. Garrett Haines <www.treelady.com>
stuck in this mental paradigm (which your magazine Jer Hill <jerhil@frontier.com>
As always, I was delighted to get the
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promulgates) of “mixer,” “engineer,” and “musician.”
Sound is acquired in one discrete step, mixed in
another, and then mastered in a third. No author in
any other medium thinks in such a formal way
ot
I adore this plug-in, and have been using it a lot
to help my recent mixes, even on some tracks I’ve latest Tape Op [#102]! Right away it flipped open to that
cut myself. I’m very happy to have turned anyone super-sexy shot of Tom Werman standing in front of those
on to this fine product. I recently met bx’s [3M] M79s.Hell yeah! But I'm really writing to express

anymore. We’re all constantly creating and editing, all
at the same time. But DAWs continue to be modeled
after tape recorders and mixing desks. In short, I look
forward to the day when there is a simple DAW that
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developer, Gebre Waddell, at Summer NAMM, and how impressed I am to see the cover of Family Fun In Tape
am glad to report that he’s an awesome and Recording used with your opening editorial! This was an
interesting person to boot. Expect more miracles extremely important book for me – please see attached
the review I wrote in 1965 inside the front cover.

from him in the future. -LC

allows me the same flexibility with audio, MIDI, and “This is a great book! Given November 15, 1965 on my
notation that I have with words in Microsoft Word; 11th birthday.”
something that isn’t held back by the look and feel Mitch Easter <fidelitorium.com>
Send Letters & Questions
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of a mixing desk.
to: editor@tapeop.com
JC Harris <mail@jchmusic.com>

12/Tape Op#103/Letters/(Fin.)
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 Behind The Gear
This Issue’s Creator of Capsules
Larry Villella
ADK Microphones began in 1997 as
the dream of Larry Villella – recording
engineer, piano expert, and vintage mic
collector – to build quality microphones
for his friends. ADK’s extensive line of
microphones now ranges from very affordable
to top-of-the-line hand-built creations.
I met up with Larry at SuperDigital in
Portland, one of his earliest distributors.
What’s your history with microphones?
In ‘71 I went to recording school in Boston. Eli Lilly’s
grandson, George Lilly, was building Renaissance
Recording Studios in Boston. He went around and
found some academics to create a recording school,
and to teach him how to use all this equipment that
he’d bought. He had a big MCI board and eight brand
new Neumann U 87s mics. They taught us the basics
of recording. We’d take this 8-track Scully [tape deck] of my friends.
and drag it to old churches to record pipe organs, Recording a grand piano is such a
harpsichords, and pianos. The instructor came in to
class one day and said, “We’re going to spend the It’s a daunting task. On five different occasions I
whole week at The Jazz Workshop recording this new
guy.” We spent five nights with Chick Corea. Jazz
piano recording sort of set my life in motion.
Chick Corea on acoustic piano?
It was the Circle group, which was his avant-garde
group with Anthony Braxton, Dave Holland, and
Barry Altschul.
Some amazing players.
Yeah. In the last three years Dave Holland, Anthony There was a Wall Street Journal article. At the time I’d
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Braxton, and Chick Corea have all recorded on ADK mics. been collecting mics for 30 years. In a single day, my
Yeah, it comes back around!
Forty years later. My life is complete. Chick did a
recording that’s coming out soon with Jazz at Lincoln
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Center, and they used a pair of our 3 Zigma lipstick
mics; the SD-C cardioids.
That must be an honor.
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If I ever run into Chick Corea again, I’m going to tell
him that he set my life in motion. It’s an honor to
hear some of these tracks, and to know that was what
set out to be my life’s work.
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What happened after that?
I moved from Boston to Phoenix, and I worked at the
Electronic Music Labs at Arizona State University. I
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had an ARP 2600, a Hagstrom guitar, and a Tandberg
half-track with sel sync. I used to sit there and
strum guitar chords on one channel, dump that track
14/Tape Op#103/Mr. Villella/(continued on page 16)
by Larry Crane
over with some synthesizer lead on the second
channel, and then erase the first channel. I had a
little ad agency where I went around and sold
people ads. I made the music beds, wrote the copy,
and did the voiceover. It actually led to a late-night
FM jazz show I hosted.
When did you move to the Portland area?
I moved to Portland about 15 years ago.
What brought that on?
My wife got a scholarship at Lewis & Clark [College] to
go to graduate school. She now teaches there. We had
really young kids at the time. So I went from working
at the Sherman Clay [Pianos] store in Seattle to
working for the affiliate here in Portland. I sold
Steinways for almost 20 years. By day I was selling
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Steinways, and by night I was recording them. In
1997, I just felt like I needed something new that was
all me. I decided to build some microphones for a few
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pleasure, and a task.
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recorded Vladimir Horowitz’s nine-foot concert
Steinway. That was part of the inspiration right
there, trying to figure out how to record a concert You don’t have a background as an
grand piano. I recorded Tom Grant doing jazz, and I
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recorded some of the piano professors in Seattle Right. I hire that.
doing classical.
What was the impetus to build, or I have a mic wizard in Belgium, JP Gerard, who’s my
design, your own mics?
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[Neumann] U 47 went up $4,000 and the Wall Street
Journal suddenly called them collectable investments.
I had a guy who was going to sell me a [Telefunken]
Ela M 251 for $11,000 and the article said they were
worth $18,000. I called him and said I’d give him
$11,000 for his, but he said, “No. The price went up.”
I got mad. I said that it shouldn’t have to cost $5,000 and a half years testing which transformer matched
or $10,000 dollars to have a good sounding mic. I
went to the NAMM show and met some guys in Hall E Donny Wright here at SuperDigital
that were trying to sell microphones from China. I
took a mic home, and it sounded awful. I literally got
on a plane and flew for 26 hours to meet these guys
in Shanghai. I said, “Listen, this sounds bad. This is
what I want it to sound like.” I showed them a
response curve of a [Neumann] U 67. They sent me a
prototype, and I said, “No.” Three prototypes later,
they were starting to get close. I said, “Okay, build
100 of those.” Rob Schrock [Electronic Musician]
reviewed our initial A-51, and he said, “I was
reminded of a U 67.” We were off to the races. Of
course, a year later the big marketing giants jumped
in and copied our first mic.
What was the price point on that mic?
I think it was $400.
So it was really affordable.
At the time, when I was only buying 100 mics, that was
what it had to be. Now it’s under $200. All of our
designs are proprietary. There’s nothing off the shelf.
We’ve moved from $200 or $300 mics into $1,000,
$2,000, or even $3,000 mics.
You had started out with very affordable mics and
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then branched into the higher-end. It seems like a
different trajectory.
If you’re a high-end boutique company that started out
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with a $10,000 mic and then you want to migrate
down into the $1,500 or $2,000 mics, you have the
credibility of your name. But if you’re a little humble
company, like ADK, starting out with a $300 or $400
mic and you suddenly start to build high-end mics,
credibility is difficult to achieve. Everybody used to
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say that it was a great mic for the money. Now, Chuck
Ainlay [Tape Op #97], Bernie Becker, the late Mike
Shipley, all said, “Hey, it’s flat-out good. Period.”
Marketing defies me. People don’t know where to
pigeonhole us. They go, “Who is ADK?” Our $200 mic
sounds good! I don’t build anything I wouldn’t
personally use. I have had people say that they
bought the Thor mic for $400, and if I have anything
better than that, they don’t want to know about it.
Okay, fine! Am I the best bang for the buck under
$500? Am I the surprise in the boutique market? I’ll
let the public and the A-list engineers tell you.
electrical engineer?
Where do you find people?
lead design engineer. He hired an aerospace engineer
PhD from Australia to develop the capsule technology.
I was the middleman, with years of emails going back
and forth. The Australian PhD would say that the spec
was perfect, but JP said that it didn’t sound right, so
he had him do it over. He’s just this little ball of
energy and will not suffer fools gladly. It’s got to be
spot-on. It took us five years to develop the capsule
technology, and then we actually spent another two
up with which of the five capsules.
showed me the case that has all of the
different 3 Zigma heads and bodies
that you can swap out. He said that
sometimes people will take that
overnight and try to find the combo
that they want for a certain
instrument.
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Please Support Our Advertisers/Tape Op#103/15

 Right. The 3 Zigma line has been on the road with Wynton Marsalis for three and a half years
now. They’ve been battle-tested on tour. Our C-LOL-67 lollipop won his quest for the best
saxophone mic. There are about five factories in China putting out about 90 percent of the
microphones in the world today. They may have different brands, but it’s pretty much off
the shelf. ADK doesn’t do business with any of those factories. If you open our microphones
up, you see those giant Wima capacitors. If you look at our high-end mics, we designed the
capsules for them. We put the DNA of the five greatest historical mics into that capsule
design. You don’t need a bunch of extra EQ circuitry to get a tone.
Some mics definitely pull out details in the high-end range that
add clarity, without being shrill.
Right. The real key that we’ve found in our five year saga of developing a capsule is that, with most
everything coming from China, if you put it on a high resolution response curve you see these
little peaky, jagged, sawtooth looking things. It’s not a smooth curve. That’s hell when you’re trying
to EQ, because you want to boost somewhere around 10 kHz, and this one little peak just
skyrockets. There’s that grainy, tizzy, harsh, edgy thing. That’s why we spend all that time
developing our own capsules, to get broadband bell curves, without the jagged edges. That’s why,
if you want a brilliant mic, our C 12 and 251 flavors are brilliant, without harshness. I think that’s
the key. That’s really the heart and soul of what I try to do, to have the microphones be musical.

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So how does the company work, at this point?
We have three factories. There’s the factory that we had built for our high-end 3 Zigma in Asia.
We have a factory that builds our entry-level mics; it’s ISO 9000 and so clean you could eat

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off the floor. We also have a small factory near Seattle where we build our high-end products.
The mic you have [Z-67] was handcrafted in the USA. Eighty-five percent of the components,
and 90 percent of the labor, is American or European.
People might not know this.
It’s handcrafted in the USA, and by dollars, 85 percent of the components in there (like the
Lundahl transformer from Sweden) are European, American, or British.

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With three different manufacturing locations, is there a
warehouse somewhere? How do you deal with quality control
and shipping?

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I have a warehouse in Tacoma, WA. I ship almost everything from there.
What makes ADK unique?
If I have achieved anything, it’s because I’ve been open to criticism. As I said, with Chuck
Ainlay, I gave him mics for 15 years and got criticism and feedback. If I’ve got any strength,
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it’s that I’m just a little guy at the hub of a big wheel with spokes going in many directions.
I’m trying to do what I was trained to do in 1971 as a recording engineer – listen. r
<adkmicrophones.com>
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16/Tape Op#103/Mr. Villella/(Fin.)

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 Tanya Donelly
by Kraig Mason
In 1985, when I was 15 years old, my best friend’s older brother gave
me a cassette tape that said “Throwing Muses Demo” on the label. The
first time I played it I was completely blown away - it was like nothing
that I had ever heard before. But somehow the fact that the people
that made the music on the tape lived two towns away made it seem

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tangible. I was already a home 4-tracker and budding songwriter,
but the existence of this tape made it seem that I could make
“real” music someday as well. Some 28 years later, through
many serendipitous connections, I have had the pleasure of

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working with Throwing Muses co-founder Tanya Donelly as a
producer, engineer, and collaborator. Beyond Throwing
Muses, Tanya has been involved in the seminal bands The
Breeders and Belly and has an illustrious solo career.

Can you give me an overview of the Swan
Song Series?
Swan Song Series is a collection of EPs released digitally
through my site and Bandcamp. They are
collaborations, primarily with friends from over the
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might fit me. Everybody pretty much rose to that,
which was a happy surprise for me. I think it made
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the whole thing much more joyful and fun. For In a lot of ways, you had to act like a
instance, if someone sent me words, I wrote music
that I wouldn’t have written in my own lyrical style.
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amazed by, and happy with, everything that came
back. It ended up being a very successful experiment.
general contractor for these sessions,
keeping tabs on the songs in
different stages of completion in

years, but also with people that I reached out to, such
as authors and other musicians that I admired but
didn’t know. I reached out to them to either write with
me, or play on the music that I was making. There were
If someone sent me music, then the words that came
out of me would not have come out otherwise. The different studios.
whole process was really wonderful and engaging for I like that. That should be an official musical title.
me, in a way that I hadn’t really felt in a while. Oddly, “General Contractor.” It did feel like that.
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also producers that I wanted to work with, such as
yourself. Basically, the inspiration for this came from
the Cabinet of Wonders that my friend John Wesley
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even though it was a massive project with dozens You would send me an email and say,
and dozens of people involved, it ended up feeling “Hey, are you available on this day?
like a real community project in a way. It feels like a We’ll do this piece.” Sometimes it was
even for pieces that we weren’t

Harding puts together. At the end of those nights, giant band to me. That’s been really wonderful.
people were reaching out to each other, saying, “ Let’s Do you think that the process itself working on directly.
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write something together.” I followed up on those created results that wouldn’t have I will say that the people that I worked with - you, [Paul
conversations almost immediately. The songs I wrote happened, had you gone in a more Q.] Kolderie [Tape Op #22], and Scott Janovitz - were
with Wes, Mary Gaitskill, and Rick Moody came from traditional direction? people that I already trusted implicitly from the
those events. From that point I just kept the ball Yes. Part of that is the fact that I wasn’t just writing with production and engineering end of things. By putting
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rolling. That’s where that was all born from. other people. It was also the process of recording it into the hands of engineers and producers who I
Were you surprised how the results with so many of them. Sometimes I’m in the room could trust, and who I knew were going to get me
came out? when things are being recorded, and sometimes I’m something of great quality, I took less risk in that
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I was, and I wasn’t, surprised. I went into it wanting to
push my own boundaries and do something that felt
more like a village of people making music together.
That came exactly as I expected. I think that what
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not. That was a very different experience. I think department.
there was more trust. For instance, Jacob Valenzuela How many different studios were part of
from Calexico plays trumpet on a song called “Making the project?
Light.” He came back with this beautiful, perfect Tons of them. A lot of people worked with their home

surprised me was just the fact that when I went into part. That happened over and over again, and I feel studios as well and sent tracks in from their homes;
it, I told everyone not to send me a song that they like it was a very opening experience for me. I think like Chris Ewen did everything at home. It was really
thought would sound like me. That was one of my it’s difficult sometimes, as a songwriter and musician, kind of all over the place. Probably eight or nine
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prerequisites. I’m coming to these people because I to just say, “Here’s my song. Do what you’re going to studios, at the end of the day. [See sidebar]
like what they do, so I told them to send me what do with it and I’ll accept it!” There was not one case What was your methodology for keeping
they do, not to try to tailor it to what they thought where I did that and was disappointed. I was just all of it organized and on time?
18/Tape Op#103/Ms. Donelly/(continued on page 20)
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I didn’t have any methodology at all. Any time constraints What you did for Swan Song Series is a lot Yes. His pre-production was brutal and necessary. It was
were of my own making, so it was very flexible. There different than what you did in the eye-opening. It was interesting to work with someone
were several times that I delayed a release because I past, especially with the bands you who was coming from the perspective of wanting you
was waiting for something to be mixed or mastered. were in. Making a Throwing Muses or a to have everything ready to go when you come into the
The methodology was all over the place. It really went Belly recording, you’re in one place studio. We spent as much pre-production time with him
song by song. It depended on who was responsible for for a specific amount of time and had as we did recording time. It was really fun, for one
what, who was contributing what, and if we were to complete a record. thing. It felt like we were building something. He came
waiting on a musician to finish a part and send the Right. It’s totally different. This project is not an album. I at it looking at whether or not we needed a part, or
track. Every step of the way was just a very daily, never meant for it to be as cohesive and thematic, or for it whether something was essential. As writers, it’s like,
organic process. to have the same feeling. In fact, I wanted it to be as “Yes, of course it’s essential! That’s the part where I do
No project management software? No scattershot as possible. I feel like with albums, that little this, and that’s so important!” In terms of
spreadsheets? microcosm of both space and time is really important for craftsmanship, he’s the master. I mean it in the best
None. Nothing like that. Everything came together at Q making something that sounds and feels like an album. possible way. He’s a songwriter’s producer.
Division [Studios], where I mastered half the stuff, and Clearly this is an arguable point of view, but I personally What about other producers?
with Eric Masunaga [Modulus Studios] who mastered half. feel like the albums that I love as a listener - and the Gil Norton was awesome. He’s wonderful and was a friend
I think the tightest one was something like, albums I love that I’ve made - have been this finite thing of ours for years on the back of that. I feel that we
“I need this by Saturday.” You were here where we’re going from one place to another place, we’re [Throwing Muses] went into it quite armored. We were
on a Thursday, so I still had to mix what going with these people, and it’s going to be in this room. anxious about what the big, fancy producer was going

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we did with Gail Greenwood [of Belly]. You hear that. It’s a whole, enclosed piece when you make to do to us. We were teenagers, so we were nervous.
Oh, yeah. The one with Gail was the tightest one. It was it that way. You have a cohesive thing, as opposed to a It’s funny. We just felt like he was trying to
hard to get Gail and I into the room at the same time bunch of songs put in one place to listen to. It’s bigger overproduce, putting bells and whistles on. But when I

for a while. Scheduling wise, not emotionally!
Something you mentioned once stuck
with me. With all the time that you
spent at Fort Apache, it was more than
just a studio. It was like a creative
homebase, and a community. Was this
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than that. I think the downside is that you can have listen to that record now [Throwing Muses’ self-titled
weaker songs that are supported by the stronger one. Now debut], I think it sounds so much like us. It’s so raw
I feel like the songs really have to be stronger. If you’re compared to other stuff. Part of that was us fighting
doing everything piece-by-piece, or putting out one song things that he wanted to do, but a lot of it is because
at a time, they have to be stronger. I’ve been guilty of filler. he was dealing with four very right-out-of-the-cradle
It’s like, “Oh, we only have 12 songs. We should have 14.” musicians. We were extremely defensive of what we

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a way for you to recreate that? “What’s that other song you’ve got?” were doing, as we should have been; but I think that
I hadn’t thought about that; but yes, I think that’s it “What’s that awful thing that we hated? Let’s do that.” we overreacted sometimes to certain things. Like
exactly. My ideal music making is like the zocalo at the You’ve worked with some “big name reverb. We were rubbing up against reverb. Now I’m

end of the night, when the whole village comes together
and everybody plays at whatever level of talent and
enthusiasm that they are able. I love that feeling. It’s
even greater than being on a team. That’s how the Fort
felt to me. There were so many people invested in it, in
and out of those doors, and I do miss that. That was part Yes. I think those were all like blind date situations. We The rule of four! A backup for backups. That was the Kolderie
of this too, to pull all those threads together.
As an artist, do you feel that the studio
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producers.” Paul Q. Kolderie, Glyn Johns, like, “Juice it up!” At the time, we were also anxious
Gil Norton, Gary Smith, and Dennis about everything. But he’s a wonderful producer,
Herring [Tape Op#48]. Does working with clearly. I don’t think that has to be said.
somebody that is also a star in the One of the techniques that you learned,
on
recording world make a difference? and have used, is the “rule of four...”
were absolutely set up. I think that it worked out, and Slade trick, where you sing it four times, don’t worry
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experience lends itself to your creative
process?
Absolutely. I think that when the Muses were very young
particularly with Glyn, who I absolutely love as a about what’s coming out, and then listen to all four
person and a producer. That was a very good match for together. Most of the time when you blend them it works
us in every way; personality-wise and work-wise. He out. The edges smooth themselves out, miraculously.
brought Jack Joseph [Puig] with him too, which was It really does work.
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and we were just getting started working with Gary great. They were an amazing team, because they I’ve done it ever since. Another trick that Jack Joseph and
Smith, in particular, and later [Paul Q.] Kolderie and totally complemented each other stylistically. It was Glyn taught me was that you sing in the control room
[Sean] Slade [Tape Op #22], it was the training ground just a great experience. with the speakers just perfectly aligned, so that it’s out
for us. Fort Apache was where all the pre-production That record, Belly’s King, was banged
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of phase where you can’t hear the track in the mic. That
happened. That’s where the inspiration came, from out live? way I don’t have to sing with headphones. I prefer not
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being in the same room, with the same people, day in When we were auditioning and meeting with producers, to sing with headphones. It depends on the song, but
and day out, for weeks at a time. It absolutely adds Glyn was the only one who said that he thought we for the most part I like to hear myself in the room.
something. The model of working with another pair of should make a live record. We thought that was That’s a trick I learned from them that I’ve since
ears is really important to me. Almost every producer or exciting. He said that he’d seen us live and that we applied, but it’s not always the best.
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engineer we ever worked with was as much a part of were a great live band. Of course there are layers to You’ve got to show me how to do that.
making those albums as we were. We were very open to that one somewhat, but for the most part King is Oh god, I don’t know how to do it myself. Talk to Scott
suggestions. We started understanding how important completely and entirely live. That really appealed to us. Janovitz. He figured it out for me. You get a tiny bit of
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the placement of a mic was, or how you can play with And we were smitten with him, I’ll admit. bleed, but I’m willing to sacrifice a little bit of that for
equipment outside of your own personal gear. That was Just from your meetings? a good vocal, of course.
illuminating. I absolutely am old school, in terms of From his history, the meetings, and the potential storytelling You like it because you feel like you’re
how I feel about studios; as well as the people that hours. I know some people find him prickly, but the way more in the music itself?
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work in them and bring their extra level and layer of it translates to me is that he’s honest. He doesn’t pull Yes, and because I’m not alone, standing in a room behind
inspiration to a project. I think that comes directly from punches, but he’s certainly not an unkind man. He never glass. Which is fine too. When I’m singing anything
Gary Smith, I have to say. He’s just very egalitarian rubbed me the wrong way at all, not for a second. super personal... everything I do is somewhat
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about how he produces, in terms of listening to That goes back to what you were saying personal... but if I’m singing something that ‘s
everyone in the room. I think that set a template for us about having another set of ears that potentially upsetting to me, I prefer to be behind glass,
and what we expected from that relationship. will be honest with you. in another room with the headphones on. But
20/Tape Op#103/Ms. Donelly/(continued on page 22)
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 particularly for songs that I have to sing out and really Artwork was so important. That’s another way of pulling
push, I want to be in the room, with the people, and
have the music in the room with me.
You’d say that we were going to do vocals,
line by line. You’d have specific ideas
about how you wanted to do sessions
going in. As an engineer, that makes
it so easy.
That’s nice to hear.
And then I’d make the face if I thought again. How is that?
that what you were doing was out of It’s been amazing. It’s just been so much fun. It’s this
tune. utopian situation for me, because I get to play my new
Yep, every producer’s got a face they make, or a physical
quirk that accompanies that.
You were saying, “I need to be able to see
you so that I know when you don’t like
what I’m doing.”
Exactly!
For the distribution of Swan Song Series
you’re using social media, the
website, and Bandcamp. How is that
working?
I love it. I’ve had many calls for vinyl, but really just a
handful for CDs. I’d be happy to do that, at some
point. I like it because it’s the first time I’ve ever had
product control myself. I don’t mean that in any kind
of micromanaging way. It’s just like having a
boutique. It makes the floating of everything easier
for me. I can budget myself. I know what I’m able to
do and what I’m not. There’s a direct connection to
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the people. I love the fact that someone will be like,
“Here’s $5 for the new EP,” and then they can write
me a note! It’s just so folksy and sweet. There’s
something really nice about reading those. I like that
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personal transaction. It feels more gratifying to me
right now, at this stage of my life.
Swan Song Series’
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Studios Used
Appleman Studio, Stoneham, MA
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Plan of a Boy, Providence, RI
Seaside Lounge, Brooklyn, NY
Urban Geek Studio, Brooklyn, NY
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Praxis Studio, Athens, Greece
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Camp Street Studios, Cambridge, MA
Moontower Studio, Somerville, MA
Q Division Studios, Somerville, MA
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Mad Oak Studios, Allston, MA
Modulus Studios, Boston, MA
One Ring Zero Studio, Brooklyn, NY
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We need vinyl!
Yeah, vinyl would be cool. And wouldn’t Sue McNally’s <www.tanyadonelly.com>
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paintings look amazing? That’s 60 percent of why I Kraig is at <www.planofaboy.com>
want to do vinyl - to get Sue McNally’s paintings in a
tangible form. She’s one of my favorite artists. I think
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it would look beautiful.
In my formative years I’d listen to the
music and I’d look at the cover.
22/Tape Op#103/Ms. Donelly/(Fin.)
people in from your community that you admire.
Something that broadens the music. Talking about the
artwork was one of my favorite parts of putting an
album together. I have felt like that with the Swan
Song Series. While I’ve felt that satisfaction in having
her piece accompany each [digital] EP, I would also
like to hold it in my hands.
You’re playing live with Throwing Muses
stuff, some Belly songs, and then some solo songs. I
get to do this set before the Muses’ set, which is half
catalog and half new stuff, and then I get to play a set
with the Muses! I feel like every night is this
retrospective thing for me. It’s been gratifying. For so
long I avoided playing older songs, or songs that were
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too connected to some time in my life that I was still
struggling with. Certain songs represented something
inaccurate, or some inaccurate representation to me.
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It’d be too cheesy to do one song, too soon to do
another, or too late to do another. Now I have none of
that baggage left at all, so I’ll play whatever song I
feel like playing. That’s been really wonderful. Playing
with Kristin [Hersh], Dave [Narcizo], and Bernie
[Georges] has been wonderful. I love the people in my
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solo band too, so top to bottom it’s been a good
experience. I think that’s what’s nice about it for us is
that it’s a very good balance of everybody
acknowledging that there’s a little bit of nostalgia
involved; but primarily the Muses are playing new
songs, and so am I. We’re feeling like when we do play
the old stuff, it fits in a very nice way and brings the
room together. I think that we have a balance,
material-wise, that makes everyone happy.
You can hear the song itself, but you
can approach it the way that you want
to now.
Yeah. Right. For that reason, I feel like the old stuff fits
in. These old ones are just part of a lifetime’s body of
work. So are the new ones. It just feels good. And
personally, it couldn’t be more fun hanging out with
those guys again.
You’re entering 30 years in the music
business.
I know. What the hell?
What advice to you have for anyone
making music right now?
My advice has always been the same, which is to trust
your instincts and surround yourself with people that
you love and trust. I think you should make sure that
you’re paying attention to your personal muse, as well
as being open to influences that are going to enhance
that; but not to the point where you lose the original
voice. I feel like that advice is timeless. r
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 Legendary record producer Bill in and it was hypnotic. B.B. said, ‘I want to come to the decades later on the sheer serendipity of it all, he hones in
Szymczyk helped dial in sounds for The session,’ and I said, ‘Of course, come.’ I was engineering on his central role in discovering, and helping to shape,
Eagles, Joe Walsh, The James Gang, The Who, Elvin the string overdubs, and glanced over at him. When he the solo career of Joe Walsh; something he counts among
Bishop, and The J. Geils Band. Many have argued started smiling, I thought, ‘Okay, I’m good now.’ ” his proudest moments as a producer. “Once I’d had success
that AOR [Album-Orientated Rock] radio was “When we started recording ‘The Thrill is Gone,’ the with B.B., the record company said, ‘Maybe you do know
launched on a handful of producers’ – including basic track for that was cut as the last tune on maybe a 7 to what you’re doing,’ I kept telling them, ‘I want to sign my
Szymczyk’s – watch. His many hits for The Eagles 11 p.m. session. I think B.B. was playing [his guitar] Lucille own band, because I’m not just a blues guy. I want to make
only add weight to that theory. through a Fender amp, and he recorded vocals while he was a rock ‘n’ roll record.’ They said, ‘Okay, go out and find
Bill’s first big break into the playing guitar. I only overdubbed him vocally on one cut, somebody, and sign them.’ I had a friend of mine who used
business as a producer would come courtesy of his and that was years later on ‘Hummingbird.’ On B.B.’s to be a roommate in New York, named Dick Korn, who
late 1960’s collaboration with blues legend B.B. vocal for ‘The Thrill is Gone,’ and others, I tended to use had moved to Cleveland and was working as the
King. “The Thrill is Gone’s” title may have some echo and some reverb; but nothing like we would do manager/head bartender at this rock club called Otto’s
advertised a somber mood, but working side by side nowadays, with delays and whatnot. Ahead of the session Grotto. It was in the basement of the Statler Hotel. He said,
with B.B., Szymczyk remembers the studio vibe as starting, we’d sat down in the studio with the players and ‘Man, there’re a bunch of great acts coming through here.
being just the opposite. “He had a big smile on his face worked out the arrangement. He said, ‘Okay, I like this.’ You’ve gotta come and check some of them out!’ So I
the first time he heard the first rundown of the mix. This He was all for it, and we did the whole album with my started going to Cleveland, and in the course of three or
was following a call I’d made to him at 2 o’clock in the musicians. ‘The Thrill is Gone’ became one of his biggest four visits, a band called The Tree Stumps – which was an

morning. I’d dialed him up and said, ‘I want to put strings
on this.’ And he said, ‘What?’ Then he said, ‘Well, okay.
I’ll try it.’ Because he believed in me. So I had Bert de
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awful name – came through. The lead singer was Michael
hits. I was just flipping out over that. Working with B.B., I
was thrilled at being able to record a legend, and have Stanley, and I really liked his tunes and his voice. I signed
success doing it!” them and changed their name to Silk. The next group I
Following success with B.B. King, signed was a three-piece, power trio called The James

Coteaux, who was my arranger at the time, write a nice
string chart for it. The only thing I told Burt was, ‘I want
it to be dark. I want it to be not joyful in any way; the thrill
is gone. I want it to be a dark string chart.’ He brought it
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it was the producer’s kindred collaboration with lead Gang. I made records with both of them. Silk barely
guitarist Joe Walsh and his group The James Gang that cracked the charts, but The James Gang got played a lot and
first launched Szymczyk onto ‘70s rock radio. Looking back that was the beginning of their career.”

