When and how did you get into cutting vinyl?
I suppose it was summer of 2008. There was a band called Super 400 working here at Ardent who had wanted [famed Stax/Ardent mastering engineer] Larry Nix to cut their vinyl. They had taken the studio tour and when they saw the cutting lathe, they were like, "Gosh, Larry. We'd love for you to cut our vinyl." And he said, "Oh, that doesn't work. I don't do that anymore." They kept pestering him about it and he kept saying no. So, I approached him one day in the parking lot and said, "Larry, I've been thinking. You go home everyday at five and you don't work weekends. Why don't we get the cutting lathe going again? I'd really love to learn the craft. Why don't you teach me? Wouldn't it be cool to come in in the mornings and find a check waiting for you on the turntable?" He said, "Let me think about it." He took two steps away from me and said, "Let's do it!"
All the associated gear was here?
Yep. It was always here. It was set up just like you see it here now. But it just wasn't being used. Some electronics had gone bad and it needed some TLC. And Larry had gotten fed up with it. For vinyl, he had mainly been doing DJ and hip-hop stuff and was having trouble turning a profit. I think he was charging old school prices. He eventually decided to concentrate on mastering CDs.
How long did it take you to get up and running?
Well, [Ardent's owner] John Fry [Tape Op #58] and [tech] Chris Jackson had a lot to do with getting the lathe going again. It didn't happen in one day! I learned a lot just sitting on the couch and keeping my mouth shut while they were working. I'd ask a million questions later, as well as reading anything I could get my hands on.
What's the optimum amount of time per side of LP?
The optimum time of an LP at 33 is less than 18 minutes — the less, the better. When you start cutting further and further towards the inner part of a record it gradually distorts. John Fry described it to me as the difference between 30 ips tape and, by the time you get to the inner groove, 7 1/2 ips. But to the human ear, when listening to an LP side, linearly, it's like anything else. Your ear gets used to things and then it's not drawn to the difference in fidelity as much. But, if you think about it, the amount of space that's going by, it's a lot like magnetic tape. I immediately went home and pulled out all my old albums to see how they were sequenced. You want your biggest, loudest songs with the most information at the beginning and your softer stuff goes on the inside. Look at your old records and it's so clear. It affects everything.
That's why albums often end with a ballad.
Or a quieter song. Exactly.
What do you do if you have someone who insists on having a side that's 20 minutes long?
I would explain to them that I can still cut it, but they may need to sacrifice volume and a bit of low end.
Where would you roll off the low-end in a case like that?
I'd use the high-pass filter on the Neumann console that I work with. Its presets are 40 and 63 cycles. There's also a thing called elliptical EQ that centers the bass information below a selected frequency to the center of the stereo image. Its presets are 150 and 300. I think anything below 50 cycles will roll off pretty drastically. But when you play it back, it's so much bigger and warmer than the CDs we play that have the bass piled on. It's unbelievable.
Like the medium itself makes up for the loss?
Absolutely, as far as my ears are telling me. It's just warmer and it sounds better. I've been doing it for over four years now. But I'm constantly learning and absorbing what I can from the veterans. There's definitely a difference of opinion about the best use of space. For instance, if you're gonna go for the extra expense of four sides, only cut halfway in. Some say still do the four sides, but use all your real estate and open up the grooves. If you look at some of the Radiohead records, that's a pretty good example. They cut halfway in and there's this big empty space of the run-out groove. That's because they only use the part of the disc surface that sounds the best. But do people even care what it sounds like? It doesn't appear so. But I certainly care.
How did you meet John Fry?
I was a student at University of Memphis. The first time I met him, he came to our class to speak and I fell asleep! [laughter] I dozed off in class! I was embarrassed about it later, but I just couldn't help it. I had no idea whose presence I was in.
What have you learned from him?
We have what we call the John Fry trickle down theory here. He's not one to sit down with you and explain how to get a good guitar sound or how a compressor works. But, I thank my lucky stars, he taught Terry Manning [Tape Op #58], Joe Hardy, and John Hampton. Most of my assistant days were spent with John Hampton. I'd say the biggest things I learned from John were compression and listening at a reasonable volume. I like to listen loud; I'm still a teenager when it comes to that. But I also know you need to turn it down and see what you can hear. If you can't hear your cool guitar sound on a medium to low volume, you probably don't have a very good, or exciting, guitar sound depending on what kind of music, obviously. And compression... what are you hearing when you're using a compressor? I learned mainly about attack and release times. I have a lot of fun misusing compression — I think it's a very modern thing to do. It makes things exciting to misuse it. But it's also important to learn it in the right way, the way he looked at it. It's necessary to get it to stick to the medium that you're trying to record to; that's why it was invented. Knowing what comes in and what goes out, you know? Analog tape always gave you that.
You worked a lot with Alex Chilton.
Yeah. When Big Star first got back together with Alex and Jody [Stephens, Tape Op #58], along with Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer from The Posies [#58], they recorded that live show in Columbia, Missouri [Columbia: Live at Missouri University, 1993]. That came back to Ardent to be mixed. Jim Rondinelli was the engineer, so I was his second. I had a tiny involvement in that. Then I worked with Alex on A Man Called Destruction, where I was the engineer and mixer. I learned a lot from Alex and I love that. Then there was a Big Star tribute record [Big Star, Small World] where I worked with some other bands that were recording Big Star songs. I engineered two or three tracks on that, one of them being the reformed Big Star in the studio for the first time. ["Hot Thing"] wasn't a good song; it wasn't really the best thing. But it is the song that got on the record. It was cool to be working with them. Eventually, Alex announced, onstage in London I believe, that they were going to go back in the studio. From what I heard, that's the first time Jody, Ken and Jon had heard about it too. [laughter] But when I heard the rumors that it was going to happen, I certainly went and made it known to Jody that I'd love to work on it. I wanted my name thrown in the hat, even though there were a million names in front of me. Jody called me into his office one day. He said that he'd talked to Alex and asked him who he wanted to engineer it. Alex said, without hesitation, "I want Jeff Powell to engineer it."
