How did you go from producing records to starting UnderTone Audio?
It really started when I was at a crossroads, just dealing with having a large-format recording console that would do what I needed it to do. I've always been a Neve guy. I was lucky enough early on to have bought an 8038 Neve that had 32 1081s in it from Ocean Way back in 1990. Just because everybody said, "Neves are great. That's the warm sound." So I got one, but there was a learning curve with that thing. It did not sound amazing right out of the gate. But once I learned it, it did sound amazing. All of those early records, the Third Eye Blind record and Smash Mouth's first couple records, were all tracked on that console. Then there's a certain point where I hit the limitations of mixing on that console. I just couldn't mix on it anymore; I'd outgrown it. I upgraded to a Neve 8128. I know some people would probably consider that a downgrade, but I loved that console. The 8128 was incredible. That console actually moved to L.A. with me and was set up at Barefoot Recording. I did Queens of the Stone Age and the first Good Charlotte record with that console. But then that console was really at the end of its lifespan. There was just no amount of contact cleaner that was going to make me trust that thing ever again. It was over. So, I decided, "What the hell. I'm going to get the latest and greatest Neve console." So I got the Neve 88R. It's an amazing console but they had travelled too far away from what I need a console to do. There's so much stuff on there for film stages and all these other things that I didn't need, and the thing's gigantic. The channel strips are three feet long. The nearfield monitors weren't nearfield monitors anymore. There's this giant sea of flat metal surface between me and the [Yamaha] NS-10s. The speakers sounded weird, and I could never really get comfortable with it. That console just didn't work for me at all. It drove me nuts. During the same time, I met Larry Jasper. He was repairing and modifying all of my vintage gear. He's just so good; he's a total savant with this stuff. He memorized all of the schematics for all of the equipment in my studio. He already knew them all. Every single item that I mentioned, like my [Teletronix] LA-2A seems to be weird, and he'd say, "Yeah, they got it right with this, and it was really good they did this thing, but it'd be a lot better if you bypass the output transformers." We'd try the stuff that he suggested, and he was always right. The changes that he'd make were amazing. So we modified my LA-2As and did a bunch of work on my [Urie] 1176s, tape machines, and everything. Everything came back incredible, super reliable, and sounding amazing. At this point I got kind of cocky and thought maybe we could just put together a console ourselves! Originally, I was going to build it around some module that I liked; the original 1084 Neve module, sort of a smaller version of the 1081 that was still Class A. I was going to find a bunch of those and then build a console for the bussing and routing. Then I got more ambitious and thought I'd really like the EQ to be more flexible. Maybe we can modify them. That looked like it was going to be too complicated, so finally I just said, "Fuck it. Let's go from scratch and see what happens." With every single thing, Larry would say, "This aspect of the design was good, but it could have been better if they did this, that, and the other." I said, "Let's do everything the way that you think would be the most amazing, and then let's just see what happens!" I was lucky enough to be in a place and have the resources to do an experiment like that. I paid him and we both worked on it together to build two consoles; a 60-channel console and a 48-channel console. One for Studio A and one for Studio B.
What year was that?
That started in 2007. It took us two years to finish the first one in 2009 and got installed in Studio A. We genuinely built the best-sounding analog console I've ever used in my life. On top of that, it was a new psychological context to work in, where I'd just spent two years designing what is conceptually the greatest analog console ever built. "This console is going to make everything I do sound better from now on." I'd start every project with that mindset. "This is going to be better than everything I've done before." It's a very inspiring context to work in. That's what I find the most useful about new equipment. There are always points along the way where I feel like I'm using stuff that's worked in the past, and it's probably fine and I can probably use it for the rest of my life, but I want to feel that sensation of I'm going to change things so that things will unavoidably be better and different in the future. It just adds this new, fresh inspiration to everything that you do. There's an expectation that things are going to be better than they were. That was the most powerful version I've ever had of that feeling in my life, because I was so emotionally invested in having built that console. That aspect of it was really inspiring and really wonderful. When we were done with the whole thing, it was very apparent that the equalizer we had designed was very unique. Extremely powerful, very musical. There was simply nothing like it that had ever been done before. Other people started expressing interest in it, so we decided to build that as a product. That was really the beginning of UnderToneAudio.