Bill S z y mc zy k Looks
B i l l Szymczyk Back
l o o k S Back

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In the early ‘70s, between the James
Gang’s breakout hit “Funk #49,” and later Joe Walsh
solo smashes like “Rocky Mountain Way,” Szymczyk
and Walsh set up shop at the studios of Caribou
Ranch in Colorado. “Joe moved out to Denver just
shortly after I did. He actually moved up to Nederland,
Colorado. We’d heard [producer] Jimmy Guercio – who
I had met a couple times, but not gotten to know very well
– was living just outside Nederland on a huge ranch and
building a studio. Walsh and I went over there and were
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astounded at how it looked; it was under construction and
not quite complete. They had a little MCI 400 console
and a 16-track reel machine. There was about a two-year
run where I was up there. It was like inmates running the
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asylum, because there was nobody around. If something
broke, we had to fix it – me, my assistant, and whoever the
band was.” Along with recording hits like Rick
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Derringer’s “Rock & Roll Hoochie Koo,” Szymczyk’s
personal highlight was the recording of the Walsh’s
“Rocky Mountain Way,” an audio adventure that had
actually begun “when Joe was producing himself at
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Criteria [Studios, Miami], where he had done the drums.
He’d done this shuffle track by himself that eventually
turned into ‘Rocky Mountain Way.’ He brought it back
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L-R: Bill Szymczyk, B.B. King, Phil Ramone,
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backstage at The Village Gate, NY, 1968
and basically we stripped everything off, except the drums,
and started over again – all the bass, kick, piano, the
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guitars, and everything. By then he’d had the words, but
when he first cut the track, he was thinking, ‘Let’s just do
this blues-shuffle thing.’ Two to three months later, when
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we were working at Caribou, he had the song done, so we
knew exactly how to go about finishing it. Joe liked to layer
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his guitar tracks; there’re like six or seven guitars of various
kinds, and the talk box.”
In 1974, Bill caught the ears of the fast-
rising group the Eagles. The band recruited
Szymczyk in an effort to shed their softer, country-leaning
side for a harder-edged sound. This was an ambition the
group made obvious from their first introductory meeting,
“Irving Azoff [the Eagles’ manager] set up a meeting
between me and the band. We had dinner and they asked
me questions about rock. I was hesitant about doing it – I
didn’t want to do a ‘cowboy’ band; I wanted to do a rock ‘n’
roll band. When they said, ‘We wanna rock!’ I said, ‘Well
good. If you wanna rock, I’m your man!’ One thing led to
another, and we started working together.”
From session one Szymczyk recalled that “with
the Eagles, my M.O. was to try and keep everything light,
happy, and moving forward, as well as eliminate as much
Mr. Szymczyk/(continued on page 26)/Tape Op#103/25
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hassle as possible from outside the control room, and
inside the control room.” From the very first track the
team cut together, “Already Gone,” it was obvious
the chemistry was working, with Bill proudly
pointing to the chart-topper as “the very first cut I did
with them. That was a Jack Tempchin song they brought
in. They said, ‘We’ve been playing around with this for a
while.’ It was a case of, ‘Well, let’s just turn it up and go!’
Glenn Frey had the opportunity to play lead guitar, which
[former producer] Glyn Johns would never let him do,
because it was always Bernie [Leadon]. Bernie was the
country player, and Johns gravitated towards that, as
opposed to Glenn Frey. Frey was not as gifted a musician,
at the time, as Bernie was; but he really had the desire to
rock, so I took a lot of time with him on the guitar solos,
as well as the sounds of the rhythm guitars, and we were off.
I would maybe use one of three different mics on a guitar
amp: a [Shure] SM57, an AKG C414, and a Sennheiser.
I wasn’t double-mic’ing anything in those days, and I
always tracked everybody in the same room, but I would
gobo the amps off from one another. We were recording
at Record Plant Studio A in L.A. – the original 3rd Street
Record Plant. We were recording on a Quad Eight 16-
channel console.”
 Following the success of albums On Don Henley picked up on that. He didn’t have any idea
the Border and One of These Nights (a Grammy what the song was going to be about, but said, ‘Let’s work
winner for Album of the Year in 1975), Szymczyk on this riff for a while.’ During the acoustic introduction
and the group – who now included longtime of the song, where Don Felder opens with his signature
collaborator Joe Walsh – would embark on their riff, he was playing a 12-string, which I recorded with three
most ambitious studio adventure yet, as they mics. My go-to mic for recording acoustic guitar was a
headed in to record an album that went on to sell Neumann KM 84 – I’ve used the same one since before
a staggering 32 million copies. The musical mythos ‘Hotel California,’ and I still use it to this day. But Don
of Hotel California would revolve around everything had a pickup in his guitar, off to a pair of small Orange
one could expect from the making of an epic album, amps, and I mic’d them in stereo. The initial opening
beginning with the now legendarily lengthy writing guitar intro is acoustic guitar in the middle, and an amp
sessions. “We’d work for three weeks, then take a month on both sides, with a chorus that is flowing back and forth
off. During that month off is when Don [Henley] and between the two amps.”
Glenn would write lyrics. They had innate talent as Eventually the producer discovered that to reach
songwriters, and fed off each other brilliantly, much like sonic perfection, the song would be recorded by the
Lennon and McCartney. They’d go to each other’s band three full times before everyone felt they had
houses, and then come back to the studio for the next finally gotten the perfect take. He confirms, “We
the wrong key. The third time’s the charm, and that’s the
version that everybody knows. By then, he pretty much had
90% of the lyrics done.”
By the time he was ready to team Felder and
Walsh up as a stereo pair on the song’s outro solo,
the producer remembered feeling Joe’s greatest
assets as a player shone brilliantly alongside
Felder’s own, one that went down over, “a two-day
period working at Criteria Studios. We ran lines out to the
amplifiers in the studio, but they were both performing in
the control room. I was in the middle, Joe Walsh was on
one side, Don Felder was on the other side, and we just
attacked this ending blend of solos. It took us two days, but
it is still one of the highlights of my career. There was a lot
of stop/start and, ‘Let’s try this,’ and, ‘That didn’t work,’
‘Well, if we did this with that, maybe that would work.’
Piece by piece by piece until before it was done. They were

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session with, ‘Well, here it is.’ Glenn and Don, by that indeed recorded that track three times! The first time we equal gunfighters, Joe and Don.”
point, both knew who was going to sing lead on what song, did it was too fast, but you’re doing a track, and you have Bill joked throughout the process that, “the
and they would always have decided that prior to cutting no idea what the words are, or where they’re going to be. console was my weapon.” By the time the team had
the lead vocal.” When Don would start to get an idea about what to write declared victory and neared the album’s finish line,

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The iconic title track, “Hotel about, he said, ‘Well, this is going to be too fast. We’ve got a final flash of inspiration arrived when Walsh and
California,” began after Szymczyk first heard the riff to cut it again.’ So we cut it again. Then he progressed Henley took the wheel, co-writing “Life in the Fast
off, “a cassette of a bunch of Don Felder riffs and ideas. further with the song’s writing, and next decided it was in Lane.” One of rock radio’s most rotated classics, the

Bill Szymczyk, B.B. King at The Record Plant, L.A., 1970

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26/Tape Op#103/Mr. Szymczyk/(continued on page 28)

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producer instantly recognized the potential of there were a lot of expectations. Everybody was like, ‘How As the 1980’s dawned, Pete
Walsh’s riff. “That was Joe’s tune. He brought that lick are we going to top that?’ According to the critics we Townshend came knocking on Bill
in, and Henley wrote the words. By that point in my didn’t, but in my mind it was a very, very good album – it Szymczyk’s door, offering him what would have
working relationship with Joe, when I heard a riff of his, I
just took forever to get done. The pressure was seriously sounded like any producer’s dream gig: producing
could tell when it was a hit riff, and we all jumped on that
high, and everybody was getting a little antsy with each The Who’s Face Dances LP. In truth, the band was
one. Most of the lead solo overdubs were done in the other. That’s when the dissension in the ranks started. having a hard time escaping the dark shadow cast
control room, but the original basic track would have been
Instead of the old all-for-one/one-for-all, it was, ‘What over them by the recent death of their longtime
done with everybody in the studio. Once we started about me?’ and a lot of that attitude. They were still a drummer, placing their new producer in the
overdubbing guitars, they would come in one at a time.
team, but instead of everybody riding in the same car, unenviable position of making, “their first album after
But for ‘Life in the Fast Lane,’ that’s all Joe; even though
eating together, and staying in the same house, it was two Keith Moon had passed away. Kenney Jones was the
Felder played some rhythm parts and doubled the lead lick
or three different houses, everybody had their own car, drummer, so he and I were the ‘new kids.’ There were the
an octave higher, it was all support to what Joe was doing
and it was more standoffish, if you will. But when they got usual band rifts going on. For instance, they didn’t want to
on guitar.” into the studio, 90 percent of the time we all got along be around when Roger [Daltrey] was doing vocals, and
As he wrapped production on what would go on good and did our work. We would always track together. Roger never showed up when we were cutting tracks. I’d
to become one of the best-selling rock albums of all We might replace one thing if it didn’t fit later on, but we have to do each one of them individually, almost. That was
time, Szymczyk had already set his sights on would do five-piece, live off the floor all the time.” the hardest record I ever had to produce. I worked my ass
recording Joe Walsh’s third solo studio album, But One pleasure the producer took great satisfaction in off on that.”
Seriously, Folks... “Life’s Been Good” features with the making of The Long Run came with the fact that “Pete was the reason I did that album. He’s the one that

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another one of Walsh’s infectious hooks, and the he was working on his own turf this time around, allowing wanted to hire me.” Szymczyk was able to throw the
song was a summary of all the glorious excess of him to maintain a sonic order of sorts. “We recorded that notion of a “concept album” out the window. “Pete
stardom the Eagles had reached by that point. “To record mostly at my studio. There were some things done brought songs in, and because he did not have a cohesive

get the album underway, we rented a 72-foot yacht out of
Miami and went down to the [Florida] Keys with a 4-track
machine and all their instruments. We spent a week down
in the Keys hashing these tunes out. Pretty much
everything on the album was rehearsed on that boat. ‘Life’s
Been Good’ was one of them.”
at Record Plant in L.A, but we did most of it in Miami,
which was the first one we’d recorded at my studio. Hotel
California was done at Criteria and Record Plant. Right as
we were finishing I was building my studio, Bayshore
Recording. It had a relatively dead room, about the same
size as Record Plant Studio A. It was not a huge room, but
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Quadrophenia or Tommy vibe to it, it was strictly, ‘Here’re a
bunch of songs.’ There was no storyline to follow, per se;
but, unlike the Eagles, he had the songs finished. For
instance, that bubbly loop in ‘You Better You Bet’ – he
brought that in and we basically overdubbed everything to
that. We also had John “Rabbit” Bundrick, the piano

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Bill favored the Neumann U 87 as his, “basic go- it worked really, really well for how I wanted the studio to player, who Pete just loved (and I could see why), playing
to vocal mic, at that point. To me, it was a very high-quality sound; regardless of who I was recording. Studios are on every one of the tracks while we were cutting. He was
microphone. Mostly I did not have access to the old U 47s people’s personal taste and, at that time, in 1976, we filling in a lot of the melodic stuff.”

and the classic Neumanns. I never had any of those, but an
87 was basically a U 67, just with transistors instead of
tubes. It worked great with Joe. There are a bunch of
effects on his vocals for ‘Life’s Been Good.’ On the verses,
there’s a digital delay that’s left and right that is maybe 40
milliseconds on one side, 80 milliseconds on the other.
Then I take that off on the choruses and put a [Cooper]
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weren’t doing a lot of live-room stuff; things were still
pretty much dead. It wasn’t until about ten years later that
the big live-room drum sound came into being and
everybody was changing to that. The studio had all the
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equipment I wanted as far as outboard gear, which
included a bunch of [Urie] LA-3a and 1176 [limiting
amplifiers], a couple Eventide digital delays and
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The producer remembers Townsend having, “five
or six different amps to go to. We’d put up some mics, and
away we’d go. As a player, he was the epitome of a slash-
and-burn guy. He would attack it, and it was fun to watch.
Pete was impressive as a guitar player, songwriter,
visionary, and just all-around really good guy. I still am in
communication with him to this day.” While he enjoyed

Time Cube on him.”
In what could have become one of rock’s greatest
travesties, the producer revealed that the song almost
didn’t make it on the album. “We got back to my studio,
Harmonizers (which were really, really new at the time),
my old trusty Cooper Time Cube, as well as a MCI
JH-500 Series console. I had a little help in designing
that one, because MCI was right up the street, in
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his collaboration with Pete, when reflecting on his
opinion of the album following its release, the
producer confesses, “I’ll be honest with you. To this day
I’m not real happy with the mix of the whole album. It was

which by this point was set up at Bayshore [Recording
Studios] in Miami. All the way through making the record,
he was getting more and more hesitant about putting this
Fort Lauderdale.” tough, because of a lot of the dissention. Plus there was
But there was a looming question: some serious drinking going on – not by me, but by the
“How do you top Hotel California? That’s the thing I band members – so it was a rough record to make.”
Bill took some time off in the mid
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song out, because he thought the public would take it the remember most about The Long Run. Initially it was going
wrong way lyrically. I was the one who was just on him to be a double album. They figured, ‘What if we give and later ‘80s to recuperate from the grind of his
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constantly, saying, ‘No.’ At one point he wasn’t even going
to finish it. I told him, ‘You must finish this. This is a killer
record!’ Finally he agreed, and the rest is history. I did
change a couple of melody lines in it, so it made it easier for
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them a double album, and really stretch out?’ We would production schedule throughout the previous
cut track, after track, after track. The songwriting modus decade. “I didn’t have the desire to be in the studio 24/7
operandi was that the music would come first; the lyrics like I used to.” But he readied himself after receiving
would come later, to be written to the track. We had the call many rock fans thought would never come

him to sing and gave it more of a lighthearted feeling. roughly under 20 tracks, but they were in certain stages again. Signed on to co-produce the Eagles’ reunion
Initially it was (singing in low, slow tone) ‘Life’s been good of completion. We were into this album about a year album, the aptly titled Long Road Out of Eden, the
to me so far.’ It was a real kind of down and dour, and I when they realized, ‘Well, hell, we’re never going to get a producer set his sights on the strategy of, “wanting
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said, ‘You’ve gotta be exuberant there. LIFE’S BEEN double album.’ So they just concentrated on the ones to take everybody back to the mindset where it was all-for-
GOOD TO ME SO FAR!’” that were the most fully lyrically done, and that’s what one/one-for-all. We initially started out that way. Notice
It was the end of the 1970s, turned out to be the final track listing. There are about how I said ‘initially.’ After six to eight months, it became
and Szymczyk‘s run of successful collaborations eight or nine tracks that are floating around, left over.” the old ‘me/mine’ kind of thing. ‘Who’s the leader of the
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with the Eagles proved true the adage that all good The album satisfied fans, as well as the band’s appetite band?’ ‘Who’s making choices?’ To me, that’s purely ego.
things must come to an end. The Long Run would for one last go-around, selling seven million copies and To get around that to keep work going, I relied on humor
become the band’s last studio album for almost 25 producing three Top 10 singles with “Heartache and just keeping it light. That’s the best recommendation
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years. “All the way through the making of Hotel California Tonight,” “The Long Run,” and “I Can’t Tell You Why.” It’s I can say, because I was never a dictator in the studio. I just
everybody was getting along pretty good. But coming off a perfect swan song for Bill and the band. try to keep the whole situation as light as possible. I also try
the heels of the success of Hotel California, among the band to try out everybody’s ideas.”
28/Tape Op#103/Mr. Szymczyk/(continued on page 30)
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 As the band returned to their old habit of writing while they recorded, the
band managed to amass what Szymczyk revealed was two albums worth of material. “When
the record was done I thought it should have been a single album. I thought there was too much
there. There are probably ten tracks that were cut but never finished, and some of them are
just astounding rockers. Nobody was really getting exhausted, because we were all older,
married, and had kids. We were working from 10 to 6 instead of from 2 in the afternoon ‘til
3 in the morning. Everybody had to go home. One had to take his kid to basketball practice,
and another had to take their kid to piano practice. It was more family-oriented and daytime
hours vs. all night. That also meant if two people in the band did have an argument, they could
leave it, come back the next morning fresh, and hopefully not antagonistic.”
Bill was also dealing with several new dynamics within the group’s musical
makeup, first and foremost being the absence of co-lead guitarist Don Felder, whose
final album with the band had been The Long Run. New member additions also
translated to there being, “a couple of other differences in the recording process. Don
Henley was not playing anywhere near as much drums. Scott Crago was playing more than half
the drums on the live shows. They’d also fired Don Felder. This was when I first met Steuart
Smith, who is a brilliant musician and could play anything with strings on it. A lot of things
were different, and most of it was musically for the better, as far as playing goes. I focused on

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Joe Walsh and Steuart both. Joe and Steuart were fine because Steuart wasn’t an Eagle, and his
ego was totally in check. He brought a lot to the table, and is also credited as a co-producer on
that album. Me, Richard F.W. Davis (who was the keyboard player and Pro Tools operator),

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Steuart Smith, and Scott Crago, were all co-producers. It says: ‘Produced by the Eagles; co-
produced by us four or five guys.’ I liked having that kind of democracy, and was happy to be
back with them again.”
These days, still making records in his early 70s, Szymczyk
keeps at it. “What gets me up and going in the studio each morning after so many years
of doing it? Coffee! I don’t have to be in the studio like I used to, but it’s the creative process

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itself that I still love. [I love] doing what a producer does: here’s your script, the song; here’re
your actors, the players. You’ve got to guide the whole thing through to the end where it’s a
great-sounding record. It’s a drug, number one; it still jazzes me when something I have a

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vision for works and turns out good.” After producing Dishwalla’s self-titled fourth
studio LP in 2005, and ex-Verve Pipe frontman Brian Vander Ark’s self-titled third
studio LP in 2008, Bill worked with his son in the studio, an experience Michael
Szymczyk posted about on his Facebook page, sharing that, “In July 2010 my Dad and
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I worked on this EP, and it was an absolute blast to create. I did all the instrumentation,
(drums, guitars, bass, piano, keys and electronics) and sang lead or background vocals on all
the tracks, while Dad did what he does best.”
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Szymczyk is clearly grateful for his legacy. “I’m just very, very
happy that I grew up in the business when I did. I’m blessed, and I thank God every night for
the wonderful life he’s given me.” Closing with a final reflection on his catalog, in the
context of favorites, the producer begins, not surprisingly, with, “Joe Walsh, who was
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definitely one of my most kindred collaborations. I found him, signed him to his first
contract, and we still work together. Most of what I consider my favorite records were not hit
records. I thought Jay Ferguson’s first solo record, All Alone in the End Zone, was one of the best
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records I ever made. There’s a Mickey Thomas record, Alive Alone, after he left the Elvin Bishop
Group. I’d signed him to a contract with Elektra, and cut a solo album with him that I think
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is just brilliant. To go way back, there was a very weird jazz record by Howard Roberts that I did
with Ed Michel called Antelope Freeway [1971] that is one of my favorite records. So those are the
babies; the other kids grew up, went out, and made money!” [laughs] r
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Jake Brown has written 35 published books, featuring many authorized collaborations
with some of rock’s biggest artists, as well as the producers’ anthology Behind the Boards
Vols. I & II. <jakebrownbooks.com>

Tape Op is made possible

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by our advertisers.
Please support them and tell them
you saw their ad in Tape Op.
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www.tapeop.com
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Bonus content online!!!

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 This article is composed of excerpts from
From the moment I first heard Joy Division’s two studio albums, Chris Hewitt’s book, Martin Hannett; Pleasures of
Unknown Pleasures and Closer, I was affected. Initially I returned the LPs to my friend Steve, saying,
the Unknown, a slightly chaotic but thorough
“These are too gloomy. I don’t want to listen to them.” But soon I was asking to borrow them
collection of interviews, history, and
again. These records were like beacons from another planet, in the early ‘80s in the US, and
memories published earlier in 2014. Thanks
also not the easiest items to procure. The other college students I knew were rocking out to
to Chris for allowing us to present some of
commercial radio bands like Journey or Foreigner, while I was immersing myself in this dark
this work in Tape Op. For more information
world of post-punk, created by some lads from Manchester a scant six years older than myself.
about Martin, please check out the book, as
Soon I learned that the architect of the LP sounds I adored was a producer named
well as the nearly 4-hour DVD, He Wasn’t Just the
Martin Hannett. His specialties included reverbed drums, echoing vocals, icy synthesizers,
Fifth Member of Joy Division – a film about Martin
clanking/crashing sound effects, prominent bass, and effected guitars. After a life of constant
Hannett. Below is partial history of the man
alcohol and drug abuse, Martin’s life was sadly cut short in 1991, due to heart failure.
who produced records for Joy Division, U2,
As a recordist I have always felt that Martin left a lot behind for us to study and absorb.
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Nico
I also feel he played a large part in changing the way record production was perceived;
[& The Invisible Girls], Magazine, Crispy
he was a precursor to many of the advances that came into play in the studio in the years
Ambulance, Durutti Column, A Certain

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following his late ‘70s and early ‘80s masterpieces.
Ratio, Buzzcocks, John Cooper Clarke,
Happy Mondays, Section 25, Blue in
Heaven, and Stockholm Monsters.

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Early on Martin was obsessed with having the
best hi-fi equipment. Listening to and examining
records became a pastime that would pay off. -LC

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Martin Hanneı
“`e Possibil⁄ies SÕm Endless” sl
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compiled and notated by Larry Crane Ïom Chris Hew⁄t’s book,
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Martin Hanneı; Pleasures of the Unknown

Photo Collage by Gary LÔton
uk

Neil Pointon: friend, co-worker

“I met Martin at ICI Blackley [Imperial Chemical
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Industries, where they worked together] in September

of 1965, on a typical Manchester rainy day. He was
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sitting there in his Hush Puppies with a packet of

Sterling cigarettes, and he offered me a cigarette. He
bought a hi-fi system from a shop on Oldham Street
with his first month’s wages. That’s when he began
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listening obsessively for some unattainable silence

between or behind the notes. On Saturday morning we’d
make the routine tour of all the hi-fi and music shops.”
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Bruce Mitchell: drummer, Durutti Column

“His first LP production was the Belt & Braces
Roadshow Band. His second production job was
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Slaughter & the Dogs’ ‘Where have all the Boot Boys
Gone?’ His third job was Spiral Scratch by the Buzzcocks.
It was what established him in that generation’s eyes as
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the sympathetic producer. It was geography; he was in

the right place, at the right time.”

