Aside from the comfortable vibe, a noteworthy assortment of colorful mic pres, and a well maintained Otari MTR 90II 24-track, Jupiter's most valuable asset is the aural aptitude of it's in-house producer/engineer/mastering engineer/part-owner, Martin Feveyear. Martin grew up in Hadleigh, England, but wound up in Seattle at the request of the Screaming Trees, who he'd been working with on tour in Europe, doing live sound. "I was in bands in England for ten years or so," reflects Martin, "recording pretty much from the word go. I had no particular training of any kind — just two ghetto blasters, bouncing backwards and forwards. I bought a 4-track, bought an 8-track, put it in a little barn, recorded local bands, and recorded my band. Then I started working on a 24-track in England and toured with The Screaming Trees in Europe. They asked me to come to the States and work, and I came up here. In between touring, I was making records with the funds that I earned on the road. I started making albums in basements and local studios — getting a clientele and a reputation that way."
It was during this time that Martin hooked up with Seattle musician, Christian Fulgham. "I was in a band called Sister Psychic in 1992," says Christian. "Martin was getting ready to go out on another leg of a Screaming Trees tour, and he came and saw the band live. He liked us a lot and ended up producing some records for us. Around 1994, we decided to make a little project studio where between projects, we could be working on some stuff with bands and that kind of thing."
"The main thing for me," Martin adds, "was that I wanted to create a space with the right kind of vibe to it, so it didn't feel like you were working in a studio and that you weren't under pressure."
Martin had already come a long way with a small studio before meeting up with Christian but was quickly outgrowing the basement. "When I'd be touring," he says, "I'd come home and spend the money I earned on the road on new equipment and built the basis of a little studio — a couple of ADATs and an 8-track analog that I locked up. I did some records that way. I did the first Super Deluxe record — It did pretty well — a Model Rockets record, and stuff for Sister Psychic, as well as other bands around Seattle at the time. It just seemed logical that Christian and I would get something together. We were always looking for a space. Christian found that initial space for us in 1996. All we had were three ADATs and eight tracks of analog. We have the two- inch 24-track now. We still have the ADATs but we also have a full-blown Pro Tools rig."
Though the studio has certainly stayed afloat financially, Jupiter's founders rest more comfortably on their laurels knowing that they've had an artistic prosperity from the get-go. "It was much more successful than we thought right off the bat," Christian explains, "partly because there was demand for a low-key, artist-friendly studio that was focused on results with no frills. We wanted to have a place to work that was comfortable for musicians, that was reasonably priced, and that was word-of- mouth. But, we really wanted to focus on the most important piece of equipment, which is the person operating the equipment."
A move to Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood
As the number of projects grew, space began to run out. Jupiter had to move. In 1998 they did, and now fit like a glove in their new location. "We were just growing too quickly at the old space," says Martin. "When we got that together we didn't expect to have the kind of clients that we were getting. I mean, we had Tuatara, The Screaming Trees, members of REM, Cornershop... you know... pretty cool clients. It got to the point where we were too busy and that place was getting too small for us. Even though it was fairly spacious compared to a lot of studios, it just seemed like the right time to move. The live room's really cool," Martin says of the new space. "It's nice and big... high ceilings. It's been around for 20 years [It used to be called Crow]. It got a little run down. We spent a lot of time and money on it and it's pretty saucy in here now."
Martin had help with the move from Jupiter's newest staff engineer, Jon Ervie. Jon appeared on the scene just as Martin was getting ready to move. He'd been in the Northwest since moving from Missouri in 1994 to form a band. He started working at another Seattle 24-track studio called The Ranch, where he recorded bands like Zeke. He spent some time working in a studio outside Bellingham and put a call into Martin when moving back to Seattle.
"I've known Jon for several years," says Martin, "and mixed some records that he engineered. He sat in on the mix sessions and we met that way.He just kind of reared his head again when I was about to move the studio."
