Kingtone

This the history and evolution of my recording set-ups. The idea was lifted from the liner notes to the Pete Townshend “Scoop” LPs.

Studio #1 1985-1989 Various east coast USA locales. 4 track. Purchased the venerable Tascam Porta-One cassette from Manny’s in NYC and a couple of Shure 57’s. Recorded ALOT of demos, ideas and several cassette releases.

Studio #2 1990-1997 Boston, MA, CT and SF, CA. 8 tracks. My first real studio with a Tascam TSR-8 1/2″ open reel deck, Seck 1282 mix console, Tannoy monitors, Sony DAT deck, Lexicon reverb and a Symetrics compressor. All very decent sounding and popular semi-pro gear that I acquired while an employee of the now defunct EU Wurlitzer Music in Boston (thanks David Bryce and Ducky Carlisle). I eventually purchased a few more mics including a really nice AKG 414TLII, made many demos and several records.

Studio #3 1999-2002 Berkeley, CA. 8+ tracks. I moved into a warehouse complex right on the train tracks in West Berkeley and made the move to (mostly vintage) pro gear (with the help of my good friend and SF bay area audio guru, Lawrence Fellow-Mannion). The centerpiece was a beautiful 1969 3M M23 1″ 8 track that I found sitting in a forgotten corner of El Cerrito Guitar Center, a late 70’s Soundcraft Series II 16/8/2 desk from Wallysound, a couple of Dan Alexander Neve 1272 and Ampex 601 mic pre’s, some good compressors, an Otari MX 5050bIIb 1/4″ deck and a tt patchbay with fancy quad cabling. I added an amazing Lawson L47 tube mic and a Coles 4038 ribbon to the collection. My friend Ricardo Esway, chipped in some digital gear including 8 channels of MOTU digital in/out (that paled in comparison to sound of the M23).

The tracking room had great sound and fantastic reverb decay due to the 30′ arched wood ceiling. We built a proper double-walled control room but left the rest of the space as is (ie not remotely soundproof). Amazingly the trains that frequently roared by rarely interfered with recording…

I eventually moved out of the space and broke up the studio (no more tinkering and soldering!). The M23, Soundcraft and patchpay live with Chris Butler and his vintage collection in Hoboken, NJ, but I did keep some crucial gear…

Studio #4 2002-2003 - Emeryville, CA. 8track. I struggled for a year with a free version of Protools 4.0 and an old Digidesign Audio Media III card (16 bit, 2 i/o) running on a really old Mac 7600 (G3) in a dark and dank rehearsal studio. The setup was hodgepodge and without a proper patchbay, but it sounded okay. I recorded alot of cool music - much of it for the Immersion Composition Society.

Studio #5 2003 to 2006. 16 tracks+. I moved to a more spacious and brighter studio and fully committed to the digital age after discovering and purchasing a ‘vintage’ DAW platform, PARIS. Fantastic sounding, stable, with really intuitive (ie analog) recording, mixing and editing capabilities. 16 tracks, 24 bit, no latency with real time fx, eq and aux capability and a decent control surface. Since it had its own processing power, I ran it for years with my old 7600 with no problems. I added a sweet Ampex 350 mic preamp (rebuilt by Rance) and a FMR audio Really Nice Preamp to the setup which was now neatly contained in two roll around racks.

Studio #6 2006-2007. The PARIS system’s main card died - RIP. Faced with the prospect purchasing another card with a limited life span and continuing to run OS9, I chose to sell the PARIS parts off. I’ve since been using an MBox I found for $200 to access Pro-tools.

Studio #7 2008. Of late, I’ve been obsessed with keeping the smallest footprint possible - something both portable yet totally pro to track with - making do with what I already have excepting a few necessary upgrades (it’s about THE MUSIC right?!). There are so many options available these days it sets your head spinning but it boils down to two or three paths. Digital recording involves living with certain compromises and after a bit of trial and error and several false starts, I decided on a Metric Halo firewire AD/DA interface running Digital Performer and Protools (thru an Mbox) running on a black MacBook. This setup gives plenty of ultra high quality ins and outs. The addition of a Mackie Big knob (great piece of gear) has enabled me to do with out a mixer and keeps my table top nice and clean and I also picked up an M-Audio Sputnik tube mic that is really great. Small, mobile and powerful.