32/Tape Op#103/Mr. Hannett/(continued on page 34)

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 The Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch was the first
independent punk record, and the third release ever
by a British punk group (The Damned and Sex Pistols
were on major labels). It still remains an urgent and
melodic slab of vinyl. -LC
Phil Hampson: engineer
“Tuesday, 28th December, 1976. Buzzcocks set up,
we mic’d up, and started sorting out the sounds. I was
used to loud noise, but this was special. ‘It’s totally
distorted,’ says I. ‘Yeah, great!’ says they. We got a
sound, and then barely touched the faders. They
played, and we recorded. Although the songs were
recorded as live takes with minimal overdubs, we were
using 16-track on 2-inch tape at that time, so
everything was on individual tracks – and recorded with
some separation, which meant that we could play
around with the mix later.”
Vini Reilly: guitar, piano, Durutti Column
“I first met Martin in about 1977 when we [Ed
Banger and the Nosebleeds] did the first record on Tosh
[Ryan] and Martin’s label [Rabid]. [He was] incredibly
charismatic; one of those people who communicated
more by what he didn’t say than what he did say. Martin
had a sort of aggressive dominance with me. He was
being completely oblivious to my ranting and raving in
a studio with him. It was my first album for Factory, in
1979, and he was messing around with all this very
obsolete synthesizer stuff – plugging pins into little
sockets and making noises. I was very ill, at that point.
I sat there, and after about two or three hours began to
scream and shout at him. Every so often he would look
up and say, ‘You’re being a bit irrational there, Vini,’ and
carry on. All of a sudden these noises became sort of
bird noises. I had my guitar plugged into the desk; DI’d.
I’d asked for a delay, because I used to use tape delay.
Martin Hannett
“Joy Division – there was a lot of space in their
sound. They were a gift to a producer because they
didn’t argue.”
John Brierley: owner Cargo Studios, engineer
“I’d only just built Cargo when he came in to record
A Factory Sample with Joy Division. I’d heard of Martin
before – he had a bit of a reputation as a ‘name
producer.’ We had two enormous reclining chairs behind
the desk in the control room, and once he was sat in
one of them there was no moving him. We didn’t have
an awful lot to say to each other, which actually suited
us both. I expected him to tell me where he wanted
mics placed and what sort of sound he wanted, but it
soon became evident that that was going to be left to
me. I soon realised that he expected to sort out any
problems with the sound during the mix. In this respect

Richard Boon: Buzzcocks’ manager
“Although he did have set ideas, it depended on the
toys he had in the studio. Sometimes the gadgets
He said, ‘You can’t use tape delay. Use this.’ He’d plug in
some piece of technology he’d had developed. When
these bird noises came up I immediately thought of a
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we worked well together. I did most of the recording
side – he did the mixes. He liked working with me
because I didn’t hold long, incessant, irrelevant
conversations. I would leave him alone to do what he

eclipsed his interest in the music he was supposed to be
producing. He’s as inventive as he can be within a
limited budget. The studio is a playground.”
Howard Devoto: vocalist, Buzzcocks, Magazine
“Martin was the only person we knew in Manchester
tune, and I started playing along. In the space of about
a minute he made a very basic rhythm pattern with the
bird noises and it went down to tape. I overdubbed one
guitar and that was the track. The whole album was
done like that, in a very strange way – in that sense he
was the direction of that album. Martin wouldn’t let
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wanted to do, and I worked fast. I was always up for
trying anything out, which Martin always appreciated,
like placing the drums downstairs and having the mics
recording the kit upstairs. Recording trumpets in the loo
was another one. Plugging one effects unit into another,

that was known as, or called themselves, a producer.
Martin felt restricted by the sessions.”
Martin Hannett
anything stand in the way of a perfectly original piece
of art. Nothing would be sacrificed, unless it became too
obtuse or imperfect. Everything had to be perfect, in
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and then another, and so on produced some amazing
effects; sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.”
Chris Nagle: engineer

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“I was trying to do things, and the engineer was every way.” “No other engineer at Strawberry [Recording Studios,
turning them off. ‘You don’t put that kind of echo on a Stockport, UK] would work with Martin. Martin tended
Tony Wilson: Factory Records co-founder to tape everything, rehearsals and run-throughs
snare drum!’ I’d have whipped it away and remixed it, “It doesn’t matter if Martin falls asleep under the included, and took delight in mistakes. The first time
but he erased the master because he thought it was mixing desk. Even in his sleep Martin is creative.”
on
such rubbish.” Martin turned up at Strawberry, the session was to mix
Martin Hannett A Factory Sample. This fella walked up, carting all this
Mick Middles: journalist “Songs unfold themselves to me. The object is to gear under his arms, and he said, ‘The first rule is there
“I first heard of Martin Hannett [from] the capture somebody’s attention and keep it for a are no rules.’”
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Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch EP. It had an intelligent satisfactory [amount of] time. I’m not always that
energy; something strange was going on. It would set interested in the content, or the words, or even the Martin Hannett
a benchmark.” [On the Strawberry Recording Studio control room]
track. I’m more interested in the feeling. Originality “There’s a lot of depth in this studio. From behind the
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exercises the intellect, working out how it got to be

Martin had a long history in the Manchester music scene original, from all its influences. Or you can just let it mixing desk you look into some sort of a tunnel. [Joy
Division’s] Unknown Pleasures was fun. Closer was quite
before the Buzzcocks, running Rabid Records and booking shock and amaze you. To me the technology is fairly depressing, for obvious reasons. A bit of a strange social
bands. He became a partner in the legendary independent straightforward. Technology just makes it work faster. climate. It took 13 days and 13 nights to record – hard
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label, Factory Records, which released records by Joy Digital recording will sort it out, but you can’t buy that; work. Ian wasn’t very well. Despite that – the clouded
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Division and many of the artists he recorded. The first release you have to lease it from 3M. There are record industry retrospect – it still has a good atmosphere, in a way,
by the label was Martin producing Durutti Column’s standards, but what do they mean? All I care about is though the sound suffers. The content is more cohesive,
that they should be recognisable as records.” much more accurate, much more powerful. The sound is
ironically-titled debut, The Return of the Durutti
certainly unique. We used a half-completed construction
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Column. –LC Joy Division’s debut album and follow up remain the project as an echo room – a huge shell, with plaster walls.”
Chris Hewitt
most recognized of Martin Hannett’s studio achievements to
“Hannett had always wanted to be a record producer, this day. By taking a raw, moody punk group and morphing
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but the occupation requires a tremendous [amount of] their sound into power and texture, he created something
discipline. The advent of new hardware in the early unique, new, and lasting. The bass guitar became much of
1980s, and the constant refinements in high technology the melodic focus, the drums were isolated and treated with
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have turned the modern studio into a clinical operating effects, the guitars often shimmered as a background texture.
room. Martin wanted to offset the barrier between the It was a whole new way to envision a rock band. At the time
booth and the mixing room, so he preferred to record as
the members of Joy Division were shocked by the results, as it
many instruments as possible right by the desk.”
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was a far cry from their powerful live shows.

-LC

34/Tape Op#103/Mr. Hannett/(continued on page 36) Strawberry Recording Studio control room
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Ms. Marks/(continued on page 24)/Tape Op#102/23

 Stephen Morris: drummer, Joy Division, New Order in my experience, had his poems ready; Martin had a
“I was alright with what Martin was asking us to do
mostly; although he did make me use an aerosol can on
the 12-inch version of ‘She’s Lost Control,’ like you see
in the film Control. He shut me in a room with the tape
cleaning fluid, and made me press it in time with the
song. The booth was filled with noxious fumes by the
end. I think he was just trying to kill me. If I’d lit up a
fag, the whole of Strawberry Studios would have gone
up in smoke. The unusual sound I like best is on ‘Atrocity
Exhibition.’ I had a Simmons SDS-V and Synare
[synthesizer drum pads], which we got out and put
through this horrible fuzz box. My drumming on Closer
was a disco/tribal thing, and Martin pushed his studio
equipment to its limits. He had me do the snare, then
the hi-hat, and then the hi-hat again, in an almost
robotic style. Martin did the mixing during the middle of
the night, because it’s when your brain is at its most
Peter Hook: bass, Joy Division, New Order
tune in mind, John would take a listen, and then he’d “Later, after Ian’s death, Martin was involved less
usually run through it in one take.” and less with New Order. We had to wrestle the mixes off
Steve Hopkins: keyboards, co-producer him. A lot of the equipment that Martin brought into
“I did the rational mathematical computing side of it, the control room and studio rooms at Cargo, Strawberry,
whereas Martin provided the anarchistic, surreal, dada-ist and Pennine [Sound Studios] could be grouped into the
type of elements. Say I was trying to record a piano part; category of ‘stuff to waste time with’ in the studio.
Martin would say, ‘Steve, could you make it a bit more When we went to record ‘Ceremony’ and ‘In A Lonely
Bavarian and less Transylvanian?’ I was left to interpret Place,’ Martin just thought that all three of us were
this, but a lot of the time I got it right. Phil Spector was dreadful and that the three of us couldn’t sing. He just
one of Martin’s heroes. He studied not only his techniques, thought we were shit. I remember that Bernard had a
but also his psychological ruthlessness in sticking to ones’ last go at the end; he was convinced he could do it
production vision. He would look for spaces with unusual better. That was how it became his vocal. Before that,
acoustical properties. We’d go into the shower room at the vocal on ‘Ceremony’ was a combination of the three
Arrow Sound and have the engineer trail 200 metres of of us. He sort of became the singer by default, really. But
cable, then we’d flush the toilet and record it, and so on. as our sound evolved in New Order, it became quite
We discovered that the lift shaft was remarkable for its natural for him to sing and then play around his vocal.
rebounding echo, so we’d place a microphone at one end I think that was quite useful to creating the New Order

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creative. He liked the unsociable hours and the and get John [Cooper Clarke] to balance precariously at the sound. In Joy Division, he used to play across the vocal,
isolation. I think he’d do a little speed, if only because other. Then he’d shout his poem into the lift shaft. On many whereas in New Order – because he couldn’t sing and
he was on borrowed time and we had to get it done.” of the Clarke albums, Martin paid care to the qualities of play at the same time – he used to play ‘round the vocal.

Peter Hook: bass, Joy Division, New Order
“The equipment we used for Joy Division sessions were
the Arp Omni-2, the [Powertran] Transcendent, and the
AMS delays. Bernard [Sumner] used an Altair Power
Attenuator between his Vox UL 730 amp and the cabinet,
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John’s voice; virtually every track has a particular treatment So I think it sort of created our new sound.”
of the reverberation and ambience around the vocal. On a Among the bands intrigued by Martin’s production of Joy
few tracks there are things that the listener would presume Division was a young group from Ireland named U2. They
are instruments, such as a xylophone; but in fact it’s John’s
coaxed him to Dublin’s Windmill Lane Studios to record
voice that has been fed through so many effects units that
their second single. It certainly carries all the U2 hallmarks

and fed his guitar through Melos [Tape] echoes and an
MXR graphic pedal. A set of chimes were fed through the
AMS delay to get the effect that can be heard in
‘Atmosphere.’ Chris Hewitt owns the original set of chimes.”
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they’re coming out as notes.”
of their early era; but, as one might guess, the bass is
Chris Nagle: engineer
prominent and the drums are a bit more echoey than their
“[Sometimes] Martin would feed vocals to Auratone
[speakers] at the top of the lift down into a microphone
debut album, Boy. -LC

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Chris Nagle: engineer in the cellar. There was a load of wasted time in the
Tosh Ryan: Rabid Records label partner
“Re-recording Ian Curtis’s vocals, Martin said, ‘He studio at Strawberry with Martin, but the end product
“Martin wouldn’t go back to Ireland to record U2. He
really can’t sing.’ The next minute I said, ‘He can sing; was special, and that outweighs any wasted time.”
did ‘11 O’Clock Tick Tock’ and he wouldn’t do anymore.
on
just listen to that vocal.’”
Soon others were searching out Martin’s production He only liked to work from Strawberry [Studios], and
Bernard Sumner: guitar, Joy Division, New Order skills, and in the case of Pauline Murray he even provided a travelling to Ireland was not something he even
“On early Joy Division recordings, Martin was a loose band, as he had with John Cooper Clarke. -LC considered. He remained at Strawberry in Stockport. U2
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catalyst and an experimenter. I’ve worked with other were young and impressionable.”
producers since Martin, and the point of their job is to get Pauline Murray: vocalist, Penetration and Paul McGuinness: U2 manager
a hit record. Martin’s job was to create an environment of The Invisible Girls “He didn’t think much of the facilities [at Windmill
experimentation. We worked at Cargo [Studios] in
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“He just seemed to have the knack of putting Lane Studios]. There were some special pieces of
Rochdale; a box-type place, a good sound. ‘Atmosphere’ everything in the right setting. He works in a totally
equipment he made us rent from London and ship over.”
was done there. A lot of A Factory Sample was done there. different way to any other producer we’ve recorded with.
At Strawberry [Studios], Martin used to work with a tape He doesn’t even replay the songs on the tape very much. Larry Mullen, Jr.: drums, U2
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op and assistant engineer; a miserable git called Chris He has it all in his head. He’s a weird bloke, but we work “He was asking me to do a click track. I wasn’t sure if I
Nagle. He’d sneer at the band all the time.” could play in time with one. I must really have done
really well with him. I had been stuck in a rut, and I
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Martin’s head in. He listened to the track over and over

Manchester’s favorite “punk poet,” John Cooper needed someone like that to show me some sort of light.
again, constantly playing it back. I think he was highly
Clarke, made many of his classic recordings with Martin and Martin was just the right person.” medicated; as the session went on, he became more and
the “house band,” The Invisible Girls, of which Martin Martin Hannett more incoherent. Despite his condition, he did a great job.”
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played bass in as well. Martin’s obsession with sounds is well “I don’t get people ringing me up all the time. I must
be quite elusive; it took Pauline Murray six months to Martin always had a different attitude with the studio
evident on these albums’ vocal treatments. -LC
track me down. I don’t get asked to do a lot of things – than producers that had come up the ranks as engineers.
But, in many ways, I feel he truly listened to what was
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Chris Nagle: engineer
“It did hit me after a while that Martin and John
[Cooper Clarke], with their habits, did used to disappear
a lot at Ridge Farm Studios, during the second John
ot
the idea of me working with a band like The Clash would
be disastrous.” happening with his recordings, and that he quickly could
After singer Ian Curtis sadly took his own life on the eve formulate a vision of how a production should sound – a
of a US tour, the remaining members of Joy Division skill not many master. -LC

[Cooper Clarke] album [Disguise in Love]. Martin and

eventually regrouped as New Order and set off to make their
Steve Hopkins [keyboards] used to work with a Martin Hannett
supposed deck of cards: ‘Right, the key for the next
first single (featuring “Ceremony” and “In A Lonely Place”) “I never look at VU meters. If I want that certain
with Martin. The record has a heavily reverbed and drum sound, I get it from tape compression. Most of the
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number is F. Run that sequencer; the next note will be

G. What are we going to do with that?’ Steve tinkled his compartmentalized sound, but the hard part was finding a time I keep the volume low because I want the sound
piano then Martin would possibly put a bass to it. John, new vocalist. -LC in front; clear and crisp.”
36/Tape Op#103/Mr. Hannett/(continued on page 38)
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 Chris Hewitt
“After Martin became a studio engineer, he would
often go ‘round to musician Dave Lunt’s house with
pockets full of cassettes of different mixes he had done,
but on getting to Dave’s he would take a look at the
shelves full of jazz records and dive headlong into
playing some of the LPs instead of listening to his
cassette mixes.”
Martin was keenly aware of how spaces translated to
recordings. Much of his production work involved capturing
drums with no ambience and later treating them in the mix.
No tool was more infamous in his hands than the newly
introduced AMS dmx 15-80 delay. -LC
Stuart Nevison: AMS (Advanced Music Systems) Martin goes and meets these guys in a car park on the
“Whilst Martin Hannett was starting to carve his own
niche in music production, my small company, AMS, not
25 miles north of Manchester, was working on projects
of digital audio processing. In the music recording
business there are two significant elements; the
tracklaying and the mixing process, which I think Martin
had a fascination with.”
Chris Hewitt
“AMS was Advanced Music Systems, and were
established in 1976 by Mark Crabtree and Stuart
Nevison. In 1978 AMS introduced the world’s first
microprocessor-controlled, 15-bit digital delay line. By
October 1978, they had provided Hannett with this AMS
dmx15-80 delay for him to use on the Joy Division song
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‘Digital’ at Cargo. Crabtree and Nevison had been
aerospace engineers who moved into the design of
professional studio equipment for the manipulation and
on
control of sound. The first product designed by the
company was the dm 2-20 Tape Phase Simulator,
notably used by ELO [Electric Light Orchestra], 10cc, and
Paul McCartney.”
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Martin Hannett
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“The ideas were always there, but at the end of the
‘60s a digital delay line was implemented using these
things called shift registers, which were enormous,
unreliable, and used too much electricity. When little
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bits of memory started to arrive, those clever guys at
AMS stuck ’em in a box. Whilst you are recording, you
take all the clues off the snare sound that the ear
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needs to recognise a room – we have to put them back,
otherwise it will sound odd. The value I usually set the
display on the AMS dmx 15-80 delay at represents the
first reflection boundary of a room, so by selecting
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different values, you can effectively change the size of
the room. The Marshall Time Modulator performs the
38/Tape Op#103/Mr. Hannett/
same function as the AMS dmx 15-80, but in a
different way, with the result that it has got a different
set of parameters. If I can establish a room sound with
the AMS, and also establish a room sound with the
Marshall Time Modulator, and put them both in the
mix, then I’ve got the sound of the walls of the room
rushing in and out at a fantastic rate. Of course, you
don’t want to hear all that up front, so you bury it in
the track. As for drums, I love echo and drum
synthesisers, but I got a bit worried about using
repeats after I had a fit of quasi realism. I still do ’em
in a fairly subliminal way. Some of it’s from reggae.
Reggae drumming is fairly simple diagrams.”
Tony Wilson: Factory Records co-founder
“Unbeknown to me, until I found out years later,
moors above Burnley [Lancashire, England], and tells
them the sound he’s imagining [while he’s] off his head
ot
on fucking drugs. He drives back to Manchester at
midnight. Meanwhile they drive back to their shed and
they build the world’s first digital delay machine, the
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AMS digital delay, which is the most important outboard
equipment of the last 50 years. It was 15 years later,
when some guy stopped me and said, ‘I want to thank
you. One of your partners changed my life.’ When I
realised it was AMS, I said, ‘No, you changed his life by
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giving him that equipment.’ He said, ‘Don’t you know
where it came from?’ I had no idea it came out of
Martin’s head. The first time he ever worked with that
digital delay machine was on the song ‘Digital.’ The first
time Martin moved music forward was with the digital
delay machine, which changed drum sounds forever. Did
you know the most sampled track in hip-hop history is
ESG’s ‘You’re No Good’? That was Martin in a New York
basement with three great singers.”
Chris Nagle: engineer
“Those AMS dmx 15-80s were used on every aspect
of Martin’s productions, from his infamous ‘walls
rushing in and out’ philosophy, to the short 85
millisecond delay that New Order incorporated into
their live production, to phasing and flanging on his
John Cooper Clarke work. Martin’s number one rule was
‘never wipe a mistake.’ It may bug the hell out of you
as a musician, but you never know how you later might
be able to incorporate that into a track; i.e., put it in
reverse, feed it through a bunch of effects, see how
that sounds, and bring it up at random somewhere in
the mix. Sonic holograms were created out of various
equipment and sounds in Strawberry.”
Martin Hannett
“That’s been the biggest change in the last ten years;
the enormous flood of digital effects. It started off with
cheap digital delays, and now it’s cheap digital echoes.
For £485 you can get the latest [Alesis] QuadraVerb that
does four digital things at once: delay, chorusing,
reverb, and equalization. They’re gifts to the
imagination, really. You can do all of those difficult
things, without ever getting out of your chair.”
Vini Reilly: guitarist, Durutti Column
“He was always ten years ahead.”
 U2 were not the only band to have a brief recording
experience with Martin Hannett. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the
Dark (OMD) worked with him at Cargo Studios on their debut
single for Factory Records, although they used their own demo,
“Electricity,” as the A-side. -LC

Andy McCluskey: vocals, bass, OMD

“We were very young and inexperienced, especially in
recording studios. Martin Hannett was rather intimidating
and seemed a bit bonkers to us. Both Paul [Humphreys] and
I definitely remember him climbing under the desk at
Strawberry [Studios] when we were mixing overnight and
going to sleep for some considerable time. Paul and I were
like, ‘You wake him!’ ‘No, you wake him.’ Err… ‘Let’s just
leave him then!’”
Martin Hannett
“Electronic music is a bit frightening. It gives a lot of

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potential for accurate amounts of energy that you can’t get
out of instruments. I was definitely pleased with OMD’s
‘Electricity.’ It was a great tune.”

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Martin’s deepening problems with alcohol and drug abuse
eventually caught up with him, and erratic studio sessions sadly
became the norm. -LC

David Wood: engineer

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“In March of 1985, I enrolled to study sound recording
at John Breakell’s School of Sound Recording (SSR) which
was based [in Spirit Studios] in a basement on Tariff Street
in Manchester. I’d heard that there might be an opening to

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do work with a guy called Martin Hannett. I immediately
called him. I arrived early at Strawberry [Studios] and
Martin was already there, which I think was the one and
on
only time he was there before me. The studio was amazing,
but I was quite surprised at Martin’s reaction towards me.
I’d driven for over an hour and I’d agreed to work for free
to gain some experience. Initially he was really tense with
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me, although I realised within a couple of days that he was

like that with everyone. In time, Martin was very nice to
me. I often saw another side to him with people – it was
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clear quickly that Martin was a drinker and drug user. Martin
had recorded a young Irish band called Blue in Heaven and
wanted to make some edits and cut the parts up to
experiment with. It seemed a very high profile release to
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me, as the band was signed to Island Records and Martin

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told me that Bono of U2 had chosen them as one of his

favourites. In ‘85 they released their first LP, All the Gods’
Men, which, apart from one track, was all produced by
Martin. The album had a thick texture; heavy bass, and
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strange vocal. Whilst doing the Blue in Heaven edits, I

realised why Martin had asked me to go in and help. He had
a hand tremble and was unsteady with the blade on the
splicing block. I felt a little sad, and selfishly disappointed,
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that the only reason he needed some help was due to his
problems. But I was happy to be there, getting the
experience, even though these were clearly dark times for
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him. After the Blue in Heaven edits, I’d been in touch a few
times with Martin to see if there was anything else I could
get involved with; but it was summer and I had loads of
playing going on, so it wasn’t a problem that he hadn’t.
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Mr. Hannett/(continued on page 40)/Tape Op#103/39

 Martin got back to me in August to tell me that I
could do some edits soon. The first day back, Martin
seemed to be shaking more, but I might have just
been aware of it a bit more. He started immediately
moaning that the band hadn’t had enough material,
so there wasn’t going to be as much for me to do as
he’d said on the phone. I really liked Martin, and he
had some great stories about his days recording at
Cargo, Arrow, and Central Sound Studios, but I found
him terribly unpredictable.”
Martin Hannett
Colin Richardson: engineer, producer
“I haven’t done that much compared to people like John
“I was looking forward to working on the Happy Leckie, but what I have done has all been a bit odd, don’t you
Mondays’ album with Martin, as he obviously was well think? Maybe I look a bit catalytic?”
known through his work with Joy Division. I had met
him briefly at Cargo, in about 1980, when I first started
“Right now I’m reading an article about strange facts
there, but it was more of a hello in a corridor rather concerning the location of pure tones. A certain tone always
than a working relationship. The Bummed album seems to come from straight above your head. The ear has a

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session for the Happy Mondays was at The
lot of transfer functions, so it peaks and soothes in various
Slaughterhouse, Driffield, Yorkshire, although, as per
At a certain
directions. There’s a lot to think about.
usual Hannett practice, it was mixed at Strawberry
moment you reach a point where the

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possibilities seem endless.”
Studios. When Martin turned up on the first day, his
appearance had changed dramatically from how I
remembered him. He was now about 20 stone [280
lbs], very disheveled, and always seemed to have a
runny nose, which I put down to a cold at the time. As
a successful producer in my own right now, I think I

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know how a session should run – the producer should
be in charge, at all times. Well, this one was an utter
shambles. The band was given no direction, at all, as

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to what was going on. Martin sat on the couch reading
magazines 95 percent of the time. On a 25 day session
he did not bother to turn up on seven days, with no
prior warning. It was quite a relief when the session
on
somehow ended. I like things to be organised when I
am working, and this was completely the opposite. I
was not involved in the mix – I just tracked the album.
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Later on, when the final mix was finished, it sounded

like someone had gone really overboard on the reverb
and delays on the instruments, and it had the effect of
washing the whole band out. My thoughts were that
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this type of sound in the late-‘70s sounded good, but

this was the late-‘80s. It needed to be drier and more
contemporary for the Happy Mondays to bring out their
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dance elements. It was a shame he died so young, but

for most of this session he looked quite ill to me.”
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Now all we have are memories and artifacts. Martin

Hannett left an enviable legacy behind because he had a
vision for what recorded music could be. By studying his
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work I’ve become a better engineer and producer. I see a

different door one can take into making albums, one that
is richer, deeper, and more unique than I ever imagined on
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my own. Thank you, Martin. -LC

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<Go to www.ozitmorpheusrecords.co.uk to get Chris’

book, Martin Hannett; Pleasures of the Unknown, as well
as the DVD, He Wasn’t Just the Fifth Member of Joy
Division – a film about Martin Hannett.>
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40/Tape Op#103/Mr. Hannett/(Fin.)

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 So what’s the history of Indigo Ranch?
Mike Pinder and I built it. Mike was the original
principal in Indigo Ranch. The Moody Blues did their
last album, Octave, as a full group with Mike there,
Richard Kaplan
which I have a platinum album for engineering. But
Mike and I basically built it for our own in-house
The Legacy of Indigo Ranch
projects. It was never intended to be a commercial
studio. We ordered the absolute best equipment. We
interview by Larry Crane
were originally going to get a Neve or an API console,
but we ran into these guys from Aengus. This was the
best console we’d ever heard. On the day of delivery
of the console in 1974, we’re waiting for the truck,
and this guy comes strutting down the driveway. He
says, “Hi, I’m here to supervise the installation of the
console.” We said, “No, that’s okay. We flew David
Hawkins in from England.” He had done probably half
of the big installations in Europe. Very, very sharp

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guy. We said, “Thank you anyway. What was your
name?” He says, “Deane Jensen.” [laughs]
Yeah, like, “Stick around.”

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We didn’t even know who Deane Jensen was. We had
just come back from Europe, and Deane didn’t have
the fame there that he had here. David Hawkins knew
who he was, and said, “Don’t send him away!” So
they start putting the console in. About an hour later
Mike and I were sitting out on the bench in front of

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the studio, looking at the ocean while having a cup
of tea, and David comes out. We said, “What do you
think of this Deane guy? Should we just send him

home?” He said, “After an hour of working with this
guy, I feel like he should be doing the console, and I
should be soldering AC cords.” Deane was just a
wonderful guy. He was our in-house tech for the first
couple of years. He hated to even have the world
know that he could solder; he liked to be thought of
as the design guy, and not the diagnostician, builder,
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Indigo Ranch, nestled on 60-acres in the hills of Malibu,
on
California, operated from 1974 until 2006, under the guidance and
obsessions of Richard Kaplan. Clients took advantage of his
meticulously built studio, 400 guitar amps, and rare
Aengus console. Artists as diverse as Neil Young, Neil Diamond,
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or anything like that. But Deane did everything for

Indigo for the first couple of years, including Olivia Newton John, Jeff Lorber, Korn, Sepultura, and Limp Bizkit
changing out all of what were really good electronics. all made albums at Indigo Ranch. We tracked down a “retired”
Richard in Venice Beach, for a long chat.
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Mike (L) & Richard (R)

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The Aengus was probably the best-sounding console

I’d ever heard, as delivered, and Deane said, “We’re
gonna make it better.” He designed an op-amp for us,
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the JE-918, which we used for all the mic preamps. It

was his best shot at the amp module for a mic pre.
How did you end up at Indigo Ranch, as
well as living out there?
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I was living in a basement in Woodland Hills, California,

having just returned from the Midwest where a
partner and I had run the Nova Lights show. Nova
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Lights was the first on-stage laser show in the world,

written up in TIME magazine in the ‘60s. We were
doing polarized lights and laser techniques. The first
42/Tape Op#103/Mr. Kaplan/ album I did with Mike Pinder, after we opened the
 So you turned the house into a studio?
We built the studio largely on Mike Pinder’s acoustic
intuition. The control room was the best-sounding
control room I’ve been in before, during, or after. I
took every penny I earned and put that into gear. It
was a phenomenal collection.
I remember reading about all the mics.
I had 50 tube limiters, including a Teletronix LA-1, a
Fairchild Conax [Model 602], which Deane Jensen
redesigned so that it would be useful as more than a
mastering limiter, and a Fairchild Model 666 – the
Devil’s limiter.
The studio started in ‘74, and we know
that people started throwing out
tube equipment around then. Were
you finding good deals?
Oh, bless their hearts, I was! It was from people that were

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switching to solid-state; I wasn’t buying junk. When
you find some gem lurking in a studio’s storeroom
studio for personal use, was called The Promise and nowadays, it usually needs to be completely restored.