"I was wanting to move back to Seattle," Jon finishes, "and Martin had an opportunity to help him move so I came down to help. It turned out to be a good project. I'd seen this space before. I'd come to look at it when it was Crow and I was really glad that Martin took it over."
More space for drum sounds
One of the new perks Martin, Jon, and Christian took fast advantage of was the newfound spaciousness of the high-ceilinged "big" room. It greatly enhanced their well-defined knack for getting outstanding drum sounds by cleaning up low and upper-mid range waves that low horizontal ceilings often produce, as well as eliminating early reflections from above. However, Martin attributes the majority of this sonic success to the ordinary — yet hard to come by — building blocks: great drummers and great mic pres. One drummer Jupiter has had the opportunity to work with extensively is local dynamo, Jason Finn. Over the past year, Jason's been in the studio with several bands, including The Presidents, Subset, and The Nevada Bachelors. Martin has taken advantage of these opportunities to craft Jason's infallible playing into individual mixes on a case-by-case basis. "Jason's drum sounds are very consistent," claims Martin. "The stuff I've been doing with him and the Presidents, the Nevada Bachelors, and the Subset stuff — they're all slightly different but they feel like Jason. They're amazingly dynamic, and have a great snap and bite to them, but they're not overly bright, overly EQ'd, or compressed. They're natural sounding but they have this dynamic to them that's definitely his. It's all about capturing the drummer's style. With some of [Jason's] bands, it's more of an open kind of earthy sound. At other times, it's tighter and more focused — the resolution of the magnifying glass is a lot higher. Other times it's not as high because it doesn't need to be. He changes his style or we change the way we track or mix dependant on the artist and the song."
It's all in the mic pre
The tracking of drums, as well as most other instruments at Jupiter, is commonly executed through one of a handful of favorite mic pres and compressors, namely their Telefunken and Kendrick supply. "A big part of the drum sound here is the Telefunken piece that we have," explains Martin. "We have a lot of gear custom made for us by a gentleman called Oliver. He runs a company called Jester Enterprises and he's bought the trademark and trade name for Oahu and he remakes the Oahu amplifiers, all class A. He's been selling them to people like Keith Richards and Billy Gibbons. He used to work for Telefunken so he has all the plans and designs for everything they made. He makes this wonderful stuff, which he's actually retailing now. We doalotofR&Dforhim.Hebringsstuffinforusto try out and I give him pointers. He's also made some Telefunken compressors. We have one right now and he's making another two more for us. It's basically the Telefunken Varicom. It's the most useful compressor I've ever used. It's absolutely beautiful... very colored, slight harmonic distortion, very crispy, with a nice low end bump, but very smooth — and very, very musical. It reacts to stuff that other compressors don't react to. It doesn't react to the low end like most compressors do. It doesn't seem to react to voltage — it seems to react more to frequency, which is what we like. And then he made us some other Telefunken compressors too. You have some V-72s, which are huge, and then these old solid state models, which are basically — from what I've been told — the model that Neve used for his solid state and boy, they sound fantastic."
Another colorful favorite is the Kendrick "6- Shooter," a very cool looking six channels of class A mic pres in a two-unit space, with a smoking gun on the front panel. It's mostly used for toms, kick, and vocals. "My partner Christian bought that a couple years ago," claims Martin. "He'd used the [Kendrick] guitar amps and raved about them. It's a very expensive piece of equipment and when he bought it, I was like, 'Wow, what'd you spend that much money for? We could get some Focusrites for that!' So, I thought I'd try them out and send them back or something. Well, I brought some Focusrites in and A/B'd the Kendricks against them. I got the best sound I could with the Focusrites, with EQ, and ran some tape. Then, I used the same mics, same position, with the Kendrick and it just completely blew the Focusrites away, even without EQ. They're great for real rich, dynamic stuff that needs clarity, but also a tonal picture. We use those a lot. That's the main pre-amp that did all the vocal tracking on the Mark Lanegan record that came out last year."
The singer is the sound