That was the EQ standalone, or the EQ with the mic pre?
The EQ with the mic pre. It was a channel strip, the MPEQ-1. We built 100 of those ourselves with a small group of people who were all part of UnderTone. We didn't use a contract manufacturer or anything. We set up our own manufacturing installation upstairs at Barefoot. I had three or four people up there who were stuffing boards and soldering. It was all through-hole components, and we did it all ourselves. The small boards have surface-mount components, so those we did contract out. The submodules with all the active circuitry. But all the larger boards were hand soldered. We built the first 100 MPEQ modules. Then people wanted consoles, so we started building consoles for other people. Greg Wells [Tape Op #123] bought the first UnderTone console. Then we built one for Fraser T. Smith and a guy in Alabama named Jason Elgin, and then there's one in Switzerland. We built one for John Kuker who had a studio in North Hollywood called Seedy Underbelly. Really, really cool guy. He ordered a big console. He passed away literally in the last week of installing his console.
Oh man.
Yeah. It was really crazy. I was in Switzerland finishing this recording school installation of the console we built for them and got the email that John had passed away. That console got tied up in a bunch of probate stuff for a long time and ultimately found a home in Brazil. Anyway, there's a total of eight UnderToneAudio custom consoles on the planet.
Are you still making them for people?
We don't make consoles now. Really the main issue is that the consoles require a lot of my time. There's a lot of mechanical design work that I did on those consoles and configuring a custom version of it is something that I have to do, and I just don't have the time to do it. We're just not offering those right now. We do have requests from time to time from people who are interested. But building a custom Class A console in California is insanely expensive. A lot of times people think, "Oh, if we just build a really small one it'll be super affordable." No, that's actually the most expensive way to do it, for what you get. When they compare it to mass-manufactured API consoles, they're like, "Hey, I can get the API for this." "Well, buy it then." We cannot hand-build something like that in the United States right now.
Have you thought about just doing a stock size console? Like here's the 16-channel console, and there are no options.
I have considered that. I just think it's been more important to focus on getting all the rackmount products up and running and have them going smoothly before I got back into that. That's still a lot of design work for me. There's a learning curve to becoming an audio manufacturing company. After building the first 100 MPEQ-1s, my guys were like, "This sucks. It's super repetitious, super boring. It's mind-numbing. We're not into this. We'll build custom consoles, but we're not cranking out repetitious stuff. It's too boring." I said, "Okay, let's get a contract manufacturer to do that." We signed up with a contract manufacturer down in Orange County. They started off great and then sort of fell apart. There was a certain point where we had to make a change. They made some really fatal mistakes that were difficult to undo and fix. I couldn't have stuff go out that was unreliable and not put together properly. All of it had to get fixed. We switched to another contract manufacturer almost two years ago. There's a whole process of getting up to speed with a new manufacturer, getting all the bills of materials, ordering parts, understanding how to build them and test them. It's this whole crazy, complicated process where you have to teach somebody how to be an expert on your products. We went through that whole thing with them, and they're great. That company's JMP Electronics. They're amazing. I think things are finally smoothing out. We just placed another purchase order for another hundred UnFairchilds, which is kind of sobering to initiate. Those things are expensive to build, so it's a huge commitment of hundreds of thousands of dollars when you say, "Okay, we're going to build 100 of these." You're sorting through all these expensive parts, transformers and tubes. I know that we're going to need hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for all of these parts and pay for people to build these things. We don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars right now, so we've gotta sell stuff! It's been an interesting transition. I was subsidizing UnderTone with my producer income for a long time. Then in 2018 I took the training wheels off. So starting in 2018, UnderTone's gotta pay for itself. It's tight, but it's working.
You had mentioned you went through a whole process of blind listening tests when you were initially developing the gear?