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the cover is a photograph of one of my polarized light I never cared what the specs of anything were; I always
crystals. Mike had married the daughter of Samuel Z. cared what it sounded like. If it sounded better, that’s
Arkoff, of American International Pictures – he what ended up in the racks at Indigo.
produced all those B-horror movies in the ‘50s. Her When did Indigo Ranch shift from being
cousin was one of my best friends, and Mike a private studio?
happened to be talking to him about stage lighting. In 1975 or ‘76. Canned Heat was our first customer; they

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He said, “You should talk to this guy Richard.” So, came in and recorded half a side of an album, and
Mike came over and visited me, I showed him some then the world literally beat the door down. We had
of the lighting stuff I was doing, and he said, “I’ve hundreds of great albums that came out of there.

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never seen anything like that! I want you to fly to
England. I want you to be the special effects guy for
The Moody Blues.” A month later, I was on my way to
England. They went on tour, and I ended up going
on
with them all over America and England, as well as
being their photographer.
People forget how huge that band was at
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What do you think the appeal was?
It was the sound. People were hearing little demo bits
that were coming out of there, and it was like, “God,
I’ve never heard anything like that.” Back in the ‘70s
and ‘80s, when Indigo first started, you’d hear an
Indigo record on the radio, and it would just
obliterate whatever was played in front of it or after

that time. it. The sound was just dazzling.

They were the biggest band in the world for two years. Mike What other clients did you start getting?
and I got to be best friends. I was his sort of right-hand Bob Margouleff (who had worked with Mike Pinder – he
man, lackey, gopher, photographer, and special effects helped mix The Promise album) brought in another
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lighting guy. He was building a little studio in his house, engineer, Chris Brunt, and they liked the sound. Bob
and he was going to have this Aengus console shipped brought in Billy Preston, and then just client after
to England. England’s economy was approaching the
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bottom in ‘73, and he said, “This is crazy to finish this

studio up here. I want to live in the United States. Let’s
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go find a place in America and build the studio there.”

We started looking at properties, all the way from Santa
Barbara to Costa Mesa, and nothing seemed to be right.
We found a property in Santa Monica, this great big blue
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building. Then I got a call from Mike, and he said, “I’m

in Malibu.” We drive up to this place, it’s like a mile of
dirt road, and we finally get to the end and there’s a one-
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story ranch house with a big parking area in front of it.

The ranch was actually owned by the owner of the
Stetson Hat Company. John Barrymore, Sr. was his best
friend, and the Stetson guy lived back East. John was a
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horrible alcoholic, so when they had to dry him out for

a play or a production they would send him up to this
place where he couldn’t get out. As we were building the
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studio there were a lot of boards that were loose, and

behind every one of them was a 50 year-old bottle of
something.
Mr. Kaplan/(continued on page 44)/Tape Op#103/43
 A Trip to Indigo Ranch drumming festival since the turn of the century. They
On my first trip to L.A., in 1976, we drove out from set up their drums outside. There was an old chief with
Houston in the middle of summer with my band, them who said, “This is the spot.” We ran mic cables
Buzzbone, and arrived in the middle of the night. We out to the spot, with some Neumann mics with
stayed in a motel at Topanga and Ventura Blvds. The next windscreens. We said, “Go ahead and play a little bit,
morning we drove through Topanga Canyon to the Pacific and we’ll get the levels.” They start playing, we get to
Coast Highway and headed up to Indigo Ranch. They had the point where we’re satisfied, and we’re like, “Okay,
these cool little chalets we stayed in – total So Cal hippie start from the beginning.” The vibe got real heavy, and
vibe. We rehearsed for two days in a beach house with our about two minutes later the chief comes walking into
producer/engineer Chris Brunt and spent the rest of the the control room with his arms folded, and said, “You
week recording. They had Deane Jensen’s Aengus console cannot play that song twice in one year.” We never had
– one of three, I believe. The weather was perfect – you anything like that happen again in the next 35 years.
could see Catalina Island every day, which is rare. It was The back door of the studio led out to this porch that
like Maui up there! I never made it past Santa Monica Pier was all cement. Oftentimes bands would leave the back
into town on that trip, so my first impression of L.A. was door open and put a mic out there [while tracking] to
a little skewed. But I knew then that moving to L.A. was get that Led Zeppelin “down the staircase” stone
in my future. effect. In that cement room you’d get a delay of the
-Dusty Wakeman, Mojave Mics, producer, engineer, bassist drums. It would be mono of course, because it’s gone
through the door and out into this other room. That
was an often-used sound.
client. Then Chris Brunt started bringing all his
projects in. He brought in guys from Earth, Wind &
Fire, plus many jazz clients. Albums like Caldera (with
Eduardo del Barrio), Ronnie Laws’ Flame, and Hubert
Laws. Jazz people just started swarming to us.
And you attribute that to the quality of
the equipment?
Deane Jensen. He was the guy. Deane looked at a studio
as not simply being a bunch of components stacked
together. He looked at it as one integral unit. He was
very much into level and impedance matching. That
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studio was so full of transformers. Good transformers
are like the difference between a Cadillac and a
Volkswagen.
You’re a founder and owner of the
place, but you also engineered
on
So he would go into some of the
equipment and replace transformers? through its history.
If I wasn’t the actual engineer, I usually ended up
Not usually in the equipment. He would have an
setting up everything for them anyway; getting all
external matching transformer. The one thing he did
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their sounds, and walking away. I’m not a guy who
change transformers in was on the 3M tape machines;
grabs for credits. I probably should have, but I didn’t.
he would go in and put his own in. The console was
I would just get everything going and then quietly The studio attracted people who would
all Jensen transformers, from the mic pre, to the
disappear in the background and maintain the thing.
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output transformer in the EQ, to the transformers in
the fader amps.
How did you learn about session flow
and things like that?
It was interesting. I had been working with Mike Pinder
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on The Promise album, and then a couple of bands
came in with their own engineers. I was always
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assisting and learning what I could. But I had
engineered with Mike, and then when Neil Young
came in, I was the engineer. I do have a real knack
for it. I was just lucky to get a start working with top-
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name groups before I knew what I was really doing,
but I was also giving them what they wanted. I had
some engineering on virtually every album that came
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through there, even when I was not the engineer or
the assistant. There were a lot of albums that I
Did anyone ever record outside?
straight-out engineered, and a lot of the albums that
Yes, we did a fair amount. Our very first recording after
I engineered that I actually produced. You’d get
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the Pinder album was the Chumash Indians, who are
producers who came in, and they spent their whole
the coastal Indians in California. Indigo Ranch was in
time in the other room on the phone. They’re like,
Solstice Canyon, and it had been their holiest of
“Did you get a good take yet?” I’d say, “Yeah, I did;
ceremonial grounds. They came twice a year to
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and we’re working on fixing a vocal part.” It’s like the
celebrate the high holiday of sun worshipers, the
producer takes credit for being on the phone talking
summer and winter solstices. The Chumash expressed
to the record company.
an interest to come back and do their first solstice
44/Tape Op#103/Mr. Kaplan/(continued on page 46)
When did Mike decide to not be involved
in Indigo Ranch anymore, and how
did you deal with that?
Around 1978 or 1980 he wanted to move on; he’d gotten
married and wanted to put his equity into a house and
various other things. We worked out a buyout for the
equipment and the property that took years to pay off,
but we did it. We continued our good friendship and
relationship through all of that. It was an amicable part.
Neil Young did a number of records at
Indigo Ranch.
We got a call for Neil Diamond to book a session, because
he lived in Malibu and had heard how great the sound
was. He booked a session and, at the last minute, after
we were set up for him, he canceled. A month later, we
get another call, “Neil wants to come back in,” and he
cancels again. Another month later we get a call, “We’ve
got to get Neil in tonight.” They said, “We want you to
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be set up for drums.” They were scheduled to come in
the early afternoon. We’re sitting there, and we get a call
at about 8 o’clock saying, “We’re still coming!” Around
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10 o’clock they finally show up, and they go straight into
the room and say, “We want it dark in here.” So, we turn
off all the lights, and have one or two candles going. A
guy comes into the room and introduces himself as the
producer. He says, “Are you ready to record guitar and
vocal? You’ve got to be ready; there’s no getting things
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set.” On the second note of the song I realized it’s Neil
Young, and not Neil Diamond! Because they had called
and said, “We’ve got to get Neil in!” All this paperwork
is sitting out on the console for Neil Diamond, and I just
kind of nonchalantly flip the paper upside down and
proceed. We got six songs that ended up on Neil Young
albums in one night. He said it was the most usable
material they had ever gotten, and they loved the sound.
They even used my rough mixes. I ended up doing ten
albums with him. The producer was David Briggs, who
ended up being one of my closest friends. He brought all
sorts of projects up to Indigo.
repeatedly use it.
Working with George Martin
To have him come into Indigo… that was a guy. About
halfway through the album, with the band American Flyer,
George was talking to the band and he was saying, “See if
Richard will give a discount on the studio time if we call the
album Indigo.” So, the main guy comes over to me and he
says, “We were wondering, if we call the album Indigo, will
you give a discount on the studio rate?” And I said, “That’s
an interesting concept. Why don’t you ask George if he’ll
give you a discount on the production if you call the album
George?” Later that day, George comes up to me, puts his
arm on my shoulder, and says, “Well, it’s all decided. The
album’s now called Indigo George.” And we laughed. Neither
one of us had to give a break. He understood what had
happened. Another interesting story about George Martin –
he always had a locked briefcase. Everyone was always
wondering, “What’s in the briefcase? Is it a bottle? Is it
secret papers?” And one day, he had left his briefcase open
and walked out of the room, so everybody goes over to it
to look and see what’s in there. There was a Cadbury
chocolate bar and a Beatles songbook. That’s what he had
in his locked briefcase –the big secret. -RK
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 Near the end Ross Robinson [Tape Op #79] did Korn,
Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, At the Drive-In, Glassjaw,
Soulfly, and Sepultura. I engineered a number of
those. And then my assistant, Chuck Johnson,
became his in-house engineer, until Ross fired him
for not being dependable. I mixed the second Korn
album [Life is Peachy] because Chuck just didn’t
show up. Chuck got credited on most of that stuff;
but I did a lot of the engineering because it would
be the first two or three hours of a session where
you’d get all the sounds together, and then Chuck
would show up. I’d have everything together, they’d
be recording with Ross, and Chuck would come in
and sit in the engineer’s seat. But that’s okay.
That’s part of being the owner
sometimes.
Yeah. I know what I did. They know what I did. And
Chuck’s a great guy. Chuck has since cleaned up
his act, and to this day is a very wonderful guy
and a brilliant engineer.
I heard Ross Robinson would get the
bands pretty riled up.
Ross would go out in the live room and leave the engineer
in the control room to get things right; he trusted
Chuck and I. He would dance around, whoop and
holler, scream, make motions, and give them cues. If
it sounded great in there, it better sound great when
he walked back into the control room. He knew how
to get the bands fired up into getting takes that were
unbelievable. David Briggs was also a master at that,
but in a completely opposite fashion. Ross would get
the bands into almost a spiritual high. Briggs would
get them so rattled and uptight that they would
perform just to escape his wrath. [laughter] He knew
how to push people’s buttons; he would get the most
incredible performances out of people, in the exact
opposite way of Ross, but equally valid.
It seems Indigo Ranch had a really
unique vibe.
There’d be this musical ghost that appeared at various
sessions; I don’t know what to think about that. We
had a UFO sighting on the property that was seen by
a dozen straight people. Even the Malibu sheriff saw it!
There were all kinds of amazing things that happened,
and amazing people coming in and out of there. r
Visit <tapeop.com> for more from Richard’s interview,
including more about archiving Bing Crosby’s radio shows.
The Aengus console from Indigo Ranch now resides at
Rock Garden Studio in Wisconsin.
For more about Indigo Ranch and Richard:
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<www.studiorathq.com>
Go to https://www.flickr.com/photos/101051783@N04/
to see tons of photos of the rest of Richard’s impressive gear
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collection which he is auctioning off in one single lot.
Contact Richard at: indigoranch77@gmail.com
bonus article:
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http://tapeop.com/interviews/103/richard-kaplan-bonus/
46/Tape Op#103/Mr. Kaplan/(Fin.)
Mike Pinder and Indigo Ranch
One of the earliest sessions I did in my early twenties
at my first “real” studio job was with Mike Pinder, who lives
in Northern California, in the foothills above Sacramento.
That was almost 30 years ago. I don’t remember a lot of it,
but I remember that Mike knew his way around a studio
and was a nice guy, which was good, since I was a bit
nervous about working with one of the founding members
of The Moody Blues. When Larry sent me the Indigo Ranch
article for layout, I thought it would be nice to track Mike
down and get his side of the story. -John Baccigaluppi
What brought you from the UK to California
before opening Indigo Ranch?
My ex-wife was from Los Angeles. She wanted to move back
with our young son. As I had always loved my tours and
visits to California, I was happy to move across the
ocean. I was tired of the English rain and was ready for
some California sunshine.
What about the property at Indigo Ranch
made you think of using it for a
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recording studio?
I wanted some place where I could have a house, as well
as a recording studio; and I loved the privacy and view
on
of the ocean from the Malibu property.
You came up with the name The Moody
Blues from the Duke Ellington song,
“Mood Indigo.” Did that same song
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inspire the Indigo Ranch name?
Yes. I always loved “Mood Indigo.” Moody was used, and
Indigo was left.
Was the studio originally for personal use?
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Yes. When I lived at the Ranch, I only recorded for personal
use, although I did do a couple of projects for friends,
and friends of friends.
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What prompted opening up the doors as a
commercial studio?
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I moved to Hawaii with my new wife, Taralee. Richard
Kaplan and Michael Hoffman bought the property and
the studio from me. They opened the studio
commercially at that time.
Did you retain an investment in
Indigo Ranch after you started
working for Atari?
I never formally worked for Atari, but I did use the Atari
Computer for music recording. It was the beginning of
MIDI and Atari computers were ahead of the game, at
one time. My friend, Greg Whelchel – a keyboardist from
L.A. and band member for The Pointer Sisters – and I
were both using the Atari for sequencing and sounds,
and we did demos at some of the NAMM Shows.
Do you still have a home studio for
your use?
Yes, I still have a home studio. Some of the hardware I use
is Digidesign. I dabble around and it is occasionally
used by two of my sons, Michael Lee and Matt Pinder.
They record professionally as the Pinder Brothers and do
solo projects as well.
You’re well known for being an early
adopter of the Mellotron and
popularizing it, but you’re clearly
comfortable with new technologies
and adapting them for musical use.
I love that musicians can record at home. Given the sad
shape of the music business, it is essential that
talented singer/songwriters can easily afford to record
their own music. On the one hand, it levels the playing
field a bit. The music died when corporations took
control and began producing a homogenized version of
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music. True creativity was stifled. The genius of the
‘60s music scene was that there was diversity and
creativity on every level. Today’s young people are fed
TV shows with bland showbiz formulas. I think it is
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harder than ever for young people today to discover
true musical talent. By that I do not mean a good
singer – you can find a good singer at your local talent
show. I mean a true musician, skilled at playing and
writing songs that you want to sing along with; songs
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that become the fabric of a life. I thought that with
technologies like the Internet, musicians would have
access to their audience. But, unfortunately, it is
ponderous to wade through a lot of semi-talented
musicians to find the gems of music that are really
melodious and meaningful.
Anything else you want to add about
Indigo Ranch, or working with
Richard?
Living and working at Indigo Ranch was a wonderful
experience. I was surrounded by friends and talented
people. It was really a loving, supportive, and creative
environment. Richard is a very warm and intelligent
guy, and learning engineering was second nature to
him. Richard and I were very dear friends, and became
close, like brothers, during those days. It was a special
time for me, and I think the magic of Indigo remained
for the musicians that followed. r
The Bing Crosby CBS Radio
Recordings (1954-56) 7 CD box set
These are original masters of a radio show that was done
from 1954 to 1956. Some of the tapes I got had 3M
numbers on them, and it’s among the earliest known tape.
The Buddy Cole Band was four guys, with keyboard, bass,
guitar, and drums. It was like a cocktail band, and Bing
would sing. It was all done live; there was no multitracking
in those days. They went into a studio, and each guy had
a mic. These were guys that could play. It’s probably the
biggest splicing project ever done in analog tape. I did
over 50,000 splices. The tapes were poorly stored. Many of
them had been flooded; the boxes were melting, the tapes
were molding. I had to go through, inch by inch, with a
camel hair brush to wipe off the mold, restore each of the
splices, and fix where they had torn. -RK
<www.mosaicrecords.com>
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 Giles Martin certainly comes from an enviable
musical pedigree. His father, the legendary producer
Sir George Martin, had more number one hit records,
and broke down more barriers in the recording studio,
than anyone in the history of recorded music. But for
anyone who maintained the idea that Martin’s son
inherited his father’s mantle when The Beatles’ Love
project was announced in 2004, the success of that
Grammy-winning, multi-million selling album
(initially created for the Cirque Du Soleil Las Vegas This was around the time of The Beatles’
show) quieted any critics. Since then Giles Martin has
overseen several key Beatles related projects, Yes, the Anthology era. [1995] I was hanging around in
including The Beatles’ groundbreaking game for Rock
Band, as well as Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison:
Living In The Material World documentary and
companion album. He also acted as executive
producer on Paul McCartney’s 2013 album New, in
addition to making time to score films like Noble,
which recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
His latest project is the mono and new surround mixes
for the newly restored version of The Beatles first film, [McCartney] wrote asking for a producer [for what
A Hard Day’s Night, which was recently released in
theaters, as well as on Blu-Ray/DVD.
Tell me a little bit about your
background and how you ended up
in your dad’s profession.
I originally wanted to be a composer. That’s what I was
driven towards. I started writing music for
commercials when I was in college, although I
Giles Martin
“The Idea is The Im
portant Thing”
by Jeff Slate
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48/Tape Op#103/Mr. Martin/(continued on page 50)
studied literature. When I was about 16 years old, my studies. I was perfectly happy working away on my
father started losing his hearing – he needed own thing; I had no aspirations to do Beatles work.
someone to be his ears, if you like. He didn’t want me When the Love project came up, I had with a concept.
to go into the profession, in any shape or form. I was My dad wasn’t around because he wasn’t well at the
quite good academically at English. He wanted me to time, and Neil Aspinall [head of Apple Corps] asked
get a proper job, I suppose. He didn’t want it to be me if I could experiment with something that hadn’t
exposed that he was losing his hearing, since he worked in the past. I said that I reckoned I could
wanted to go on working, so I started working as an create something by just chopping the tapes up. I’d
assistant, out of necessity on his part. heard the tapes, because I’d worked on Anthology,
and tracks sounded live to me. Since it was live
Anthology? recordings, I figured we could create a live show out
of the tapes. It became much more psychedelic as we
the studios with him during school time and he’d got more into it, but that was the plan.
want me to come in and listen to things. At first it Was the Love project a mash-up idea from
was sounds like cymbals, because that’s where his the beginning, or did you think of it in
hearing loss was. He’d have a quiet word with me and terms of complete songs at that point?
explain certain things. I remember he asked me who No, it was a mash-up from the beginning. I wanted to
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I thought should be engineering Anthology. I thought create a live feel. I know that’s a ridiculous thing to
he should get Geoff Emerick [Tape Op #57] to do it, say, a live feel by doing mash-ups, but I already knew
because it just made sense. Also, when Paul that I could get the drum solo. I already had the
concept of the show opening with the drum solo from
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became Chaos and Creation in the Backyard], around “The End,” which I knew I could combine with “Get
2005, my dad asked me [my opinion] and I suggested Back.” It sort of worked out from there. The piano
Nigel Godrich because I thought he’d be good. He’s chord from “A Day In The Life” going into it... it just
not as much a music producer as he is an engineering worked backwards. I knew when I spoke to Neil that
producer. That worked out well. Eventually I had I could do it. I wasn’t sure if other people would like
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some success writing and producing while working it or not, but I knew that I could get it to work. I
with different artists. I worked on Anthology 2 with didn’t really have much connection with The Beatles
my dad, because it came at a break between my at all before that. It came from doing the Love show,
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Giles at AIR Lyndhurst courtesy of C A Management & RecordProduction.com
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 which thankfully was critically acclaimed. Working with
The Beatles continues to surprise me. I didn’t really feel
deserving of it. It’s quite a big mantle to have. I
remember after I did my demo of Love, with four or five
tracks, everyone got enthusiastic. I remember saying to
a friend of mine that I’d been asked to do this thing,
but I wasn’t sure if I should do it. I didn’t know if it was
because of my dad getting me the job, or because it
was passed down. I’d avoided deliberately doing any
kind of Beatles projects that felt passed down to me,
probably to my detriment. I just didn’t want to go down
that route. This friend of mine, who’s a producer and
engineer, asked me if I had any idea how many people
would love to be working on this. He said that if I
turned it down I’d be completely crazy. I figured if I
could put the teenage bitterness to one side and stop
thinking about what other people would think, I could
just enjoy myself and be honored that I had the chance
to work in that situation. So that’s what happened.
Let’s backtrack a bit and talk about the
Hayley Westenra album Pure, which
you worked on before you worked with
The Beatles. What did that entail, and
how was that different from the
Beatles work?
When I started to pursue this, everybody thought I knew
what I was doing, but I had no idea. Honestly speaking,
I wasn’t very good. I didn’t have a huge talent, and I
think I made some pretty terrible records. I ended up
getting a job working for Rob Dickins, who was head of
Warner [Music UK]. I made some pretty bad records for
him. He taught me a lot – he would play me “No Scrubs”
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by TLC and tell me that he wanted projects to sound like
that. I’d have a computer set up with Logic, and it made
me realize that there are no excuses for not making things
sound good. People don’t care. You can’t say that you
didn’t have the right speakers or whatever. People won’t
care. The benchmark is there; that’s what he and my dad
taught me. The expectation is so high. I learned how to
make voices sound good, which is the most important
thing. If you can make a record and the voice sounds
good, you’re halfway there. Then I left Rob Dickins to do
the Queen’s Jubilee Concert in Buckingham Palace. After
that, I couldn’t get any work. My manager told me that
the only thing he could get me was Hayley Westenra, a
15-year-old classical singer. I told him, “No. I want to do
rock and roll.” He said that there wasn’t anything out
there. They sent me a vocal track. I put some strings,
guitar, and piano in the back of it, and they really liked
it. The album sold two million copies in the U.K. It really
wasn’t my style of music. A friend of mine said that once
you learn how to make things sound good, it gets kind of
boring. There are thousands of people who know how to
make a record with the right EQ on it, and it’s going to
sound professional. With Hayley Westenra, she was just a
really nice girl –she still is. The funny thing with that was
that I remember Paul McCartney telling me, “Well done
with that record,” because it sold massively in the U.K. It
sort of gave me success. I was offered so many classical,
and crossover classical, records by everyone. I was the
person to go to. I turned them down and didn’t get paid
for six months, because by then I knew I wanted to do
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The Beatles’ Love project. I knew in my mind that it was
going to work, and that’s what happened. on
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How have your views of using technology
evolved? Certainly you must be a cut
and paste guy, having grown up in a
world far removed from the one your
dad lived in.
I wasn’t, actually. I started in the studio when I was
young, so I had to learn later how to use computers.
A lot of the young guys who have heard the Love
project, or other things I’ve done, think I’m some sort
of guru, and you can hear their sighs of
disappointment when I try to operate Pro Tools. I
mean, I can do a mix, but when people start talking
about using shortcuts it’s like, “I know undo!” The
Beatles’ thing was interesting, because I thought
when I did it that I’d do what everyone else does and
create a tempo map. But as soon as I found out how
to chop things in time, it didn’t sound good to me. I
actually used it like a tape machine. My sessions had
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no grid, nothing. I just did it by feel.
You didn’t use a grid for Love?
No. I just found it too constricting. I wanted the songs
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to move.
Really? But surely there was some
stretching...?
Yeah, if there was a song coming after another song, it
had to follow the tempo. Then, when that [new] song
took over, that would be the song in charge.
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But that was stretching...
I had to do it all in my head. It’s just more of a creative
thing. I’m not anti-technology, in any way. I know
Geoff Emerick is actually, slightly, anti-technology. I
embrace it thoroughly. But the idea is the important
 thing, whether you’re chopping up tape or doing it in I think most people are pretty familiar The obvious technical thing is that we didn’t have six tracks
the computer. It can sound bad both ways, no matter with the 5.1 mixes that are on The [of audio]. That’s over-simplistic, as you know, but “She
how good your technology is. Beatles’ Anthology, and are probably Loves You” is just mono. We tried doing various things.
It’s interesting you would say that. Do you familiar, as well, with the 5.1 mixes on It’s done on a track-by-track basis. The tracks were
have favorite pieces of gear and D/A the Help! DVD and Blu-Ray. designed to be mono – in the purest sense. Go back to
converters? And I did Magical Mystery Tour between that. when you’re initiating how you record a track; you have
I’m distrusting of someone who walks in the studio, looks Right, you weren’t involved with the 5.1 to envision in your mind how you’re going to hear it. You
around, and says, “I can’t work in here.” I think that mixes on either Help or Anthology, can only really envision what you know, unless you’re very
you should just use what you have. There’s no reason correct? forward thinking. The Beatles were certainly forward
why anyone should complain anymore. That said, I Magical Mystery Tour was the first 5.1 I did. Yellow Submarine thinking, but they weren’t thinking about surround
don’t like certain types of monitors. I don’t trust them. (1999) and the others were done much earlier. I was [sound] when they made A Hard Day’s Night. The thing
Yeah. Let’s talk about what you do like. doing Love, I think, when they were doing those. So no, with film is that you’re watching dialogue. It’s coming
I use Adam S3-As, which are older monitors. I like them I wasn’t involved in those. They’re pretty good. out of the central channel, even if you have left and right
because they’re very good on vocals and snare drums. They You were obviously very familiar with speakers. It’s almost like hitting a mono with a toffee
have a ribbon tweeter; they’re not good at top and bottom, what was there on the multitrack hammer. You have shards of sound around you, but you
but that’s something you can worry about later. If you can tapes. I assume that everything had have a central focus.
get the mids right, you’re generally okay. I use those, and been digitized over the last few years When I went to the screening of A Hard
I’ve used them for ten years. I haven’t gone wrong so far. while you were working on Love. Day’s Night, I was alone, so I walked

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What about D/A converters, plug-ins, and Yeah. We re-digitized a lot of the tracks at a higher rate, around the room and literally put my
that sort of thing? with better converters. You can always do better. We ear up to the speakers to hear what
I used to use Apogee. I really like Apogee, and I like Bob were quite diligent with that. you’d done. It’s almost as though the
left and right channels are the

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[Clearmountain, Tape Op #84] and Betty Bennett, who I talked to Jimmy Page [Tape Op #102] a
look after Apogee. Recently I’ve been working with Pro week or so ago, and he wouldn’t even band, and the center is the vocal,
Tools, and I’ve been using the HDX system. I’ve had tell me the rate that he recently did with a bit of background band and
some great experiences. I’ve played the game because the Led Zeppelin remasters at. He said percussion, maybe. The rear is fairly
I’ve been working on 5.1 mixes. I find that the discrete they were at a “very high rate” ambient sounding.
5.1 digital world is great for film, but for music it because he’s worried about someone Yeah. I’m mixing for the film. I’m not mixing for some sort

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sometimes suffers. In the Scorsese film, George coming along in 20 years when he’s of crazy release. It’s not like the Love thing. I’m mixing
Harrison: Living In The Material World, and when I was not around. for the film, so I want to make people feel like they’re
doing A Hard Day’s Night, I ended up putting it on an We have pretty much everything at 192 kHz, 24-bit. hearing the records they know, but I want the audience

