You told me you started out on the Tascam 144. What was next?
I went to a 4-track reel-to-reel, a Tascam 3440 1/4", with the accompanying board. I was recording demos for bands to present to producers and label people, but the bug, the bite, was so severe by then. I remember getting the first ADAT and being so bummed out because the analog 1/4" sounded so much better.
When was this?
Late '80s. The digital age had come upon us. But I was using drum machines to write songs and stuff, and it still was a bit of a cocoon of home recording. I think that when people start to make a room happen and record real drums and stuff like that, it's such a baptism by fire. People don't realize it's a lot harder to make it all fit together when you're a novice. You might have the right mics and a room that sounds decent — but if you don't understand phase relationships or overlapping instrument frequencies they can really create a dangerous overload of certain frequency ranges, if you don't sculpt them properly. I remember being very daunted by that.
So you got the ADAT. What was your next purchase?
After that I found this combination rehearsal space and recording studio up on the top floor of this building, where these guys had built a sort of control room. It was just a glorified rehearsal space, one room, but I found places where I could hide amps in between wall structures and stuff. That was my first foray into recording other people. And that was with the quintessential Mackie and a pair of ADATS. Again, apologies to all my guinea pig clients. Sometimes it just clicked and sometimes it just didn't. But I felt so at home. I got to work with bands, and after a while some of the records I was doing started to come out, like the Freeze and Gang Green. I was like, 'Wow, you can make a big noise!' I remember this guy Mark Cutler, the genius of Providence, who writes 200 songs a year and they're all good. I got to do a record with him and it was just so much fun.
Do you have any pieces of gear or mics that you can't live without?
I have a pair of Neve 1064s that are just so trustworthy. And I have to say that in this world, Manley makes new gear that really works. I bought a Massive Passive, and holy shit! I bought an SE C-2 compressor, it's a one rack space, kind of like the electronics of two 1176s crammed into one. It's a stereo compressor with Neve output trans- formers, so you get kind of a Neve line out thing going on.
What about your board and tape machines?
I got the best I could afford, a Neotek Elite. It's clean, flexible, very dependable, the EQ is damn good, as well as the preamps. I still try to print on analog first most times. It's an MTR-90 Otari, it's a workhorse. When I work just in the analog domain, it never fails to be like, "Wow, this sounds so nice!" And I'm a latecomer to the digital world, but I have to say, with Pro Tools and the automation — it is nice to work on a mix and sit back and listen to the mix when it's going down instead of a physical obstacle course with different people manning mutes and fader levels and sends.
And you mix down to 1/2"?
Half-inch, yeah. That's another one of my favorite pieces of gear. It's an Ampex 102 1/2", it's the flagship of 1/2" mastering decks out there.
How do you like to record drums?
I wish I had the absolute fearless commitment to say, "You know what, let's make these drums three tracks and a couple stereo." But I tend to over-record for the safety net factor. I will commit three mics to one kick. Inside an ATM-25 is my favorite. Outside, away from the blast hole, I'll try a Royer 121. And the NS-10 speaker as a microphone combined does really work — it's really hefty on the sub-octave shit. After that it's pretty standard — Beta 57 on the top of the snare, AKG-451 underneath the snare. I love 451s for overheads. Although a stereo Royer SF-12 for overheads for the right kind of drummer can't be beat. I love the Stapes mics, too. They're omnis, and small, and they rock on room sounds, guitars — they're just uncanny. They're a little fizzy, but that's kind of what you want on cymbals and stuff. At $200 for a matching pair you can't go wrong with them. And I try not to compress much to tape. But room sounds I'm not afraid to let a stereo 1176 situation make the room mics kind of spice it up a little going to tape. There're a lot of old school applications that I still feel comfortable with. If it means putting a t-shirt over a snare drum for a song, or the guy barely hits a cymbal, ever, so when he does you're allowed to compress it so much it goes, "Bwhooooshhhhh!" I still feel like there's so many old school records that have that stuff that still sound so modern and juicy.
Like the drum sounds on Led Zeppelin records!
Right. They said, "You know what? Ambience is a good thing." Everyone else in the '70s was trying to kill any ambience. Ambience didn't re-emerge until U2's Boy record. And that record caught everybody by surprise because it was such a thumb to the nose of the bastions of dry drums. It just exploded. Sonically that record was just like, holy shit — the genie just left the bottle. And it's just ambience.
What about Pro Tools? Do you have any favorite plug-ins?
I bought the HD system, and everyone in the world seems to have cracked versions of plug-ins for the Mix Plus, so they really made that not easy to do. I do use some of the Bomb Factory and Focusrite things all the time. And there's one reverb that I bought, called Altiverb. It's an impulse response type of reverb, meaning that they recorded rooms all over the world. Like Bill Putnam's studio rooms, where the Beach Boys recorded vocals, and concert halls in Europe and stuff. And the thing's uncanny, it's gorgeous. That was a great purchase. I hope to get more, it's just like, 'Is it a mic this month or a plug-in? Or is it a slow month and I can't afford anything?'