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8-track, 2-inch tape because I liked the fact that it What were the technical obstacles that to feel closer to them. That’s my goal. I want them to
sounded like it gelled a bit better. existed when you were making the 5.1s? on feel what I feel when I listen to the tape in the studio.
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thing to me. The Beatles weren’t old when they recorded
those songs. I want that to come out. Sometimes we’d
put songs on playback in [Abbey Road’s] Studio Two to
create ambient sound, and then record the band in the
room to create surround that way.
Is that what you did for “She Loves You”?
I think so, yeah. It also has crowd in it. We did that for
everything, just to see if we wanted to use it. It’s easy,
once you have it set up. You’re trying to create a world. There was a clarity and definition to George
I don’t believe you want to be in a situation where you
feel like you’re turning around to hear sounds. You want
to have a situation where there’s expanded stereo. We
compared the 5.1 to the stereo and the mono in the
mix room all the time. You want the 5.1 to be
composed, not distracting. We wanted it to sound the
way that we remembered hearing it. When I did the
George Harrison film there was concern from various
as I do, and you’ve only got one other track, you’re going When you’re doing the work, you can’t think about it all the
to have everything in the center. As you said, I put the time. Otherwise you’d be paralyzed with doubt. You’re
band left and right and the vocal center, and then maybe working by yourself, with your engineer, and you’ve got
the room sound from Studio Two in the rear. As my dad concepts and ideas that might be wrong or right. But you
always said about mixing; it’s an attempt to create a try everything you can think of then you step back and
version that’s the best live performance that there is. The think, “Okay, [how would this sound] if I were a Beatles
further intention is to paint new pictures. I would say fan?” It’s now become their music as well. It’s become
that this new version of A Hard Day’s Night isn’t painting music that belongs to the generations. The last thing that
new pictures. It’s the former. I want to do is any harm. Somebody said to me that Love
was their favorite Beatles album. It’s not a Beatles album!
Harrison’s 12-string on “I Should Have It’s them, but it’s not. On one hand, if I can make people
Known Better” in the scene where discuss things and listen to music – not just listen to it, but
they’re in the luggage cage. The 12- hear it – that’s great. That’s what drives me. If people don’t
string seemed just a little sharper. like what I do, it’s generally because they love the originals
“I Should Have Known Better” was one of the songs that so much and they can’t bear to hear anything else. I respect
I kept going back to. Bizarrely, it was one of those that. I listen and respect what people have to say. You have
tracks that is much brighter than you remember it. to. You can’t be distracted by it, but you have to honor it.
John [Lennon]’s voice sounds great, but the track is You had to have a sense of that summer of

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people, I think even Martin Scorsese himself, that I way bright. I went back to it loads of times. I think we 1964 and what was going on at the time.
should have more of a hand in “All Things Must Pass” try and go for clarity. We try to hear the instruments, I’m sure you’ve heard stories from Paul,
to modernize it. I thought, “No.” I wanted it to sound because that makes it sound more live. Ringo, your Dad, and anyone else

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the way I remembered it, and how I remember it is as Were some tracks more challenging than around them. What is your feeling about
a soaring, beautiful piece of music. The 5.1 lets you do others? “A Hard Day’s Night” sounded that time, having lived with A Hard Day’s
that. It takes it closer into your head; just the nature like it may have been harder to deal Night over the last year or two?
of facing forward and having speakers behind you. This with sonically. I think it’s energy and commitment. I think that ‘64 was
is what people forget about. They think about 5.1 as I would say “A Hard Day’s Night” was the most difficult, the year my dad had 32 number one records in the U.K.
hearing strings in the back, or whatever. With 5.1 the because as soon as you move the vocals to the center with different artists. If you look at the ‘64 tour diary

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sonic image gets closer to your forehead, if that makes on that song, it changes the way the song sounds. I of The Beatles, it’s just fascinating. It’s actually on the
sense. You can get things to move closer. went back to it so many times. The drums on “A Hard Internet. You look at it and think, “When did they
In a lot of movies, you have dialogue Day’s Night” are very sizzly. record?” I remember looking at it thinking that it was

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and then the music will jump a Ringo [Starr]’s cymbal work is all over just completely bonkers. You see a four-day gap, and
couple of decibels. that record, isn’t it? they made an album there.
Yeah. I think that it has to complement the film. From the Yeah, it’s all over it. As soon as I moved the vocal over to Yet it’s the first record they’d made that
reviews I saw, I think it does that. We pieced together the left, it solved everything and it sounded great. But was all Lennon/McCartney originals,
on
scenes, kind of like archaeology, finding the speech then, for me, that went against what I was trying to do, plus all those B-sides and EPs.
tracks for the film. I also worked thinking that if the if that makes sense. I thought, as a film experience, For me, that’s the most shocking thing. They seemed to
music were too clean, it wouldn’t sound like it was part that I wanted it to be the way that the film was made warp time. I sat down with Paul last year, and we talked
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of the film. My concern was that it had to all fit by [director] Richard Lester. So I’d agree with that. I a bit about it. He quite enjoys it. He’s the same person,
together as one piece. The thing I’ve learned from film, can’t defend it. Hands up! really. My dad is still the same person. But you just get
and working with really good film mixers, is that what I’m trying to pick out the things that I older. There was no ceiling in anything they did in ‘64,
you don’t want to do is to surprise people too much could tell were challenging. and that revealed itself in ‘66 and ‘67. They had their
uk

sonically. You want to comfort people and take them on That absolutely was. It was quite challenging. The most
a journey. If you do anything that’s just showing off, challenging thing actually was the spoken word. That’s the
you’ll take people out of the suspension of disbelief most challenging thing, because it sounds so distorted.
What did you do? Were you able to locate a
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heads down. Their ambition was to take over the world
with great music. The only way they could do that was
by shouting and being as energetic as they could in front

that they’re under. of a microphone. Even when they sang quietly they were
What shape were the tapes in? Did you lower generation source? loud. That’s what shocked me most when I got the tapes
ro

do what you did with Love, where We had a CD reissue that’s cleaner sounding, but it has no out. They’re gentle because they’re great and have
you lined everything up from top on it. We had a lot more hiss going on with ours emotion, but they always have a ruggedness to them. r
separate session tapes? than they did on theirs. But for me, I’d rather have a <www.camanagement.co.uk>
I wish we had done that, but Hard Day’s Night was done bit more hiss and make it sound natural than trying to <jeffslate.net>
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before they started bouncing 4-tracks. So that wasn’t be too clean. Another hard thing was the weight and
there. We used techniques to try to extract guitars expectations of the people who are going to be
slightly. We were developing new techniques that aren’t listening to your work. The Beatles are going to hear
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there yet. This golden chalice of de-mixing isn’t quite this, and there are also people who really, really care
there, but we’re getting closer. I don’t want to use the about the outcome.
words “stereo spread” because that doesn’t work either, You seem to have a sense of the mantel
but we developed some pretty new techniques. I can of The Beatles’ legacy. You have to
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widen a mono track and instruments. As soon as it’s not please them, but you are aware, too,
good for the track, or as soon as you start hearing that there are people out there who
anomalies going on, you have to stop. On A Hard Day’s care an awful lot about the music,
pr

Night I used techniques to try to make it as real as even picking the mixes apart. How
possible. There’s an element of de-mixing going on, does that weigh on you, or factor into
because otherwise, if I wanted the vocals on the center, your work?
52/Tape Op#103/Mr. Martin/(Fin.)
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Please Support Our Advertisers/Tape Op#103/53


Crane Song
Avocet 2 monitor controller
Confidence. Transparency. I like my monitor controllers
like I like my politicians. I want confidence that I am
hearing what is and what is not there. Confidence that the
choices I am making in terms of signal processing are the
right ones. Confidence that I have chosen the best mic
and preamp for the source. Confidence that what leaves
the studio is going to translate to the real world. And most
importantly, I do not want a spin on it. Dung heap or
gleaming golden chalice of light — just give it to me
straight. The newly updated Avocet 2 from Crane Song is a
device that delivers that confidence and transparency —
and so much more.
I have been a fan of Dave Hill and his gear for a long
time. From Summit Audio to Crane Song and Dave Hill
Designs — many glorious pieces have been produced
under these monikers. He is not rehashing or recreating
the past, but rather pushing the boundaries of technology
and audio gear. Dave Hill was one of the first with the
belief that A/D and D/A conversion could be so much
more than the status quo, when he created the Crane Song
HEDD [Tape Op #26], a converter that to this day is still
considered by many to be one of the best. So, when the
opportunity arose to review a new version of the Crane
Song Avocet, I jumped at the chance.
Crane Song gear is handmade in Superior, Wisconsin,
and everything about it says no compromise. Build, look,
feel, and sonics are all, well, superior.
The Avocet 2 is an analog monitor management tool,
with discrete Class A electronics and a newly redesigned,
fourth-generation D/A converter (more on that later). The
main unit is an elegant 2RU-height rackmount box with a
clean, brushed-metal front plate that has the ubiquitous
green Crane Song light and a 1/4’’ TRS headphone jack. The
back is packed with XLR jacks for three analog inputs, three
digital inputs, and three speaker outputs — all stereo.
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There’s also a second TRS headphone output, as well as
optical and RCA jacks if you prefer S/PDIF format for digital
input 1. On-the-fly gain trim is available for each of the six
inputs. The Avocet 2’s functionality is controlled by a well-
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designed desktop remote. The main volume knob is a
comfortable size, has a nice resistance, and is stepped in
1 dB increments from −32 to +12 dB. The text around the
dial is marked in 2 dB increments, but LEDs encircling the
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knob display each dB step by lighting one or two at a time.
Adjustments of the volume knob result in small clicks from
the main unit due to the use of relays, inspiring confidence
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in the analog audio path, which remains safe and clear inside
of the main unit, without need for a detrimental detour
down a long remote cable.
54/Tape Op#103/Gear Reviews/
Many mix and mastering engineers are already using the
original Avocet — and for good reason. The capabilities and
sound of the Avocet cannot be beat. Having level-offset on
all of the input sources is an indispensable feature that
should be standard on every monitor controller. I was able
to level-match every source using an SPL meter, allowing me
to make real-world judgments between the unprocessed
analog 2-mix coming directly from my summing amp; the
mix with bus compression and EQ via the digital input from
my DAW; and reference sources such as CDs, and files
streaming wirelessly via my Airport Express. Additionally, the
Avocet offers speaker defeat, polarity flip, mono mode,
speaker dim, mute, and talkback. It can even truncate the
selected digital input to 16 bits. Moreover, output 3 can be
dedicated to an active subwoofer and used in parallel with
output 1 or 2. All digital sources are up-sampled to over
200 kHz and jitter-reduced for maximum accuracy. Up to four
Avocet rackmount units can be chained together to facilitate
5.1–7.1 surround mixing. Metering is configured out-of-the-
box to display input signal from −46 to 0 dB in 2 dB steps,
with multiple options available via internal jumpers.
The headphone section accepts three sources: the
selected main input; the post–volume/polarity/mono
version of the main input; or the aux input, independent
of the main input selection. All three headphone sources
have dedicated volume trim. The headphone amp in this
unit sounds beautiful, is well thought out, and is user
friendly. Once headphone sources and levels are set, it is
as easy as hitting the mute button to defeat the mains for
tracking in the same room or for critical listening sans
bleed. Likewise, assigning an artist mix to the headphones
is as simple as feeding the Avocet’s aux input and
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choosing that for the headphone source.
At this point, if you want to learn more about what the
Avocet offers in terms of routing and control, you should
on
download the manual from the Crane Song website. The unit
has many more features than there’s room to discuss
here — including integration with other devices — and
options abound in its control set as well as in the hardware
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jumpers, trims, and pads inside the main box.
While the functionality of the Avocet 2 is the same as
previous versions, what is not the same is the newly
reworked D/A converter. Dave Hill has invested over two
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years of research, trial and error, and countless
experiments into his new, fourth-generation DAC, and it
was certainly worth the time. Improvements have been
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made in the quartz crystal reference oscillator responsible
for the Avocet 2’s clocking, and the result is a significant
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reduction in jitter. When I spoke to Dave Hill and
mentioned I was not an overly technical chap, he laid it
out, in what I’m sure were the simplest terms possible:
“We use a sample-rate converter to do jitter reduction,
and it up-samples to about 211 kHz. The reference
oscillator has ultra-low phase noise, which translates to
extremely low jitter. It is very difficult to achieve this kind
of performance. Custom parts, custom quartz crystals —
let’s put it this way, to make it significantly better, when
you are using $30–$40 parts, and throwing a bunch of
them away due to poor performance, they become
$300–$400 parts. I’m not sure at what point you stop
hearing things, but I am asking it to do something that is
at the edge of its capabilities. The part that is in the
Avocet 2 measures a phase-noise floor of about −115 dB
at 10 Hz off the center frequency, which is really quite low.
As a comparison, I put in a part that was at −105 dB and
did a listening test, and you can hear the difference.”
What I love about trying to convey what something
sounds like with words, is that you have to take the time
to listen and train your ears to discern what it is you are
trying to hear. In the case of jitter, I have never had a
way to effectively identify and judge what jitter in the
clock signal does to audio or how it even presents itself.
There is an excellent explanation on the Crane Song
website called “The Jitter Files.” It is a set of critical
listening tests that lets you train yourself to hear clock
jitter and its effect on various sources. Song examples
are presented in their final, mixed form and then with
only the artifacts of jitter and inaccurate clocking. What
blew my mind was that what I perceived as warmth was
actually jitter coloring the midrange. Why is this a big
deal? If you are hearing mud or maybe what you perceive
as “warmth” in playback that is not actually there, and
you reach for EQ as a remedy, you are altering the audio
unnecessarily. If playback is not as pure as it can be, you
are guessing. Two months ago, I couldn’t tell you what
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picoseconds were, let alone that a reduction from 13 ps
to less than 1 ps would make a significant difference in
my work, but it does.
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This stuff is subtle. And to the average listener on
an average playback system, it may ultimately be
irrelevant. However, as Mr. Hill noted, “There is always
going to be someone with a better system, and the
flaws will be evident.”
I asked Dave what all of this R&D and the
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improvements to the DAC would do to the cost of the
Avocet 2, and he said that when all was said and done, the
price would not increase. Personally, I would pay more, but
I quickly realized that Dave Hill is not trying to turn a
quick buck. He has dedicated his life to this pursuit of
pushing the boundaries of audio quality.
Because of the depth and layers of functionality in this
unit, it is not a monitor controller you will plug-and-play
out of the box. In advance of my receiving the unit, Tim
at Crane Song contacted me to schedule a walkthrough of
the unit with their head tech. After a short tutorial, I was
off and running. Basically, the unit is set up in layers.
Several of the buttons have a second function that is
accessed by using the “Shift” button. Some of these
include accessing the headphone sources and individual
levels as well as optional subwoofer configuration.
Importantly, once I understood the thought process
behind the unit’s design, it all became very intuitive.
When I first started using the Avocet 2, my impressions
were very positive, and they haven’t wavered since. I like
the sonic image both side-to-side and back-to-front; the
super-smooth and even response across the entire
frequency range at any volume; the stellar transient
response that becomes very apparent when listening to a
snare drum, because it actually sounds like a snare drum
in the room; the deep functionality, level-matching
offsets, and other useful options; and of course, the
supreme clarity. Sound-wise, everything is so perfectly in
focus and defined that it allows you to “see” the mix,
which opens new doors to the placement of mix elements.
I love watching clients and friends sit in the mix position
and reach out between the speakers to touch the top of
the singer’s head because its location in the sound field is
so strongly represented. When a listening experience is
that tangible, it is a powerful thing, and it changes the
listeners’ emotional connection to what they are hearing.
This is what making, recording, and mixing music is all
about. Put your left foot in.
 Moreover, I am convinced that because of the
Avocet 2’s superior clocking and signal path, my brain
doesn’t have to work as hard, and therefore, listening
fatigue comes much later in the day. At the end of a recent
run of 10–12 hour days, I was still making good choices
in terms of balances and EQ — and even the end-of-
session roughs sounded close to finished mixes.
Over time, I simply became addicted to the unit. The
result of all of this time, energy, and technical prowess is the
most beautifully transparent and detailed monitor controller
I have ever heard. Both analog and digital sources are
rendered with extreme accuracy. Integration of the Avocet 2
has been a huge time saver, and its use has produced better
results. At the end of the day, none of the tech specs matter
one bit. The Avocet 2 with its new and improved DAC sounds
awesome. We are humans making music for humans (and
maybe some plants too), and the tools that facilitate
emotional resonance and assist in translation of artistic
intent are indispensable. If a new monitor controller is on
your need-to-get or upgrade list, you would be doing
yourself a serious disservice by not giving the Avocet 2 a
serious look, and more importantly, listen.
($2,999 MSRP; www.cranesong.com)
–Geoff Stanfield <www.geoffstanfield.com>
KRK
Rokit 5 G3 active monitor
Anyone who has read my previous reviews may know
that two years ago, I left the comfort of my trusted
Oakland studio to start mixing primarily in my
apartment in Brooklyn. I started working right away
with the speakers I happened to have with me — Rokit
5 G2 monitors — planning on upgrading them as soon
as I got settled. I immediately (and surprisingly) felt
very comfortable mixing on them, and managed to
eventually completely forget that I wasn’t supposed to
use “cheap” speakers for professional mixing. Since
then, I have auditioned about six or seven similarly-
sized speakers of very varying prices, and the Rokit 5 G2
has held its own quite nicely, even against speakers
three times its price. The most recent audition was for
the next generation Rokit 5 G3.
Physically not a whole lot changed from G2 to G3; it
still has the telltale yellow glass-aramid composite woofer
cone, 1’’ soft-dome tweeter, and slotted bass port on the
bottom of the face. The outline of the box changed a bit,
becoming slightly less rounded and more angular, with a
trapezoidal bevel defining the shape of the faceplate. The
back is also mostly unchanged, with the same I/O
(balanced XLR and TRS, plus unbalanced RCA), and the
same two controls the G2 had (volume as well as HF level
adjustment), plus one more — a LF level adjustment with
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four positions (−2, −1, 0, and +2 dB). I’m glad the G3 has
the extra control, and I’ll tell you why in just a moment.
The first thing I encountered after plugging the Rokit 5
G3s into my speaker-switching matrix was that I thought
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they had arrived DOA. No sound came immediately out of
them, although the logo on the front was glowing, and I
was sure audio was passing down the line. Roughly a
second later, though, I heard the audio gurgling up from
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the murky depths, and within another second, there was
full-color audio blazing through the G3s. It turns out that
the Rokit 5 G3 goes into an “Auto-Standby” mode when it
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hasn’t been fed any audio for thirty minutes, unlike any
other studio monitor I have come across in my 17-plus
years of hanging around pro-audio equipment. I find this
“feature” a little unsettling and rather odd, since I feel like
any power saving during this sleeping is completely
overshadowed by the likelihood of cranking up the volume
of whatever is feeding the speakers during that second of
silence, only to experience a loud surprise when it wakes
up. Plus, there’s that moment of “huh, what’s going on?”
when switching over to them for the first time in a half
hour, and anything unexpected like that interrupts your
mix flow, which ain’t good.
Aside from that functional issue, I think this is a fine
speaker. It’s more different sonically from the G2 than I
thought it’d be. I find the G3 warmer in the top, that is to
say that I can hear more high-end detail on the G2. The
G3 is also a little tubbier in the low and low-mids than the
G2, which I already feel is a little on the boomy side. Even
after notching the LF adjustment down a couple of dB, the
G3 still has an ample amount of low-mid info, at least
living a foot from the back wall in my small mix room. As
for true low end, well, it is still just a 5’’ woofer, so if you
really want to hear subs clearly, you’ll need a subwoofer —
or full-bandwidth headphones — but that’s the case with
any speaker this size. As for the high end, even with the
HF adjustment bumped up a dB, the G2 has a fair amount
more sizzle, and I consider it to be dark speaker!
The takeaway is that the Rokit 5 G3 is really quite good
for its extremely low price tag of $300 per pair. I’ve grown
to like it more and more, as it burns in and I get used to
its sound. I think I’ll hold on to my G2 pair for now, but
that has as much to do with familiarity as anything else.
The G3 is warmer and “rounder,” and therefore may sound
better to some users, but I would definitely recommend
coupling them (as with any small, affordable monitor)
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with some headphones that have both frequency extremes
better covered (I rely heavily on my Audio-Technica
ATH-M50 [Tape Op #63]), to make sure your subs and
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sibilance are both kept in check.
($149.50 street each; www.krksys.com)
–Eli Crews <www.elicrews.com>
TASCAM
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UH-7000 mic preamp
& USB interface
Instead of offering eight or more inputs loaded with mic
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preamps in a never-ending quest for bang-for-buck, some
companies are designing two-channel units that put the
emphasis on quality rather than quantity. Such is the latest
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USB interface from TASCAM for both Mac and PC. The
UH-7000 costs about the same as a mid-priced multi–in/out
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interface, but its analog I/O is limited to two channels, with
two built-in mic preamps. It’s capable of 24-bit, 192 kHz
operation, and TASCAM has done a bang-up job of making
this a high-end unit with premium sound.
The UH-7000 is a 2RU-height, half-rack unit, but it is
made for tabletop use, with feet and no rack ears.
Connection to computer is via USB 2.0. The drivers and
firmware should be checked, downloaded, and installed
before firing up the unit. Installation, including new
firmware, was as smooth as a shoulder rub. The front panel
is simplicity itself with three buttons and three knobs. The
power button on the left is single function, but the two
smaller buttons on the right do double duty. If you push
the left button, the UH-7000’s Mixer Panel application
opens up on your computer, while the right-hand button
toggles the link state of the output volume knob. Link
controls the headphone and main volume together, while
unlink, no surprise, gives control of only the headphone,
Gear Reviews/(continued on page 50)/Tape Op#103/55
resetting the main output to full volume. If you hold
either button down, phantom power is engaged for its
respective mic input. The rest of the front panel is
occupied by the 1/4’’ headphone jack and status LEDs for
sample rate, link, and phantom power. That leaves plenty
of space devoted to each channel’s input knob and
associated 20-segment meter. The knobs are big, feel
solid, and offer just the right amount of resistance. The
peak-hold meters hang for a second at the highest point,
providing great ease in setting input volume. They are nice
enough that I wish they could be switched to output. The
back is busier, with XLR mic inputs, 1/4’’ TRS line inputs,
and XLR line outputs. XLR jacks handle digital I/O,
switchable between AES/EBU and S/PDIF formats. Analog
and digital I/O can be used simultaneously, for up to four
channels of audio between the UH-7000 and your chosen
DAW. There are no instrument-level DIs on the unit, and
neither are there inserts.
The included Mixer Panel software is straightforward yet
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flexible, incorporating a three-tabbed UI. The Interface tab
is for status and settings like driver version, sample rate,
clock source, etc. The Mixer tab is for controlling the
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UH-7000’s onboard mixer. When set for the default
Multitrack Mode, it offers mixing of input signals to the
DAW, routing of input and DAW signals to the outputs, and
a cross-fader for low-latency monitoring. You can choose
either the mic preamp or the line input for each analog input
channel. The digital channels can be mixed and routed
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separately from the analog channels. Plus, the mixer has
access to four virtual output channels from the DAW.
Switching to Stereo Mode simplifies everything, mixing
everything into a single stereo track that goes to the DAW
and all of the UH-7000’s outputs simultaneously. The Effects
tab is for the built-in effects. The usual suspects are
available, including various dynamics, EQ, and reverb
effects. I found the latter most useful, allowing the artist to
hear reverb in the monitor mix without having to commit
reverb to the DAW recording.
When I first listened to the UH-7000 during playback
of a song I was almost finished mixing, the first thing that
jumped out at me was the vocals, and I immediately felt
that they could use a touch more reverb. I could hear just
that much deeper and cleaner into the song. At home, I
use a long-in-the-tooth but still useful TC Electronic
Studio Konnekt 48. It delivers excellent sound for a home
studio, and I never experienced any problems transferring
projects between home and studio. The difference in
conversion quality between the TC and the TASCAM is
obvious to the trained ear. The TASCAM’s capture is a little
deeper and more distinct, so the edges of the sound,
especially distorted guitars and such, are smoother and
more realistic. The UH-7000’s preamp is an even bigger
step up in quality. Although transformerless (like just
about every other built-in preamp design), it’s smoother,
with no hint of the graininess found in the TC and most
interface preamps I’ve tried. It even holds its own against
standalone preamps like my Rupert Neve Designs Portico
II [Tape Op #82] and Warm Audio units [#91, #97] at
home, as well as the Neve and API preamps at The Kitchen
Studios. Not to say that the TASCAM preamp sounds like
these transformer-based designs — its sound isn’t as “big”
as Neve’s, and its highs aren’t as sweet as API’s — but I
wouldn’t hesitate to use it alongside these for its clear
image and full lows. The only thing I wanted was inserts
for the TASCAM preamps so I could use analog compressors
going in. John Painter at The Kitchen thought that the
 UH-7000 was a steal just for its preamps. Importantly,
the UH-7000 doesn’t offer direct outs for the preamps,
so our preamp evaluation required both A/D and D/A
conversion for the TASCAM, which makes for quite a
compliment on both the TASCAM preamp and
conversion!
TASCAM has hit a sweet spot with its UH-7000 —
great converters, mic preamps that can play with the
big boys without being sent home crying, and a price
the working stiff can actually justify. For the
singer/songwriter, DJ, location recordist, or in-the-box
musician, the UH-7000 delivers a step up in sound
quality from the usual fare. And with its digital I/O, you
can integrate its premium mic preamps and converters
with a multichannel interface that you already own.
($599.95 street; www.tascam.com)
–Alan Tubbs <www.bnoir-film.com>
Massey Plugins
THC Distortion Stompbox plug-in
The Massey THC (Total Harmonic Corruption) plug-
in is a no-nonsense analog-modeled distortion
“stompbox.” THC has the same familiar controls —
drive, filter (tone), and level — that you’d find on your
average overdrive or distortion pedal. But that’s where
the similarities end. THC really does sound like it’s
“corrupting” the signal — walking the line between
digital clipping and something from a Van Halen
album. I’ve used at least a dozen different distortion
plug-ins, and this one is definitely a bit different. Let’s
get one thing out of the way; I’m not suggesting that
you try any type of distortion plug-in in place of a tube
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amp, but there are plenty of other uses for such a
handy little noise-maker.
On a parallel drum bus, THC delivers instant
intensity. It’s gritty and blown out, and the filter
on
throttles the cymbals that typically become harsh when
distorted. Particularly on room mics, this thing can get
nasty, in a good way — and in a hurry. I recently was
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given a song to mix in which one of the guitar tones
was flubby and weak, so I cranked up THC and blended
it in to add some bite. As long as you’re not shooting
for a B.B. King tone, THC can come in handy. When used
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on vocals, THC renders them immediately ready for hip
beer commercials, so long as you add some slap back.
However, of all of the scenarios that I tried, my favorite
was adding THC to reverbs and delays to make them less
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digital and soft sounding. Even turning up the drive
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5–10% and then low-pass filtering down to 5 kHz can
make your generic “Hall 1” preset sound useful. For
instance, on a recent mix, I was having trouble making
a slap-delay plug-in sit in a track that was dark and mid-
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heavy, but THC provided some overdrive and helped to
bring the delay onto the same plane as the dirty vocal
track. It’s also important to note that if you’re using
AAX plug-ins, THC features a wet/dry knob for even
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more flexibility.
All of these scenarios involve using THC as a
mixing tool, but if you find yourself doing lots of ear-
candy production, distorting intros or breakdowns, or
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are just looking to upgrade from using amp-
simulators to dirty up your tracks, download the demo
of THC and try it out for yourself.
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($69 direct; www.masseyplugins.com)
–Dave Hidek <dave@treelady.com>
56/Tape Op#103/Gear Reviews/
Graefe Designs
TruTone Head
We’ve all seen photos of studios that own a wall of guitar tube
heads. Certainly, having a dozen or more amps to choose from
might be ideal, but the total cost can be prohibitive for a studio
owner. After all, when top-shelf heads cost several thousand
dollars each, you can buy an amp farm — or a lot of recording
gear. With that in mind, I’ve been trying to build a small
collection of very flexible recording amplifiers. While discussing
maintenance on our Sony console with Tom Graefe, I learned that
he was about to market his hand-built guitar amps. Graefe spent
years working for MCI/Sony in their Florida facility. In Electrical
Engineering circles, he is known for his high headroom, high
signal-to-noise ratio designs. While I am very familiar with tube
amp designs and features, I wanted to give the Graefe TruTone
Head a deep review. I enlisted Dave Cerminara. When he’s not
touring as the lead guitarist for Legs Like Tree Trunks, Dave does
a lot of engineering work. Having someone who plays and records
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full time seemed to be the right call for a piece of gear like this.
–Garrett Haines <www.treelady.com>
The Graefe TruTone is an all-tube 50 watt unit available as a
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head or in a 1x12 Combo configuration. Powered by a pair of
EL34s, the TruTone offers the front end of two classic guitar
amplifiers — a Fender Twin Reverb and a Marshall JCM800, labeled
“USA” and “British Voice” respectively. The Twin setting exhibits
the same rich low end and full-bodied response as the original,
with plenty of headroom before breakup and a clean top end. The
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Marshall side rolls off some of that low end and instead presents
a tighter, more defined midrange, especially in higher gain
scenarios. This attenuated low end is super beneficial when
pushing the amp into extreme distortion as it sits nicely above my
kick and bass without having to reach for an EQ. It also sounds
much more natural than simply turning the bass knob down.
The rest of the TruTone’s front panel is deceptively simple with
all the standard amp controls — gain, master, treble, middle, bass,
and presence — but there’s a “Mo Bass” feature which I’ll get to
in a second. Gain and master controls work in tangent as is to be
expected — gain down, master up for clean, and vice versa for
overdrive. Unlike other amps, however, the TruTone responds to
pick control and heavy/light handedness, meaning that even with
gains all at 11, the amp goes crystal clean when given softer
plucks (you can see a demonstration of this feature at the Graefe
Designs website). This not only makes the amp a pleasure to play
but also makes the lack of a footswitch or channel selector a
complete nonissue. Also worth noting here is the amp’s remarkable
signal-to-noise ratio, even at these most extreme settings.
Somewhat hidden is the unlabeled push/pull feature on the
gain control for more drive. The added gain stage tastefully
boosts the amount of distortion without going into unusable
sizzle-crunch like certain hi-gain heads love to do. More
importantly, pulling the gain maintains the overall balance and
character of the selected amp voicing; it extends the overdrive
without adding a nasty midrange bump or rolling off more lows.
Between the two input voices and added gain stage, the TruTone
offers an incredible range of options, not to mention the tone
controls are some of the most responsive I’ve encountered.
Now back to the Mo Bass control, which doesn’t add some
incredible low end, but instead tightens the top end and adds
unreal articulation to even the most overdriven setting.
Initially, I assumed this was some kind of built-in parallel
compressor as it accentuated pluck in a similar way to, say, a
Barber Tone Press, but Mr. Graefe clarified that the control
actually handles negative feedback at lower frequencies, thus
allowing for more controlled lows and tighter highs. This is not
an EQ but exactly the type of feature you’d expect from a man
with 40 years of experience building recording consoles.
 The amp runs at 4, 8, or 16 Ω. Effects can be inserted via an all-tube line-level loop that
can be placed in series or parallel (cool!) — perfect for using rack effects processors. There
is no built-in reverb tank, as doing so would compromise the signal-to-noise performance.
The Graefe TruTone can cover a lot of sonic ground. But unlike some flexible designs, the
Graefe does everything well. If you want one or two amps that can cover your needs, the
Graefe is a first choice. The quality of the hand-made construction puts it on par with the
finest recording gear. Buy one, and you won’t have to worry about upgrading down the road.
(Combo $2625, head $2325; www.graefedesigns.com)
–Dave Cerminara <cerminara@treelady.com>

Moog
Minifooger analog effects pedals
Moog Music has been making big, sophisticated pedals — Moogerfoogers — since 1997.
They’re amazing pedals with lots of synth-inspired modulation features, but they’re pretty
expensive and are too complex for my puny brain. For me, Moog’s new stripped-down
Minifooger pedal line is more like it. Compared to their older siblings, the Minifoogers are
smaller, simpler, and less expensive. They feel more like traditional guitar pedals, and the
effects themselves are more traditional guitar effects: boost, distortion, delay, tremolo, and
ring modulation. But the features and sounds are still clearly Moog. Each pedal includes an

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expression pedal input, and the controls on each pedal are very interactive.
For the past few months, I’ve been working on an LP for Sie Lieben Maschinen — old-
school post-punk jams. Bassist/guitarist/main-dude Josh Newton lives on the other side of

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the country, and he’s been tracking straight into Logic using amp simulators, then sending me
his DI tracks to re-amp. So I’ve done tons of re-amping lately, which has been educational and
super fun. With good performances already tracked, I can take my time and experiment with
pedals, amps, and mics. If you haven’t ever done this, get a re-amp box and do it! You’ll find
yourself hearing things you never have time to hear in the heat of a normal session. Anyway,
over the course of this record, I found myself using the MF Delay and MF Trem all over the

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place. The MF Delay is just fantastic — dark and crunchy. It can do 700 ms of bucket-brigade
delay, and it has a great-sounding pre-delay distortion that’s controllable via the Drive knob.
Buy this pedal. The MF Trem is another winner. I have a few solid tremolo options in my

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studio — a silverface Fender Twin, a ‘60s Ampeg Jet, a Boss TR-2 — and the Moog is a very
different beast than all of them. The MF Trem wave-shapes are complex, weird things; and at
some settings, the tremolo effect creates enough phasing to get into rotary-speaker territory.
My Boss TR-2 sounds boring and pedestrian in comparison, and the MF Trem has gotten lots
on
of use on the SLM songs.
I also used the MF Drive on a number of sessions. Distortion pedals are funny — there
are millions of them, they’re hard to describe, and sometimes one is the right thing and
sometimes it isn’t. The MF Drive is a thick, nice sounding overdrive that’s flexible and works
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well on a number of different sources. It includes a resonant low-pass filter, which seems like
a cool Moog-ish feature, but in actuality, the LPF didn’t do much for me. The resonance is
pretty mild and I wasn’t able to get sick filter-sweeps out of it. I need to spend some time
controlling the cutoff with an expression pedal to see if I like it that way. Anyway, as a
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distortion pedal, it’s cool. It made the cut on a number of Sie Lieben Maschinen guitar tracks,
but my favorite use of this pedal was on vocals. I’ve been trying to get “out of the box” more
by running pedals as insert effects — send the recorded track to a re-amp box, then into
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some pedals, then back into the computer via a DI. Recently, I mixed a steamroller of a
sludge/noise EP for North Carolina’s Power Take-Off. Gus’s vocals are an intense shout/spoken
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thing, and I spent a good hour or two hunting for the right vocal chain. I ended up with the
MF Drive into the MF Delay. The MF Drive sounded gnarly and interesting without being wooly,
and the MF Delay sounded great while I torqued on its knobs as the re-recorded vocal take
went back into the box. Awesome!
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Because I’m not a fan of ring-modulation effects in general, I spent the least amount of
time with the MF Ring. But I do want to mention that the MF Ring has an expression pedal
control over rate — which lets a player find useful modulation spots while playing. [Even if
you’re not a ring-mod fan, Moog suggests trying the MF Ring on sources that you might not
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consider initially, like snare and kick drum. –AH]

Yes, I took a few Minifoogers to band practice too, but this is a recording magazine, right?
Here’s the takeaway from band practice: the other guitar player in my band is buying an MF Delay.
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Like other Moog products, the Minifoogers carry a two-year warranty (when registered)
and are built in the Moog factory in the U.S. Of course, nowadays there is no shortage of
innovative boutique pedals at this price point, but Moog has done a great job with these
pedals. They sound great, and they’re fun to dial in. The MF Delay and MF Trem in particular
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are clear winners.

(MF Boost $139 street, MF Drive $169, MF Ring $149, MF Delay $199, MF Trem $179, EP-3
expression pedal $40; www.moogmusic.com)
–Scott Evans <www.antisleep.com> Gear Reviews/(continued on page 58)/Tape Op#103/57
 Tonecraft Audio
363 tube DI
The 363 is the first product from San Diego–based
Tonecraft Audio, but owner Jon Erickson is no
newcomer to the studio equipment scene. Most
notably, he spent some time at A-Designs Audio and
was chiefly responsible for the Pacifica mic preamp
[Tape Op #49], among other products. A bass player
himself, Jon set out to make a DI that would be just at
home in a live setting as in the studio, and he gave it
a feature set that makes it more versatile than most
other DIs on the market.
Jon was gracious enough to personally drop off the
demo unit at my new studio, Rarefied Recording, where
he walked me through the basics of the box. It has your
usual input and thru 1/4’’ connections, but it quickly
diverges from your run-of-the-mill DI from there. In
addition to a customary XLR output, it also has a
separate TRS output. Each output has its own
dedicated level control and ground lift, and the
usefulness of this will become clear later in the review.
Besides the large input gain knob, the unit also has a
Baxandall EQ with ±20 dB of boost/cut and a true
bypass switch.
The look and heft of this thing is already
impressive, but when you turn it on, you are treated to
even more of that gut feeling that the box has mojo.
You can totally hear and feel the current humming, and
the front panel has a beautiful back light that comes
up slowly. The mechanical hum may be concerning to
some who plan to put the unit in the live room with
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active mics, but in practice, I did not find it to be a
problem. Jon explained that he’s switching to a custom
toroidal power transformer that has no audible
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mechanical noise on all units moving forward.
I hit the ground running by giving the 363 a go on a
Jerry Jones Bass6 for the band Feathers (Home Tapes).
Since I also have an A-Designs REDDI [Tape Op #53], it
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was only natural to start with a quick comparison. The
REDDI is a great tube DI, and I and other engineers
who’ve worked at Rarefied have gotten great sounds from
it. So in no way was the REDDI sounding bad in
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comparison to the 363. However, the added feature set of
the 363 really set it apart and gave it a clear edge over
the REDDI in this instance. Both units go after that
classic and sought-after Ampeg B-15N sound, and having
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one of those too, I can tell you that both DIs have it, but
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one annoying thing about the REDDI is that the output
is often not hot enough, which leaves you needing to put
it into another amplification stage. The 363 does not
suffer from this problem. Another note of contrast is that
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the REDDI basically just has one sound. With only one
gain knob and no EQ, there’s not much you can do to dial
in the desired tone within the unit itself, often leading
me to use an EQ after it. The 363’s built-in EQ is great. It
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gives you options to really fatten things up on the low
end and tweak the high end to taste. I found the
frequency selection by Jon to be excellent. Having control
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over input and output level also lets you drive the unit
into saturation while not overloading the next stage.
Now comes the bit about the dual outputs. I am a
big fan of parallel compression for bass because it allows
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the punch to be retained while simultaneously
smoothing out the playing and generally filling in the
sound. While it’s not a big deal to use a mult to split the
58/Tape Op#103/Gear Reviews/(continued on page 60)
signal, not everyone has mults or a splitter handy. Plus
with a mult or split, you have to send the same amount
of signal to both receiving devices. The independent dual
outputs of the 363 negate all of these issues. The sound
I was getting on the Jerry Jones was already amazing,
but after adding in a parallel path through my Bill Skibbe
[Tape Op #44] “Red Stripe” 5-9C, a compressor styled
after the LA-2A, I was in heaven.
Later in the session, I also had a chance to use the
363 on a Farfisa Mini Compact organ. I got excellent
results again, and just a dab of EQ went a long way to
perfect the sound.
A few weeks later, Jon surprised me with an adapter
he cooked up for the unit that allows you to plug in a
microphone. I tried it on a vocal for my buddy Michael
of The Paper Thins. More gain was required to pull the
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signal up from a Shure SM7B [Tape Op #36], but that is
a notoriously low-output mic. Jon told me he is
working on a new adapter that will have more gain.
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Regardless, the sound was still great and had a rich
low-frequency response as you might expect. To make
up for the lack of gain, I simply ran the 363 into a
Purple Audio MC77 compressor. I was going for a
distorted sound, so I really cranked it up. I had Michael
sing into a Placid Audio Copperphone mic [#85] at the
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same time and mixed the two mics together. After
doubling the vocal take, it was the best vocal sound
Michael said he’s ever gotten for himself, and I was
equally impressed. I think the 363 has a lot of potential
as a mic preamp with all its tube/transformer beefiness,
EQ, and input/output gain.
A bunch of freelancers work out of Rarefied, and
they were eager to try the unit out too. Dan Maier (who
has recorded a lot of heavy bands like The Locust) had
this to say: “The 363 is perhaps the most versatile tube
DI on the market. While recording a vintage P-Bass, I
found that overdriving the input produced a very
musical distortion.”
Additionally, visiting engineer Mario Quintero offered
up this review after using it for bluesy rockers, Spero: “I
love it! One of the fullest DIs I’ve ever used. The EQ is
really useful and helps clear up the top and high-mid
while bringing out the ‘fat,’ without sounding flubby or
farty. I even used it on clean guitar and loved it.”
Finally, Mike Butler, from the fantastic San Diego
studio The Lost Ark, had two units over at his place and
tried some unusual things with them: “One of the most
interesting things for me was actually strapping a pair of
363s across the stereo bus while we were tracking. I
really didn’t know what to expect, but man, it sounded
killer. It was surprisingly clean and subtle at low gain
levels, but it imparted a really nice depth to the sound.
When pushing the gain a bit, you get some nice
saturation and harmonics. As expected, when pushed too
hard, the mix got a bit mushy, but there was definitely a
sweet spot that would be cool with the right track.”
Surprise, surprise — this demo unit is not going
back to Tonecraft.
($1250 MSRP; www.tonecraftaudio.com)
–Roy Silverstein <www.rarefiedrecording.com>
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 Dangerous Music
Dangerous Compressor
When the Dangerous Compressor was first announced, I
knew that it would be something special, like all of its sibling
products in the Dangerous Music line — despite its seemingly
simple set of controls. I heard quickly from veteran reviewers
Garrett Haines and Eli Crews, both of whom wanted to sign up
for the review. So our demo unit did some traveling before GH
and EC sent me their words. I also asked esteemed mastering
engineer Greg Calbi to contribute, knowing that he owns one
of the first units off of the assembly line, and his thoughts
close the review below. –AH
Garrett Haines: Everyone at the 2013 AES show talked
about the new “Dangerous Music mastering compressor,” but
in my experience, this is a stereo compressor first and
foremost. While I could see it being used on mastering
sessions, I think mixing and tracking engineers would find this
as attractive as any bus compressor on the market. I would
describe it as a transparent dynamics processor. I tried to
abuse the unit in a mastering environment but could not get
it to distort under reasonable circumstances.
My two-sentence summary: It sounds like one of those
$8,000 digital mastering compressors was created in the
analog realm — kind of like reverse modeling. This is a high-
headroom, high-speed, high-fidelity analog unit. And once you
hear it in action, you’ll understand how useful that kind of
design can be.
AH: That’s three sentences, not two; and you originally
gave me four.
Eli Crews: I have long been a fan of Dangerous Music’s
excellent product line, so I was intrigued when I saw the
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Dangerous Compressor come to market. With its mastering
product pedigree, I had a feeling it was going to excel in
2-bus duties.
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Physically, the Dangerous Compressor is sleek and
compelling — a marriage of modern and classic aesthetics. The
black faceplate is accented by variously colored, self-lighting
pushbuttons and large edgewise meters (think Neve 2254 or
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API 525), and you’ve got your standard compressor controls on
large, machined aluminum knobs. Tactilely, I find the buttons
and knobs on the Dangerous pleasant and easy to use. My only
reservations about the functionality of the controls have to do
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with recall. I was frankly surprised that the Gain, Threshold,
Attack, and Release controls aren’t stepped or detented. (The
Ratio control is stepped, with eight positions between 1:1 and
20:1.) In addition, the orange-on-black color scheme and
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backlit buttons don’t easily photograph with a phone, which is
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my preferred recall method for my stereo-bus processors these
days. This is a unit better documented the old-fashioned way,
with a template or simple o’clock settings.
AH: I spoke to Dangerous Music’s Bob Muller about recall,
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and his explanation was enlightening:
“With an analog stepped attenuator, you can have a
maximum of 23 positions, which would not allow fine enough
steps and would limit the versatility of the unit. I think we
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have all felt the frustration of ‘one click is not enough, but 2
is too much’ — especially in the sensitive realms like
threshold, attack, release, and make-up gain. We looked at the
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‘quasi-stepped’ method employed by some manufacturers of
using a regular potentiometer with a toothed plastic ring
underneath, but we didn’t like the feel at all, and the
repeatability when measured is sometimes not all that precise.
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“We opted for the middle road, which was to gang Gain and
Threshold while in stereo mode so that both channels track
exactly, and to give enough range to the controls so that the
60/Tape Op#103/Gear Reviews/(continued on page 62)
box could handle any situation, while at the same time
limiting the scope of the controls so that everything falls in
the useful range. No 5 second release time for example — I
never understood the usefulness of that!”
EC: On the stereo bus, the first thing I noticed is how little
inserting the Dangerous changed the sound of my mix.
Bypassing the unit (via the Engage button, which employs a
true hard-wire bypass) confirmed what I wasn’t hearing. The
headroom and transparency of the Dangerous put it into a
different category than the other stereo compressors I
regularly use. I can say without hesitation that the Dangerous
Compressor is the most hi-fi compressor I’ve ever had in my mix
chain. Thing is, I don’t always favor the most hi-fi gear for
every duty. On a mix for Eric + Erica, a band with an airy singer,
sparse instrumentation, and lots of ambience and dynamics,
the Dangerous excelled at keeping the dynamic range in check
without changing the vibe I’d created in the mix. In other
words, it did exactly what many people want from a 2-bus
processor of any sort: it made the mix sound better in a subtle,
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intangible way without any indication of a strong sonic
stamp — and I happily and readily printed my final mixes
through the Dangerous. However, on a mix for Zun Zun Egui, a
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loud British psych-dance band with a ton of energy and many
overdubs, switching in the Dangerous left me missing a little
of the sound of my current main stereo compressor, the Smart
Research C1LA [Tape Op #98]. Although they are both based
around VCAs, the two compressors have completely different
sounds — that is to say, the C1LA has much more of one. I
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can really hear it working, in a way that I like, to give the mix
a “tougher” sound. If loud rock is your bag, you may or may
not find the Dangerous too transparent for your tastes.
None of that is to say that the Dangerous Compressor is a
one-trick pony. In fact, it’s extremely versatile, with the ability
to tailor the sidechain via Bass Cut and Sibilance Boost buttons,
as well as XLR inserts for external sidechain processing if you
need more precise EQ’ing or filtering of your control signal.
There is a Smart Dynamics switch, which I found myself
leaving on all the time. Apparently, it allows the detection
circuit to address peaks and averages independently, assigning
a specific slope for each, which definitely sounds pretty smart.
There’s also a Soft Knee switch, as well as a switch for keeping
attack and release values automatic or giving yourself manual
control over them. Finally, there’s a Stereo button, which gangs
the Threshold and Gain knobs of the left channel to control
both sides. I found the Stereo setting way, way more useful
than on most stereo compressors, since it still uses the
independent left and right signals to trigger the compression.
This means that mixes through the Dangerous Compressor
won’t suffer from over-compression of centered elements and
under-compression of panned or out-of-phase ones, which is
often the case with stereo compressors that use a single shared
detector. Moreover, the dual-detector scheme is also better
suited for mid/side processing if that’s how you’ve set up your
mix bus. (The Dangerous doesn’t have a built-in M/S matrix
itself.) Interestingly, the Attack and Release controls remain
independent in stereo mode, giving you finer control of
transients that are panned (or allowing you to adjust the
dynamics differently for mid/side).
GH: After going through a range of uses, I focused on two
areas: using the Dangerous Compressor to smooth out uneven
mixes, and adding punch to slightly dull tracks.
For smoothing, I found that the auto attack and release
did a nice job either as a starting point or a final setting. I’m
normally skeptical about auto settings, but whatever
Dangerous did under the hood made sense to my ears. This is a
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box that sounded like a big-board bus compressor, but with
less sonic imprint. That’s actually good. Some 2-bus boxes
give you glue in exchange for a reduction in clarity. I
appreciated the “do no harm” nature of this unit. I often left
the Dangerous Compressor patched to give a haircut for any
wandering transients. And I didn’t feel guilty either, because
the unit is quiet and did not diminish any mix run through it.
For punch and smack, I went manual all the way. Anyone
with a lot of compression experience will tell you that attack
and release are the high stakes section of the casino. If you
get those settings right, the payoff is significant. From hip
hop to classic rock, I was able to bring a more aggressive
back beat out of a variety of sources.
EC: To see if the Dangerous Compressor could indeed
imprint a serious sound on an individual track, I ran a few
different single instruments through the Dangerous at 20:1,
with a hard knee and a fast release. I could certainly push
it into areas where I could hear heavy compression artifacts,
most noticeably on short, percussive sounds. On a vocal, the
Dangerous Compressor never quite got pumpy and breathe-y
the way a Distressor [Tape Op #32] or an 1176 can, but it
did give the vocal a nice thick heft that would be very useful
in the right context. On drum overheads, the “abused”
sound actually worked quite well to even out the elements
of the kit, and never got overly harsh on the cymbals. Fine-
tuning the attack allowed me to find the perfect balance of
impact versus ambience. Again, I have other compressors
that can get a much more extreme sound; if the Dangerous
has a fault here, it’s only that it remains fully musical even
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when pushed hard. I know that doesn’t sound like a fault —
it only is to somebody that sometimes likes their gear to
crumble a bit under pressure. But at the end of the day, I
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found many ways of using the Dangerous on single elements
that sounded great to me.
The takeaway here is that the Dangerous Compressor is
an excellent product at a fair price, especially for a device in
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its class. Its versatility and sonic stealth should make it very
attractive to anybody looking for an alternative to their
current 2-bus squeezer, or for two more independent
channels of tracking or mix compression. I put it squarely in
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the category of “does its job without calling much attention
to itself,” which every serious studio should certainly have
as an option. Even if you think of yourself as somebody who
favors compressors with a sound, I’d recommend checking
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out the Dangerous to see if it can fill a hole in your
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toolbox — perhaps one you didn’t even realize was there.
Greg Calbi: The Dangerous Compressor was sent into my
studio early this year for a demo, and I never let it leave my
studio after hearing what it could do. The most remarkable
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feature is its uncanny ability to push the melodic elements
of the mix forward while maintaining all the separation in
the low end, which always seems to collapse when hitting
other stereo compressors. In my setup, the Smart Dynamics
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button is in all the time, and it seems to enable me to get
just a little more level on my mastering for all those level-
hungry clients without sacrificing the sense of dynamics.
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Chris Muth should be congratulated on creating an essential
tool for my mastering projects.
($2,799 street; www.dangerousmusic.com)
–Eli Crews <www.elicrews.com>,
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Garrett Haines <www.treelady.com>,
Greg Calbi <www.sterling-sound.com>
62/Tape Op#103/Gear Reviews/(continued on page 64)
Warm Audio
WA76 compressor
Warm Audio only recently began making some noise
with their affordable, well-built WA12 [Tape Op #91] and
TB12 [#97] mic preamps, and at the 2014 NAMM Show,
Warm dropped a bomb by releasing the WA76, a FET
compressor based on the legendary UREI 1176. The catch
here is that the WA76 hit the streets with a price of $599.
The original UREI 1176 cost almost $500 when it debuted
in 1967, and today, the Universal Audio branded model
retails for just under $2,000. Warm Audio’s take follows the
circuit design of the Revision D version of the 1176. The
Rev D, one of many revisions, can be considered the
“standard” 1176 and incorporates UREI’s low noise (LN)
circuitry and improved circuit board layout. Similarly, the
currently produced Universal Audio 1176 reissue takes
after the D and E versions, where the E version simply
allows for both 110 and 220 V operation.
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The WA76 mimics the look of the blackface 1176 with
very similar knobs and switches, but also sports Warm’s
signature orange logo. The rear panel drops the 1176
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barrier strip connections and instead provides XLR and
balanced 1/4’’ inputs and outputs. An external 24 V wall-
wart power supply connects to the rear panel, and a
thoughtful input pad switch also lives on the back panel.
The WA76 follows the original 1176’s design very closely,
even sourcing the original input and output transformers
td
from CineMag. So the form factor and the critical elements
resemble the original as closely as possible with two minor
changes. First, the attack knob on the original had an “off”
position that allowed the unit to be run as a line amp
without any compression. The WA76 loses this feature, but
you can still bypass the compressor by simply deselecting all
the ratio buttons. Second, like the original, the WA76
provides tons of gain (over 50 dB), but the WA76 provides
an input pad switch (−23 dB) that effectively allows more
control over the amount of compression, which I find
especially helpful when used with modern mic preamps that
don’t provide an output trim.
The controls of the WA76 resemble those of the original
with input gain, output gain, attack, and release knobs, as
well as pushbutton selectors for ratio and metering
functions. Also like the original, the attack and release
times range from crazy fast to moderately fast: 20 to
800 microsecond attack times, and 50 millisecond to
1 second release times. Interestingly, the input knob is
finely detented, but the output knob turns smoothly.
Ratios can be set at 4:1, 8:1, 12:1 or 20:1, and the “all
buttons in” mode also works. Threshold varies
automatically with ratio, and the input control determines
the drive into the compressor while the output control
provides makeup gain after the compressor. This is a
completely discrete circuit with a Class A output amplifier,
and the unit’s noise floor stays very low with proper gain-
staging. Like the original, the illuminated VU meter can
display gain reduction or output level referenced to either
+4 or +8 dBm.
In use, I found the overall compression to be slightly
more grabby than a very good example of an original
Revision D, which seemed to have a slightly softer knee —
possibly due to aging components. The WA76, however,
provided a subtle but very nice low-mid push which helped
vocals and bass come forward in a mix. I attribute the
sonic color mainly to the CineMag transformers, which
impart their flavor even when the compressor is bypassed.
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 I found that I typically ran the input knob only at about
9 o’clock to provide a few dB of compression at 4:1, and the
output knob lived around 1 o’clock. I also tended to use the
middle positions of the attack and release, whereas on the
vintage unit, I particularly like the slow attack and fast release
settings. I often use an 1176 just to add a bit of presence to a
vocal, with its slightly edgy tone, and I could get the same
effect with the WA76, but also with the smooth low-mids that
the transformers provide. Overall, the WA76 stands up
extremely well to my collection of compressors, which include
Summit, UREI, Inward Connections, Focusrite, and a few
custom pieces. The entire build quality belies the low price, and
some may even overlook the unit for fear that corners were cut.
I don’t see anywhere that quality was compromised, but some
clever cost-saving processes were used, and the external power
supply helps trim costs, as well.
With vintage and reissue 1176 units costing almost four times
as much as the WA76, it’s an easy call to check one (or two) out.
I know Warm Audio will have trouble keeping these in stock.
($599 street; www.warmaudio.com)
–Adam Kagan <adamkagan@mac.com>
Exponential Audio
R2 Stereo reverb plug-in
I’ve been on a mission over the last seven or eight years to
find a reverb plug-in that fills the void left by not being able
to place a microphone, say, 5–20 ft away from a source. I’ve
used just about every big-time reverb plug-in out there, and
while some are better than others in terms of “believability,”
I’d easily place Exponential Audio’s R2 Stereo in a first-place tie
atop my list.
After a few days of using it, and being continuously
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baffled by how good it sounded, I reached out to its
developer, Michael Carnes (whose name you may recognize
from his many years at Lexicon as principal engineer), for
some enlightenment. His response helped me to put some
on
pieces together: “Many earlier classic reverbs had all sorts of
noticeable modulation. This was originally done because the
modulation helped break up room modes. It wasn’t natural,
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and no modern reverbs use those techniques any longer. But
it turns out that a lot of people liked the sound of the
modulation. So I wanted a reverb where that could be an
artistic component rather than a technical workaround.”
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With that information in mind, I dug a little deeper into R2
to see what it was made of. One reverb litmus test of mine is
the quality of the plate setting. To me, a boring plate is just...
well, boring. Much like I do with Pad Thai or Mattar Paneer, I
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find myself keeping mental notes on my favorite plates, and
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R2’s was again among the most musical that I’d ever used. (It
should be noted that R2 offers a very extensive library of
presets to choose from, as well as several variations of those
presets depending on what you’re looking for.)
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Allow me to explain. There are two key factors that have
made me abandon most of my other reverb plug-ins for R2.
First, the reverb tail is full of motion and grit, so it doesn’t
sound like an algorithm or convolution. Don’t get me wrong,
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it’d probably lose in a shootout with a real EMT 140, but most
of us don’t have one of those lying around. The thing with most
digital reverbs is that they sound “soft” to me, as if they don’t
contain quite the level of sonic interest that occurs when
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recording actual ambience or using a physical spring or plate.
To my ears, R2 gets you a heck of a lot closer; I have little fear
that I’m going to make my mix more “digital” sounding when
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I pull up the aux fader. You can even control the type of chorus
that’s shaking the reverb, which is a really nice option to have
64/Tape Op#103/Gear Reviews/(continued on page 66)
depending on what sort of depth you’re looking for. The second
factor, which should not be overlooked, is that R2 sits nicely in
my mixes without equalization, aside from a high or low–pass
filter, depending on the scenario. Obviously, you and I mix
differently, but I feel that so long as your sounds are generally
balanced, incorporating R2 should be effortless. If your work
experience sounds anything like mine, I strongly suggest giving
R2 Stereo a trial run.
($299 direct; www.exponentialaudio.com)
–Dave Hidek <dave@treelady.com>
MicRehab
Miktek CV4 mic modification
How do you get a $10,000 sounding mic without
bankrupting your studio? Send it to Shannon Rhoades at
MicRehab, that’s how. Specifically, I’m talking about the Miktek
CV4. To be fair, the stock mic is good right out of the box. The
mic is sturdy, the PSU is beefy, and the price is friendly —
especially for independent studios without deep pockets.
ot
However, when the SPL is pushed, the capsule seems to pinch,
resulting in a harsh, metallic overtone “zing” found in the
upper frequencies that seem impossibly hard to dial out. This
characteristic appears to be the result of the Chinese-made
(d
capsule used in the stock CV4, which makes this a prime
candidate for a mod.
Shannon Rhoades might be a name that is unfamiliar to
some, but he is definitely the real deal. Shannon is the force
behind MicRehab, an independent upstart specializing in
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modding, reskinning, and restoring mics of all brands and
varieties, from vintage to modern-day models. Before
MicRehab, Shannon worked with his brother Tracy Korby (Korby
Audio Technologies) building and repairing new and vintage
microphones. The brothers then moved to Nashville to maintain
Blackbird Studio’s vast vintage mic collection. While at
Blackbird, Shannon also spent four years helping to launch
Miktek, where he became intimately familiar with the CV4.
After leaving Miktek, Shannon took over mic managing duties
from his brother at Blackbird and began his own venture,
MicRehab. Needless to say, his credentials speak volumes.
So what does Shannon’s mod entail? The bulk of the mod
comes from replacing the stock Chinese capsule with a custom
sputtered gold (or nickel), 3 micron (and in some cases
1 micron!) mylar capsule. This is what makes Shannon stand
out among the rest. There are probably less than a handful of
people in the country that sputter their own capsules, let alone
with the degree of craftsmanship that Shannon brings. I
suspect there are other components of the mic that Shannon
mods (backplate, capacitors, etc.), but he is keeping a tight lid
on his proprietary “secret recipe” — at least for now.
After receiving my CV4 back from Shannon, I was eager to
get a session underway, and thankfully, my client was willing
to let me have some fun with the new CV4 on a tracking
session. We recorded both electric and acoustic guitars, as well
as male vocals (brooding, indie-pop). The signal chain was
relatively simple: CV4 to one of two preamps — EZ1290 (a DIY
Neve 1290/1073 preamp replica) or CAPI VP28 [Tape Op
#95] — captured through a UAD Apollo [#95], and monitored
on a pair of Spiral Groove Studio One speakers (in a well-treated
control room). Tracking electric guitars proved to be somewhat
underwhelming. I think I would have preferred a
ribbon/dynamic combo in this case; however, switching over to
acoustic brought the smile back. The CV4/VP28 combo was just
what the doctor ordered — bright, jangly, and full of body and
wood. But let’s be honest, we’re here for the vocals, and man
did they sound good. I mean, really good.
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 The mod has a frequency response that stays
consistent throughout the dynamic range. It’s got better
quality midrange information and responds to EQ really
well. Compared to the stock mic, Shannon’s mod is much
smoother with more body and character. The stock CV4
could be a little “bitey” in the 2–3 kHz range, but the mod
relieves this. Importantly, the “zing” is gone. Some
describe the modded CV4 as “warm, vintage, and creamy.”
While this all rings true, I would simply say that vocals I
recorded through this mic sound “finished.”
While no one will claim that the modded CV4 is a copy
of any vintage mic, Shannon’s inspiration for its sound
comes from Jeffrey Steiger’s (CAPI) beautiful Ela M 251.
In my opinion, this mod is worth the price of
admission, because it will get you in the same league as
the über-expensive vintage mic superstars that few of us
will ever be able to afford. Shannon will tell you, that’s
been his mission all along. So go out and pick up a new
(or used) Miktek CV4 (or actually, any mic), and give
MicRehab a buzz. He will chat with you about what you’re
after and make sure that you’re happy with what you get.
CV4 stock versus mod sound samples can be found on
RealGearOnline.com, and as other forum members have
agreed, the differences are not subtle. If you have
questions, Shannon Rhoades <shannon@micrehab.com>
is happy to answer your emails.
(Modification of customer’s mic $800;
www.micrehab.com)
–Adam Monk <indiehouserecording@gmail.com>
Ehrlund Microphones
Ehrlund EAP
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Acoustic Pickup System
When I record acoustic guitars, I use a mic. A real one.
Mainly mono, but sometimes stereo — especially if it’s a
on
one-voice, one-guitar recording — but definitely a mic;
no pickup transducers for me thank you. Why? Because I
don’t like the quack attack — the poultry-like sound
emissions that emanate from acoustic pickups, especially
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the under-the-saddle kind. I don’t want that sound on a
recording track.
For live recordings, sure, it’s convenient, the sound
is predictable, and it’s one less thing for the FOH guys
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to fiddle with, one less live mic on stage. Besides, the
acoustic guitar sound is usually buried by every other
instrument in the band anyway. If it’s a singer-
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songwriter situation — one vocal and one guitar — I’m
still going to use a transducer because the mic sound on
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acoustic instruments isn’t always practical in the
onstage environment.
But what if you could get both? What if you could get
the pure mic sound along with the freedom and
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convenience of an acoustic pickup? That’s what Ehrlund
Microphones is proposing with its EAP acoustic pickup
system. The system includes a triangular shaped
transducer that’s placed on the acoustic instrument —
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guitar, mandolin, standup bass, whatever — using
adhesive paste and then connected to the EAP preamp.
That preamp feeds from a TRS cable to a PA, acoustic amp,
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or recording input — and voila. You’ve got the best of
both worlds.
I gave it a try the other night on a recommendation
from a friend. He knows I’m big on recording acoustic
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singer-songwriters, and I know that almost all of them
prefer to play and sing at the same time. Could the
Ehrlund be the answer? I set up a test using my Collings
66/Tape Op#103/Gear Reviews/(continued on page 68)
C10 and played a finger-picked selection, a strummed
piece, and some picked solo notes. I compared that to my
L.R. Baggs Element, an amazing pickup that always gets
rave reviews when I play live. Here’s what I heard.
It was easier for me to get a good sound fast from the
Baggs, which is no surprise since I’m familiar with it. But
it definitely had the quackiness to the pick attack I like
to avoid on recordings. With the Ehrlund pickup, it took
me a much longer time to find a good sound. I tried it
above the sound hole around the 12th fret and hated
what I heard. I tried a few more positions. Some were
better, some were worse. But then I put the transducer
down around the lower bout, diagonal from the saddle,
and got a great sound. A pure sound. A mic’ed sound. No
sign of quack, not even when I strummed the guitar or
picked it hard. Impressive. And as promised, when I
removed the transducer from my Collings, the adhesive
paste (think putty) didn’t leave any marks on the guitar.
When I first heard about this pickup, I thought it would
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be great for live performances. It would, but I doubt it’s
practical for most people — perhaps a classical guitarist, or
a singer-songwriter in a controlled environment. But I think
(d
this pickup would work great in a recording environment,
especially for singer-songwriters who want to sing and play
at the same time. I tried that myself, and while I could
barely hear my voice on the guitar track, it was minimal,
likely due to the construction of the pickup, which is linear
as opposed to omnidirectional. In other words, the part
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that presses against the guitar picks up sound, but the
opposite end does not.
It’s pricey and quirky (did I mention the putty?), so it
won’t be for everyone, but singer-songwriters and
recordists who want to bolster the sound in a low-profile
way will like this innovative device. The preamp features
1/4’’ I/O, volume control, and a polarity switch to help
eliminate feedback. A high-to-low switch adjusts the
input signal, as the low level is recommended for acoustic
bass. The preamp is powered by an included 9V battery.
($599 street; www.ehrlund.se)
–Mike Jasper <biz@deceptivesound.com>
EVE AUDIO
SC205 2-way monitor
TS107 subwoofer
As someone who has been using ADAM monitors
fairly religiously for the past seven years or so, I became
quite interested when I heard that the former CEO of
ADAM Audio had started a new speaker company, called
EVE Audio. It turns out that the ADAM and EVE speaker
lines have pretty much one thing in common — pleated-
diaphragm tweeters based on Dr. Oskar Heil’s Air Motion
Transformer — but the similarities seem to stop there.
Roland Stenz, the aforementioned CEO, is apparently on
a mission to perfect monitor design. As such, the EVE line
is a departure from ADAM, and it’s full of innovations
intended to contribute flatter, clearer monitoring to the
average engineer’s meter bridge or desktop.
The first such innovation worth mentioning is that all
control of the speaker’s filtering, equalization, and
volume is accomplished via DSP. Yes, that D in there is
for Digital, so it means that all the audio coming out of
the speakers has gone through an extra A/D stage after
leaving your mixing desk or converters. I’m happy to
report that I didn’t realize this until I had already been
using the SC205 monitors for a while, so I didn’t
approach them with an analog-only bias. This helped
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 preclude any irrational fears I may have had about
degradation due to conversion within the speaker,
which is accomplished via a high-quality Burr-Brown
24-bit, 192 kHz ADC. If the conversion is coloring the
sound at all, it’s inherently part of whatever coloration
the speakers themselves impart. Since there are no
digital inputs, an A/B of the conversion is impossible,
and in my opinion irrelevant.
(Technically speaking, there is also a D/A stage that
follows the DSP, but not the kind that you see in a
standalone converter. The DSP section connects directly
to each driver’s Class D [Pulse Width Modulation]
amplifier, without the typical PCM or PDM–based DAC
providing conversion to an analog signal beforehand. In
other words, the Class D amp, a passive filter, and the
driver combined work together as a system that
converts the digital signal into sound waves.)
DSP functions are all accessed via a single rotary-
encoder/button on the face of each speaker. Volume
level is shown on a series of tiny LEDs surrounding the
knob. There are settings to illuminate either a single
volume LED or all LEDS up to that level, and the LEDs
can be made to shine brightly or dimly. Volume
adjustments are made in 0.5 dB increments in the meat
of the range, down to 2 dB increments at −48 dB. Access
to such precise and evenly-matched adjustments makes
whatever small cost there may be of A/D conversion
totally worth it. Other DSP duties include high-shelf
(above 3 kHz) and low-shelf (below 300 Hz) cut/boost
capabilities, as well as a “Desk Filter” adjustment, which
either cuts 180 Hz or boosts 80 Hz. All of these filters
have a maximum boost of 3 dB and a maximum cut of
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-5 dB, in 0.5 dB increments. I kept the speakers flat
throughout my testing period, and never felt the need
for filter adjustments, although it’s nice to have the
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option when necessary.
I guess that means I thought the speakers
sounded pretty good right out of the box. I love the
smoothness of the SC205’s Air Motion Transformer
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tweeter. (The AMT is commonly referred to as a “folded
ribbon tweeter,” but it works quite differently from a
standard ribbon driver, and it has many advantages
over a linear ribbon transducer. I encourage you to
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refer to the Internet if you’d like to know more
specifics about the technology.) As for the upper
midrange on the EVE, I found it robust enough to
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judge what’s happening in that range, but easy to
listen to for hours at a time. I tend to rely on
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headphones for the final checking of sibilance, and
cymbal and guitar harshness, but that’s the case no
matter which speakers I use. Even though my current
mix room is quite small, and I’ve had issues with other
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similar-sized speakers getting boomy in the low
midrange due to proximity to the back wall, the SC205
sounds much flatter and truer in that range, even
without any equalization. I attribute this fact to a
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critical difference from ADAM speakers, which is that
EVEs have their bass ports in the rear of the enclosure,
and they are long rectangular ports designed to
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minimize distortion in the low frequencies, even at
higher SPLs. (This is a good time to mention that the
LEDs on the face of the speakers blink when the A/D
converters are getting overloaded, which is a handy
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way to ensure that any distortion you’re hearing isn’t
coming from the speaker system itself.)
68/Tape Op#103/Gear Reviews/(continued on page 70)
Of course, the SC205 model is only sporting 5’’
woofers, so it only faithfully represents frequencies
down into the mid–50 Hz region. When my pair
arrived, I had been toying with the idea of getting a
sub for my home studio, since I started doing more
actual mixing here than I had originally envisioned. I
had just started to mix an album by Zun Zun Egui, a
really interesting British band with a lot of dance and
Jamaican influence. It was clear that I was going to
need a better window into the frequencies they had
laid to tape, but a big heavy-duty subwoofer seemed
like overkill for my small space. EVE Audio’s TS107
subwoofer, supplied by the kind Bruce Bartone at
TruNorth Music & Sound, came to the rescue, and the
timing couldn’t have been more perfect. This is a
compact subwoofer, small enough for my space, and
the extension of the TS107 down to 36 Hz really
helped a ton when dealing with the kick and bass
fundamentals and subtones of the Zun Zun record.
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The TS107 comes with a remote, which enables you
to adjust almost all of its parameters without crawling
under your desk. Since you daisychain your main
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speakers through the TS107, this gives you remote
volume control and a single-button mute for your whole
speaker system. You can also use the remote to flip the
polarity of the TS107, mute only the subwoofer (which
bypasses the 80 Hz high-pass filter to the mains, as it
should), adjust the subwoofer’s relative volume, and
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change the corner frequency of the subwoofer’s low-
pass filter (in seven steps between 60 Hz and 140 Hz).
A dedicated LFE input as well as a 300 Hz LFE filter
mode allows you to use this subwoofer in a true 2.1
configuration. Of course, it took some futzing with
position, polarity, subwoofer level, and LPF frequency to
find a place where I felt that the TS107 was helping and
not hurting my mixes, but it feels dialed now. Now when
I bypass the subwoofer, which I often do to make sure
the low end also feels right on the small speakers alone,
I really miss it.
In general, I find judging speakers a really difficult
task, since what “sounds good” is so relative, and can
even shift over time. That being said, after a couple of
months of use, I still really like the way the SC205
speakers sound, and working on them every day makes
me happy. I appreciate that mixes done on them
translate well, and I also enjoy listening to my favorite
records through them. For me personally, in my small
home mix room, they completely deliver, and even
more so when coupled with the TS107 subwoofer. I
purchased this set of speakers, and I plan on
auditioning the bigger models in a few months when
I’m setting up the control rooms of our forthcoming
Brooklyn studio Figure 8, so I would call that a
definite thumbs-up.
(SC205 $599 street each, TS107 $599; www.eve-
audio.com)
–Eli Crews <www.elicrews.com>
www.tapeop.com
see more of our
bonus/archived
reviews online!
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 Subatomic Software
Audulus synthesis & processing app
I’ve been a bit stymied on how to start this review off, so I’ll
run all three of my potential intros by you:
1. To the guy who got upset by my review of I Dream Of
Wires, in which I said all the music in that documentary film
sounded kind of boring and too similar to me — I’m afraid I
still feel the same way. On the other hand, the music I’ve heard
from the online community using the $15 Audulus iOS app is
much more interesting and varied. Moreover, on a philosophical
level, I’m stoked by the fact that lots more people can afford
this app than an actual analog modular synthesizer.
2. Does anybody remember Turbosynth, an icon and
GUI–based synthesis application for the Mac that Digidesign
(now Avid) first released in the late ‘80s? It was super cool and
easy to use, and it implemented a lot of different synthesis
algorithms in software, allowing users to port synthesized
sounds to a hardware sampler. I’d been looking for something
similar without success, until I dug into Audulus.
3. My last semester of college in 1983 was completed at
Stanford University Center for Computer Research in Music and
Acoustics (CCRMA), and I remember spending an entire summer
programming FORTRAN code into a big mainframe computer in
order to get a few seconds of sound out of the computer. An
iPhone or an iPad running Audulus completely blows that
mainframe out of the water with every benchmark possible.
Moore’s law is crazy! I can’t imagine what that mainframe at
Stanford cost! (Ironically, one of the computer music
compositions of that era by CCRMA Founding Director and FM
synthesis inventor John Chowning was titled “Phoné.”)
So, what is Audulus? Audulus is a modular music synthesis
and processing app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It can be likened
to Turbosynth, the early Digidesign program, but it can also be
compared to music programming environments like Max, Csound,
and SuperCollider. Wikipedia has an excellent overview of this
concept <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_audio_synthesis_
environments> and lists some of the available software
environments.
Unlike a typical plug-in or virtual instrument that locks you
into whatever the programming team decided would work best
for the particular EQ, compressor, synthesizer, etc., an audio
processing or programming environment allows you to create
your own instruments and effects, either from scratch or with
modular building blocks. For example, in SuperCollider, you’d
type in a line of code to create a sine-wave oscillator:
{ SinOsc.ar(440, 0, 0.2) }.play;
Higher-level modular environments use graphic elements
and pre-coded modules to do the same thing, so it’s much
easier to get started and create and process sounds than it is
with a code-based system like SuperCollider or Csound. The
granddaddy of modular/GUI environments is Max, currently
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maintained and published by Cycling ‘74. It’s a mature, stable
environment, and it’s very powerful and versatile. There’s not
much you can’t do with Max. But it costs $400 and won’t run
on an iPad. I’m pretty committed to the iPad as an instrument
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and synthesis environment, and $400 was a bit of a barrier for
me as a “re-entry level” tinkerer getting back into software
synthesis and coding. I looked pretty seriously at CSound and
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SuperCollider, but ultimately, I liked the fact that Audulus was
graphical, affordable, and both iPad and Mac compatible. But,
before I move on, I should point out that Audulus (or any
graphic interface) can be much more clunky than a code-
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based system. For instance, to create an additive synthesis
module with 15 harmonics in SuperCollider, you need only
these few lines of code:
70/Tape Op#103/Gear Reviews/(continued on page 72)
SynthDef(\addSynthArray,
{ arg freq=300, dur=0.5, mul=100, addDiv=8,
harmonics = #[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,8,9,10,
11,12,13,14,15],
amps = #[ 0.30136557845783, 0.15068278922892,
0.10045519281928, 0.075341394614458,
0.060273115691566, 0.050227596409638,
0.043052225493976, 0.037670697307229,
0.033485064273092, 0.030136557845783,
0.027396870768894, 0.025113798204819,
0.023181967573679, 0.021526112746988,
0.020091038563855 ];
The same function in Max or Audulus would be a fairly
complex, visually busy patch. But the upside of this for people
who are more graphically-oriented like me (and other non-
mathy type folks) is that it’s much easier to drag oscillator and
filter modules around a screen and connect virtual patch cables
between them, than it is to learn how to code something like
a filter. This is where environments like Turbosynth, Max, and
now Audulus shine.
Before I move on, I should also mention Native Instruments
Reaktor. This is also a very versatile synthesis and processing
environment, but from what I can tell, it’s a bit harder to get
under the hood in the way you can with Max and Audulus.
Reaktor seems a bit more aimed at a plug-and-play audience just
looking for new sounds, who are a bit less likely to actually create
a new synthesizer module from scratch. Also, I was a bit turned
off by Reaktor’s GUI, as it felt very old-school and limited,
whereas the Audulus GUI feels wide-open and built for the future.
Okay, with all that context behind us, let’s start with a small
sampling of what Audulus includes for building blocks or nodes,
as they’re called in the application. Under the Synthesis group,
there are many “standard” nodes, like Osc (a virtual analog
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oscillator that generates sine, triangle, square, and sawtooth
waves), Noise, Sample (currently Mac only), ADSR, Filter, and
many others. MIDI control can come from Trigger or Keyboard
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nodes (and the latter can utilize both onscreen and external
inputs). Add, Sub, Mult, Sin, Mod, Random, and other Math
nodes implement mathematical functions. Seq16 is a 16-step
sequencer. And many more nodes are grouped under Utilities,
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Effects, Level, DSP, Mixer, Metering, and Switch. All can be
routed together and combined into new nodes. For instance,
when you open up a vocoder node, it reveals itself to be a
complex “super-node” using many of the above nodes.
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One of the most interesting aspects of Audulus is that it
blurs the line between graphical software synthesis and
traditional coding approaches. With the Expr node, you can
type in textual mathmatic expressions, choosing from dozens
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of functions and operators, to create a truly custom node —
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not unlike the algorithmic sound generation and composition
you can accomplish in Csound and SuperCollider. For instance,
you can Google the formula for John Chowning’s FM synthesis
algorithm, and copy-and-paste that into Audulus, and you’ve
got a rudimentary FM synthesizer module ready to go. With a
little more work, you can implement the Karplus-Strong
plucked-string algorithm or digital waveguide synthesis. The
possibilities are endless.
It’s pretty amazing to me how powerful this app is and how
good it sounds. Compare this to the mainframe computer I used
at CCRMA in 1983, or the Synclavier or Fairlight systems of the
time, and it’s pretty great to think that this $15 app rivals
systems that used to cost more than a car or a down payment
on a house.
As I mentioned in my intro, Audulus is capable of some
pretty amazing music — beautiful music in my opinion. Jody
Golick is one of the more active members of the Audulus
community, and some of his compositions (which you can
interact with) are included as examples when you buy Audulus.
I was pretty blown away by Golick’s music and was struck by not
only how wide-open the possibilities are within Audulus, but
also how visually beautiful it is to see an Audulus composition
play on screen. The connecting “wires” change color as signals
pass through them, and the visual corollary is all you ever
wanted the future to be as you watched TRON or read a William
Gibson novel. An analog modular synthesizer seems hopelessly
clunky, slow, and overpriced in comparison, feeling like a mid-
’80s Ford, while Audulus is the car of the future running on a
hydrogen fuel cell.
Lastly, the final impetus for me to choose Audulus over Max,
Csound, and SuperCollider was the app’s developer as well as the
user community surrounding the app. Taylor Holliday is the sole
owner and programmer of Audulus, and as you check out the
Audulus forum, you realize he’s completely immersed in further
development of the app, while remaining very accessible. When
people have questions, he’s quick to answer and address them.
It feels good to support a micro-business like Audulus, and one
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of the great things about Taylor is that he has embraced and
welcomed the Audulus users, some of whom are clearly more
knowledgeable than he is with advanced DSP and synthesis. The
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help and feedback he receives from the Audulus community is
reflected in the frequent software updates and patch
contributions. In particular, afta8, Dcramer, JDRaoul (Jody
Golick), Devilock76, AlfredR, and Plurgid have posted a ton of
nodes and patches to the Audulus forum and have helped shape
Audulus into what it is today. It’s this community involvement
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that ensures that Audulus will continue to grow and expand.
Me? I’m a lurker and tinkerer at best. As much as I’m
fascinated with the promise of this technology, I’m too busy
working on this magazine and recording records to go back
and relearn how to code an FFT algorithm or make a wave-
shaping module. Nonetheless, Audulus has become a unique
tool for me to use in the studio, and I’ve learned just enough
to modify patches and come up with some really uncommon
sounds and processors using it. I highly recommend Audulus
for anyone wanting to dig into sound design and go beyond
punching presets.
($14.99 for iPad/iPhone, $29.99 for Mac OS, in-app purchases
extra; www.audulus.com) –JB
Meris
440 mic preamp
& pedal interface (500-series)
My head is spinning these days with all of the available
options for the 500-series format. As a kid, Baskin-Robbins
and their 31 flavors seemed overwhelming. Generally, I
stuck with what I knew was going to deliver. (Chocolate
Peanut Butter, baby!) Why mess with a good thing? 500-
series preamp modules are no different than all those
flavors of ice cream, except that there are hundreds to
choose from, and the price tag for trying a new flavor is
sometimes enough to put the brakes on. Often in pro
audio, there is a direct correlation between price and
quality, but occasionally, a piece of gear comes along that
breaks that paradigm.
The Meris 440 is a 500-series mic preamp module made
in Los Angeles that is marketed as “a best in class solution
for recording electric and acoustic guitar.” It boasts
CineMag input and output transformers for “classic
American mic pre tone.” (You can read that as “sounds like
an API.”) It also incorporates two hybrid-discrete op-amps,
one at the input transformer section and one driving the
output section. 60 dB of gain is available at the input
stage, and the output trim goes from −27 dB to +12 dB.
 Gear Geeking w/ John…
A special installment featuring two guest editorials
from JB! –AH
I’m not much of a fan of software synths that work as DAW
plug-ins. I’ve tried virtual instruments from Arturia, UVI,
GForce, and others. They sound amazing, but in the end, I’ve
ended up spending real money on real instruments. For
instance, my GForce M-Tron [Tape Op #70] was replaced with
a Mellotron M4000D. Sonically, there’s really no big
difference — they’re both digital — but the M4000D gets
much more use because people enjoy playing it, even if it is
just a keyboard and circuit board in a big, white, wood box.
Since I’m in the business of engaging musicians and making
them feel creative, the M4000D wins hands-down over any
Mellotron plug-in. Similarly, iPad apps feel much different to
me than DAW plug-ins, for many reasons. First, I can plug in
a 1/8’’ cable and pass the iPad around the studio for the
musicians to play — a much different vibe from everyone

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crowding around the computer to tweak a soft synth’s filter.
Second, it rarely crashes. Third, the touchscreen is much more
expressive than a keyboard, mouse, and MIDI controller. Apps

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like Moog’s Animoog not only sound great but are extremely
expressive because they offer multi-gestural control. And,
they’re intuitive enough that novice users can quickly make
compelling sounds. Fourth, can you imagine having classic
instruments like the Minimoog, Oberheim SEM, Fairlight CMI,
Korg Polysix, Roland Juno-106, EMS VCS 3, PPG Wave,

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Yamaha DX7, and Akai MPC; great polysynths like Magellan
and Sunrizer; countless sample libraries inside IK Multimedia
SampleTank; drum machines like DM1, Funkbox, and Boom
808, with just about every classic drum-machine sample

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made; and a modular programming environment like
Audulus — all for less than $1000, including the iPad? The
fact that you can hold all this in your hand is pretty amazing
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to me, but the bottom line is — unlike soft synths running
on a computer, the iPad feels like a musical instrument.
As the publisher of a free magazine, I make sure we have
enough advertising revenue to write the sizable checks for
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printing and postage. But I also deal with quite a bit of

editorial in the reviews. Most companies who advertise in
Tape Op are so small (like us), that the same person who is
handling ads is also in charge of pitching products for review,
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and in many cases, that same person will pick up a soldering

iron to build their products after we’re done talking on the
phone. These people are passionate and hardworking. At
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trade shows, I dread the meetings with large companies

asking us to review some inexpensive new DAW interface that
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is mostly identical to last year’s, except that now it has

USB 3.0. Luckily, most of those big companies don’t advertise
with us, so I don’t feel obligated to review their ROHS-
compliant future landfill. But in the case of the smaller
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companies, I definitely do feel an obligation to review and

support their products, especially if they are supporting us
and allowing us to get the magazine to you, the reader. That
said — we review a lot of products from companies that do
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not advertise. If one of our contributing writers wants to

review a product, it will get printed. We may be a bit biased
towards supporting our advertisers (and we hope you are
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too), but never at the expense of honestly reviewing the best

gear that crosses our desk, at all price points — and that our
reviewers are genuinely interested in using. For more on this
subject, please see the FAQ and Blog at tapeop.com. –JB
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Gear Geeking/Tape Op#103/71

 Small toggle switches provide standard preamp features for −20 dB pad, phantom power,
and polarity reverse. The 440 also has a basic but useful EQ section: a 12 dB per octave
high-pass filter that is selectable between 80 or 200 Hz; and a subtle +3 dB shelf boost
at 4 or 7 kHz. These filters are not only useful for tonal shaping prior to “going to tape,”
but they can also be used when mixing by setting the 440’s input, output, and pad for
unity gain.
But what really sets the Meris 440 apart from countless other 500-series mic preamps
is a send/return pair of 1/4’’ jacks on its front panel for use as an effects-pedal loop, post
amplifier and mic. This feature is also useful for those wishing to integrate guitar pedals
into mixing. I purchased the Radial Engineering EXTC guitar effects interface [Tape Op #100]
for this exact purpose, and it is an awesome tool to add some creative spark to your mixing
process. The effects return of the 440 also doubles as an instrument-level DI.
Since the 440 is touted as being a great preamp for recording guitar, that is where I
started. I needed to create some droney loops (think Third Eye Foundation meets Boards
of Canada) for a track I was working on. Typically, I would use the traditional routing of
guitar to Boomerang pedal to amp and mic — and record the effected signal from the amp.
Instead, I placed an Ashman Acoustics SOM50 omni mic [Tape Op #101] about a foot in
front of my Vox AC30, and plugged a Telecaster straight into the amp. I connected the
Boomerang to the 440’s send/return jacks. What I liked in this application was the ability

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to use the EQ features on the 440 to sculpt the sound of the amplified performance before
it was captured and looped in the Boomerang. I also liked the clarity of the tone, having
the effects after the amp in the signal chain; the difference is fairly subtle, but it is

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absolutely appreciable.
Using an SM57 with the Meris 440 to record a Telecaster through AC30 was a great
sonic treat. This mic took a bit of gain in a beautiful way, providing a nice, tight, punchy
sound that reminded me of tones on an early AC/DC record — tough, but not overly
distorted. As the literature suggests, the tone was classic, and in this instance, totally in
your face. Cranking the input gain all the way on the module provided some pretty

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undesirable harsh distortion, but dialing it back a touch provided excellent results and
lovely tone. For the sake of using the effects loop with another stompbox, I plugged in
an MXR Carbon Copy, and it worked as advertised. The effect presented itself with slightly
more clarity. It isn’t necessarily “better” having effects post amp and mic, but the

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difference is discernible, and I can see the option being useful. Since I had two 440
modules at my disposal, I recorded a guitar track with two SM57s on the same amp into
the pair of preamps. One channel was clean, and the other had an old MXR Phase 100
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through the effects loop. When I panned these hard left and right, I got a really
beautiful, lush spread, and the tone was right on the money.
In order to record a vintage Fender P-Bass using the Meris 440’s effects return as a DI,
I had to fully crank the 440’s output to get an acceptable recording level, but the tone was
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punchy and full spectrum, with a nicely-defined low end and clear top. The 440 paired well
with the Fender, and it brought home that classic midrange “nose” of the P-Bass. There was
no level issue when I recorded a bass that had active electronics and higher output. In
general, what worked better for me when recording bass was to use a separate DI feeding
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the standard XLR input on the back of the enclosing rack. This method allowed me to take
advantage of the 440’s input transformer and EQ section, and I was also able to get more
level out of the unit.
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To work the shelving features on the 440, I recorded what I knew was going to be a
mud swamp: Gibson hollow-body into an old Traynor amp powering the 2×12 speakers in a
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Marshall JMP “Countryman.” It’s a beautiful sounding setup, but it can be “dark brown”
sounding — a good challenge for the 440. With the 80 Hz rolloff and 4 kHz boost engaged,
the sound was way closer to “done” and had a nice midrange quality that was well balanced.
I also used the 440 paired with a Mojave Audio MA-200 condenser mic [Tape Op #55]
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to record both baritone and standard acoustic guitars, and I found the tone to be
appropriately forward in the mids, with nice clarity and solid body. Meris notes that the
200 Hz HPF would be useful for recording an overly boomy acoustic guitar, and if the filter
on the 440 was the only EQ you had available, it would certainly do the trick. The 80 Hz
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setting was good for cutting low mud, and I used it more frequently than 200 Hz. The 4
and 7 kHz boosts were in my opinion subtle (you can read that as “hard to F&%$ up”), but
they can add nice top presence, helping a guitar track be heard in a mix without increasing
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the track’s level.

For a live stereo recording of two acoustic guitars and percussion using a pair of Schoeps
CMC 6 mics with cardioid capsules, the Meris 440 also sounded solid. Using the 80 Hz HPF
and 4 kHz shelf, I found the sound to be very natural and the stereo image strong. The
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combination of these mics and the Meris preamps provided a lovely tone that was spectrally
balanced with nice dimension. The tracks came out clear without being sterile, and had
warmth without being wooly.
72/Tape Op#103/Gear Reviews/(continued on page 74)
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The Warmenfat
Pure Tube sl
on
Class A Micro Amplifier!
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$499
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direct!
• Standard instrument input: Lead or bass guitar, keyboards—You name it!
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• —26 dB input: Low sensitivity input. Perfect for that snare drum.
• Transformer speaker output: Use as a guitar amplifier.
• Transformer balanced output: Perfect DI. (Max output level over +25 dBm.)
• Transformerless unbalanced output: Ideal for re-amplifying or inserting into an effects loop.
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• Direct output (before gain controls): Boost classic guitar amp independently of DI output.
• High Gain switch: Selects between triode and beam tetrode tube operation.
• Pre and Post Gain controls: Adjust from clean to crunchy.
• Custom output transformer: Allows any speaker to be used as a microphone
(for kick drum or guitar cabinets) while simultaneously providing a balanced output.
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Manufactured by Rainbow Electronics - specialists in audio repairs since 1963

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Please Support Our Advertisers/Tape Op#103/73
 The EQ on the 440 is far from surgical, and it doesn’t
claim to be, but it may save you from using additional EQ
in the form of a plug-in or hardware, by applying a touch
of top and helping clean up the bottom where appropriate.
Keep in mind that the EQ section is located before the
effects loop in the 440’s signal flow, so it’s not available
when using the module as a DI.
As I mentioned earlier, another fun job for the Meris
440 is incorporating effects pedals during mixing. The
module’s usefulness is essentially doubled in this way, and
turning knobs on analog devices in real-time opens up
great creative opportunities for glorious sonic freak
“accidents.” For example, send your drum subgroup to a
stereo aux fader in your DAW, and feed a pair of 440s. Plug
in different fuzz pedals on each side, add a little
compression, and you’ve got yourself dinner! I love this
stuff, and the fun is endless.
The Meris 440 is marketed as a go-to guitar preamp,
but I found that it also sounded great on everything else
I threw at it, including vocals, drums, and keys. Its
preamp is not a “new flavor,” but it is its own version of
API’s classic rock flavor. Even at a higher asking price, the
440 would be a great addition to any 500-series rack, and
it’s a downright bargain considering you get an effects
loop and built-in filters on top of the solid mic preamp. I
would recommend ordering a double scoop — a pair of
440s — for your rack.
($549 street; www.meris.us)
–Geoff Stanfield <www.geoffstanfield.com>
Equator Audio
Q10 active coaxial monitor
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When I moved my mix setup out of my living room and
into a large shared studio space, I sensed that it would be
helpful to have a larger pair of midfields for monitoring.
Unfortunately, most of the speakers that I admired were
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prohibitively expensive, until I discovered the Equator
Audio Q10. Modern engineering techniques, likely in
conjunction with outsourced construction, have combined
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to create an affordable midfield speaker, available directly
from Equator for $1,500 a pair. I’ve long been a fan of
coaxial speakers like the Q10; I once used a vintage pair of
Electro-Voice speakers for my home stereo. Coaxial drivers
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mount the tweeter at the center of the woofer cone,
allowing all frequencies to originate from the same point.
This consistency affords a very accurate image in both
width and depth.
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The biggest improvement that I expected from
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midfields was help in the low frequencies, and the Q10
proved impressively accurate. It provides accuracy at low
enough frequencies to make it easy to combine bass guitar
and kick drum in a rock mix, and the low mids seem to sit
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especially well as a result. I previously had to switch
between two different nearfields and then stare at my
spectrum analyzer, but now I can feel confident that if the
bass frequencies sit correctly, then the mix will be
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appropriate — and will translate well. Highs and mids
sound great too, with generally even frequency balance
that stretches into the top octaves. The stereo imaging
proved reliable too, as I have an easier time identifying
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pan location with the Q10 pair than with my ADAM A7
monitors [Tape Op #57].
I did feel that the self-powered Q10 has a somewhat
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exaggerated sound, which makes everything sound a bit
like it’s running through an API. Transients always receive
a slightly unnatural emphasis, and heavily distorted
74/Tape Op#103/Gear Reviews/(continued on page 76)
electric guitars become even more distorted. Working with
such distorted signals was the only time I found the Q10
at all fatiguing. Ted Keffalo, President of Equator Audio,
explained, “It may be that what you’re hearing as
unnatural is the result of the Q10 using a real, high-
frequency compression driver horn. A horn can tend to be
aggressive-sounding, especially at a higher SPL. It is true
that a silk tweeter is much easier for your ear to
accommodate. That’s one of the reasons we use silk
tweeters on the D Series [Tape Op #88]. Of course, you
can’t hit the same SPL with a silk tweeter.”
The Q10 reminded me that midfields can be impractical
for some applications. First, a pair of Q10s is a lot harder
to set up than nearfields. Positioning them on stands
behind a desk became a lot easier with two people
involved, where I’m used to comfortably moving nearfields
myself. The Q10 is deep with a relatively small frontal
surface — their coaxial design enables the front
dimensions to be only slightly larger than the 10’’ woofer.
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Also, in our studio’s smaller control space, the Q10 pair
produced too much low end due to placement in the
corners of the room. Even with the exaggerated lows, my
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studio partners (Jay Sherman-Godfrey and Joe McGinty),
who primarily use the smaller area, found the Q10s helpful
in that space.
A nice feature of the Q10 is the room compensation
software for Mac and PC, which comes for free with the
speakers; it’s a bit like the algorithms in a dbx DriveRack.
td
The software was slightly tricky to install, because it needs
several drivers in place first, even in Mac OS, and USB and
network cables are needed to connect the speakers to the
computer and each other. Once the drivers were installed,
it was quick and easy to run the software and tune our
room. In the small space, with the speakers close to the
walls, it shaved out a lot of low end, effectively correcting
for the corner-loading. It also accurately detected
reflections and compensated for them, to bring down a bit
of cymbal pinging in the process, and it precisely matched
the volumes of the two speakers. The software allows real-
time control of the DSP that operates between the analog
input and the built-in amplifiers. Once you’re satisfied, you
can save the room compensation, tone contour, and
volume trim adjustments to each speaker.
For the price, we all found the Q10 especially impressive.
Quality midfield monitors are now available to a studio where
the budget had previously made the option impractical.
($1499.98 direct; www.equatoraudio.com)
–Steve Silverstein <ssilverstein@earthlink.net>
Sonodyne
SRP 600 2-way active monitor
The Sonodyne SRP series is a no-nonsense entry into the
sub-$1000 monitor scene, with five different models ranging
from 3’’ to 8’’ in woofer size. Touting an ultra-wide sweet spot
with custom waveguides for the tweeters on each model, SRP
monitors are enclosed in die-cast aluminum enclosures that
eliminate vibration-induced coloration. They feature woven
Kevlar cones, and Sonodyne claims they exhibit accurate
transient and low-end response, despite their compact size.
Having no prior experience with Sonodyne monitors, I was
excited to take a listen.
I spent a few weeks with an SRP 600 pair mainly using
them as a complementary set of monitors, as I’d loaned
my NS-10Ms to another engineer and needed another set
of monitors for referencing during some mix projects.
Right off the bat, it was apparent that they are indeed
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Please Support Our Advertisers/Tape Op#103/75


articulate, and loud. I had to turn them down a bit to make
them evenly matched with my Focal and my Auratone
speakers. But aside from shear volume, the detail in the
midrange was very pleasing.
After digging in a bit more and experimenting with both
my own mixes and some of my favorite albums, from 300 Hz –
12 kHz, I felt like I was hearing a pretty darn accurate
representation of the audio — particularly within the crucial
800 Hz – 2 kHz midrange. The manual specifies a usable
frequency range of 42 Hz – 25 kHz, and I feel like for the most
part that’s true, which I didn’t expect would be the case, given
the size and cost.
When it came to actually making decisions with the
Sonodynes, I first played a mix that I’d been working on for
a few days, and a few things jumped out at me right away. I
could hear that my vocal effects were clouding up the center
of the image in both their positioning and their equalization
— a welcome revelation. After switching back to my Focals,
I found that it was the right call. There was also a guitar that
was covering up the vocals with some overzealous 400 Hz.
However, the biggest shock was I could hear the punchy ultra-
lows (which I’ll classify as 40–80 Hz for the purposes of this
review), coming from these little monitors quite clearly. I
went to work on those frequencies, as I’d noticed that they
were an issue in my car earlier that day.
For all of the good things that the SRP 600 did to the
midrange, I felt like 100–250 Hz was less impressive, but still
very useful for ensuring that my mixes were translating with
lesser systems. It should also be noted that this review was
conducted entirely in one room, so your results may vary
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(especially in regards to frequency ranges that are affected
most by nearby surface reflections). While the back of the
speakers have equalizers that allow you to increase 50–250 Hz
on
by up to 3 dB either way (and a separate EQ for the highs), I
was happy with the representation up to 100 Hz, so I figured
it’d be best to do any critical low-end adjustments on my
usual rig that I know inside and out. After all, I was mainly
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evaluating these monitors by utilizing them as a
complementary pair to my current setup, so revealing any
flaws in my midrange was much more appealing to me than a
fancy low register. It should be noted, however, that an
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unclouded low end allows you to really concentrate on your
midrange, which was exactly what I’d been looking for.
Last but not least, I found the high end to be very
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serviceable — perhaps not as revealing as the midrange, but
coming in a close second. You’ll definitely know if you’ve got
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too much going on from 5 kHz up. I’d describe the response
as being crispy — somewhere between the Genelec 8000
series and the Mackie HR824 [Tape Op #67]. In my time with
the monitors, I didn’t feel like I had to dial back the high end,
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but I wasn’t really using them exclusively. Were they the only
monitors I had to use, listening at extremely high levels would
probably call for a slight adjustment.
The SRP 600 retails for $775 each, which is interesting,
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because I feel like overall, they sound a little more expensive
than that. For me, the big thing is that they sound very
different than what I’m used to, but in an entirely useful way,
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so I may have to buy myself (yet) another pair of speaker
stands for my room. Monitors are a very subjective and finicky
thing to nail down, so I fully suggest trying out several
different pairs if you’re in the market; just be sure to include
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the SRP series while you’re at it.
($775 street; www.sonodyne.com)
–Dave Hidek <dave@treelady.com>
76/Tape Op#103/Gear Reviews/(continued on page 81)
Mark Vail
The Synthesizer
(Oxford University Press)
In 2005, Matt Warshaw, a well-known surf journalist who had
written for just about every surfing publication that exists,
published The Encyclopedia of Surfing, which became the
definitive reference on the subject of wavesliding. With his new
book, The Synthesizer, Mark Vail, who has written for just about
every electronic music publication that exists, has published a
similar book on synthesizers, even if it’s not called “The
Encyclopedia of Synthesizers.” As a staff writer for Keyboard
magazine from 1988 to 2001, Mark had a ringside seat to the
evolution of many of the classic synths, but his roots go all the
way back to earning an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording
Media from Mills College, which has a long history in the ‘West
Coast School’ of electronic music. Mark’s decades-long
involvement with synthesizers during their formative years is
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apparent here, as no stone is left unturned. Packed with tons of
photos, footnotes, and anecdotes, he covers it all — from analog
to digital, Theremins to Ondiolines, modulars to MIDI, TR-808s
to Linns, plug-ins to iPads, Space Echoes to echo chambers,
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string synths to noise boxes. If it has anything to do with
synthesis or processing synthesized sounds, it’s in here! At
400+ pages, this is a significant book; the appendix and index
alone clock in at over 40 pages! Long-time synth nerd or just
getting into synths — this book has something for everyone.
($13.49 Kindle, $35 paperback, $99 hardcover;
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www.markvail.com)–JB
SBS Designs
SP1 2UBE tube processor
With the resurgent interest in analog gear, there are tons
of new boxes on the market. Most have a straightforward
purpose, but there are still some that don’t fall into the
“normal” categories of preamp, EQ, compressor, etc. The
SP1 2UBE processor is a prime example. It’s a boutique type
of piece that’s solely built for enhancing sound, rather than for
surgical precision in adjusting sound. It’s got loads of
character and makes an incredibly unique impression.
To start with, it takes a bit of poetic license just to
describe what it is — like explaining to someone what
musical “warmth” is, you have to use sentences, not just a few
words. Only two knobs — Low Thresh and High Thresh —
control what it’s doing to the source. My first thought was
tape saturation, but that’s not exactly what’s happening. It’s
definitely doing some saturation-ish things like smoothing
and widening lows. But SBS also describes it as an expander,
and it’s certainly doing some of that as well. It’s really
interesting the way that it manipulates presence. It’s as if
some low-mids and highs are scooped slightly, while high-
mids are made more expansive. This can have an incredibly
pleasing effect depending on how you use it.
As a home hi-fi piece, the SP1 2UBE can make many
music genres sound much smoother, much more open,
much wider, and generally more pleasing. It seems to take
the sizzle off of many sounds that can often get too bright
(e.g., the high-frequency resonance from guitar strings or
slides, overcooked female vocals, claps, and snares that are
pushed close to distortion). The box requires some care
when processing music with heavily compressed kick drums.
For some techno (the sub-genre techno, not everything that
goes bmp-ch-bmp-ch) and some hip-hop tracks, you may
find that the low end can get quite pronounced, even at the
processor’s lowest settings (despite SBS’s explanation that
there should be no effect at the lowest setting).
Continues on Page 81>>>
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 The Delines Colfax Songwriter and novelist Willy Vlautin has led
Portland’s Richmond Fontaine for 20 years. With this new group, The
Delines, he’s written songs for Amy Boone (The Damnations TX) to
sing, and grabbed his bandmate/drummer Sean Oldham, bassist
extraordinaire Freddy Trujillo, The Decemberists’ keyboardist Jenny
Conlee-Drizos, and Tucker Jackson on pedal steel to lay down some
excellent tracks. The songs are haunting, sad, and beautiful stories,
sharing much of the view of ‘burned out America’ from Willy’s last novel,
The Free. The album was recorded and produced by my friend John Askew,
in Portland, at Tucker Martine’s [Tape Op #29] Flora Recording & Playback. I
dropped John a line to uncover this fine albums origins.
Why Flora? You seem to work there a bit, though it is Tucker’s personal studio.
I got to know Flora early on: back when his studio was at his house, he’d let me mix while he was out of
town. When he moved to this space, and he was finalizing the build-out, he let me run a few of my sessions
in there to troubleshoot, as well as make a list of to-dos and whatnot. It’s always been very comfortable,
as well as great place to work. I try to do projects there if it can work out.
How many days did this album take?
We did all the basics in four days, including vocals. Amy Boone was only in town from Texas for the days
we recorded, so we needed to make this session very productive. Everyone was very prepared and we made

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great use of our limited time. Once we had the recordings, we brought the tracks back to my studio [Scenic
Burrows] for a few remaining overdubs, and then about ten days of mixing.
Was this recorded to digital or tape?

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I love recording to tape, but I can’t wait to get it into the computer. So, yes, we recorded the basics to
tape (Tucker’s Studer A820 24-track, 2-inch machine) and then dumped to Pro Tools. Using tape really
helped the band feel focused on getting good performances. It was that kind of record.
Did you use Tucker’s plate reverb on the vocals?
It was the EMT 140 plug-in from Altiverb. I did try hard to figure out how to get a good “real” plate sound
without having one – it wasn’t practical for me to use Flora’s plate at the time, and I don’t own one myself.
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The record was all about trying for a “vibe,” and finding that was not always easy. We had various extras
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80/Tape Op#103/Music Reviews/(continued on page 81)
Jenny Lewis The Voyager When I am asked to describe my
personal goals when making records, I frequently say that I’m
looking to make classic, timeless works of art. I want to make
albums that can be listened to for many years to come, without
sounding tied to an era in any way. When I think of a scene where
the recording process melded well with the art being created,
surprisingly L.A. in the mid- to late ‘70s comes to mind. Stick with
me on this. Recall the sound of productions like Fleetwood Mac’s
self-titled breakthrough LP (1975) and the top-selling Rumours
(1977), as well as the lesser-known LPs like Warren Zevon’s
Excitable Boy (1978). Even Jackson Browne’s semi-live Running on
Empty is a solid sounding release. Studio equipment had hit a
certain level of quality, and L.A. was full of engineers and
producers pushing that level through the roof. It might not be
your cup of tea stylistically, but you’d be hard-pressed to slight
the straightforward quality of these recordings.
Jenny Lewis, formerly of indie darlings Rilo Kiley, returns on her
third solo album with a batch of songs that feel very personal,
yet draw the listener in. But what struck me about The Voyager
<<< Reviews from Page 76
As a studio processor, the SP1 2UBE has the
potential to be a real secret weapon. It’s a piece of gear
that absolutely has a vibe all its own — a signature
type of box. It’s not the type of thing you’re going to
throw on a master bus and call it a day. It does very
unique things, and if you’ve already gone through the
composition phase, then you’ll need to take the time to
get the unit into its proper place. That time is rewarded
with incredibly warm, punchy bass, and satiny-smooth
highs. Used as an insert on individual tracks, you can
get just the sonic functionality you want from it —
something I found to be a real grin starter.
The greatest thing about the box is how smoothly
and how sonically pleasing its entire range is. From
nil to full, the sound is never distorted, crispy, blown
out, or otherwise unruly. The effect always feels clean
and controlled.

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was the similarity in presentation to these classic albums from According to the SBS website, “SP1 was designed for
the L.A. era described above. Solid players, distinct parts, and professional recording studios, home hi-fi audiophiles, the
a real sense of timeless purpose inform this album, and my nightclub pro-audio market, and the live-sound PA

guess is that it will easily withstand any test of time. A big part
of the puzzle is the production input of respected songwriter
Ryan Adams.
Jenny says, “Ryan and I didn’t know each other very well before
this album – we had hardly even listened to one another’s music,
to be honest. But I’d heard he built Pax Am Studio at Sunset
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market,” and that’s clear from the flexible routing built
into the unit. In the back are XLR balanced, RCA
unbalanced, and RCA phono I/O jacks. You can even apply
a reverse RIAA curve to a line-level source so you can feed
your favorite phono preamp for more flavor — more proof
that the SP1 2UBE is a truly unique piece of gear.

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Sound, so I hit him up and asked if I could come in and record ($3,696 MSRP; www.sbsdesigns.com)
something. We put together a band – Ryan on guitar, Griffin –Brandon Miller <brandon@thelodgemusic.com>
Goldsmith from Dawes on drums, Gus Seyffert on bass, and [co-
producer] Mike Viola on guitar and piano.” These sessions were

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recorded by Charlie Stavish and David LaBrel. Jenny continues,
“Every time I wanted to put a harmony on a song, Ryan would
ask me, ‘Do you come from a musical theater background?’ His
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argument was that great songs, with great stories, don’t need
background vocals. I trusted the vision, and Ryan ended up being
the person to get me over the fear of finishing something I’d
been working on for so long.”
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The multi-talented Beck Hansen produced the single “Just One of

the Guys,” which has a starlet-studded video to accompany it.
Engineered by Cole Marsden, Greif Neill, and David “Elevator”
Greenbaum, Jenny says it was, “One of the tunes I’d tried a few
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different ways before I finally recorded it with Beck, at his home

studio in Malibu [The Library]. He ended up producing the song,
as well as contributing backing vocals.”
Jenny’s longtime foil and partner, Johnathan Rice, helps out co-
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producing and playing on several songs. Former Rilo Kiley bassist

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Pierre de Reeder performed various overdubs (see an interview I

recently did in an upcoming Tape Op) at Kingsize North. Guest
musicians include Benmont Tench (of The Heartbreakers), Lou
Barlow (Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh), The Watson Twins, First Aid Kit,
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Lili Haydn, and many others.

The final touches for this great album include mixing by Rich
Costey at Eldorado Studios, Burbank, CA, and mastered by
Howie Weinberg [Tape Op #30] at Howie Weinberg Mastering,
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Los Angeles, CA.

Jenny says, “This record was the hardest one I’ve ever made. I
truly thought I was never going to finish it, but I did. The Voyager
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tells that story: the longest night of my life, and the journey to
finally getting some rest.”
As a listener and a fan, I’m so glad it’s completed and is part of
my listening rotation.
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<www.jennylewis.com> -LC

Please Support Our Advertisers/Tape Op#103/81

 The Recording Game by Larry Crane

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