joaoveludo@gmail.com

The Creative Music Recording Magazine 

Martin Hannett 

Joy Division, Buzzcocks 

Bill Szymczyk 

The Eagles, Joe Walsh, The Who 

Richard Kaplan & 

Mike Pinder 

Malibu’s Indigo Ranch 

Tanya Donelly 

Belly, Throwing Muses, Solo 

Giles Martin 

The Beatles Revisited 

Larry Villella 

of ADK in Behind the Gear 

Music Reviews 

w/ Jenny Lewis & The Delines 

Gear Reviews 

Issue No. 103 

Sept/Oct 2014 

joaoveludo@gmail.com 

IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT SOUND

joaoveludo@gmail.com





Hello and 

welcome to 

12 Letters 

14 Larry Villella in Behind the Gear 

18 Tanya Donelly 

24 Bill Szymczyk 

32 Martin Hannett 

42 Richard Kaplan 

48 Giles Martin 

54 Gear Reviews 

80 Music Reviews 

82 The Recording Game 

Bonus Content: 

Richard Kaplan on Bing Crosby’s Tapes 

Online Only Feature: 

K-Mack 

A “Poor Man’s Neve” 

Refurbing a Cadac J-type 

p a g e 

Tape Op 

#103! 

I arrived at the profession of being 

an engineer and producer via being 

a fan. Experiences as a listener and music lover sent me on 

this path, and certain bits of music pushed me forward. The 

tangible feeling I got the first time I heard the masterful 

production of Joy Division’s song “Atmosphere” rumbling 

through a giant stereo system at a friend’s house sent me on 

a quest to absorb more of their music, as well as a desire to 

learn how they were made. See our excerpts from Chris 

Hewitt’s book on Martin Hannett in this issue for insight 

into these iconic Joy Division recordings, and more. A 

music fan also has opinions, and while I’ve become more 

relaxed in some of my stances, I still abhor the Eagles. 

But I do love Joe Walsh and The Who, so check out our 

interview with Bill Szymczyk in these pages! And what 

fan doesn’t love The Beatles? Check out the interview 

here with Giles Martin, and see how he struggled with 

his father’s legacy, Sir George Martin, while proceeding 

to make a name for himself. There’s far more in this 

issue (did I mention I’m a big Tanya Donelly fan?), 

so dig in and enjoy the mag! But first put on some 

music you love… - Larry Crane, Editor 


c Don Lewis 

right hand LPs courtesy Scott Colburn



10/Tape Op#103/Masthead 

The Creative Music Recording Magazine 

Editor 

Larry Crane 

Publisher &Graphic Design 

John Baccigaluppi 

Online Publisher 

Dave Middleton 

Gear Reviews Editor 

Andy “Gear Geek” Hong 

Production Manager & Assistant Gear Reviews Editor 

Scott McChane 

Contributing Writers &Photographers 

Cover by JB, with endless props to John Van Hamersveld and Bruce Brown. 

Garrett Haines, Kraig Mason, Jake Brown Lisi Szymczyk, Chris Hewitt, Gary Lipton, 

Jeff Slate, Geoff Stanfield, Eli Crews, Alan Tubbs, Dave Hidek, Dave Cerminara, 

Scott Evans, Roy Silverstein, Greg Calbi, Adam Kagan, Adam Monk, Mike Jasper, 

Dusty Wakeman, Steve Silverstein and Brandon Miller. 

www.tapeop.com 

Dave Middleton and Hillary Johnson 

Editorial and Office Assistants 

Jenna Crane (proofreading), Thomas Danner (transcription), 

Lance Jackman (accounting@tapeop.com) 

Tape Op Book distribution 

c/o www.halleonard.com 

Disclaimer 

TAPE OP magazine wants to make clear that the opinions expressed within reviews, letters and 

articles are not necessarily the opinions of the publishers. Tape Op is intended as a forum to 

advance the art of recording, and there are many choices made along that path. 

Editorial Office 

(for submissions, letters, CDs for review. CDs for review are also 

reviewed in the Sacramento office, address below) 

P.O. Box 86409, Portland, OR 97286 voicemail 503-208-4033 

editor@tapeop.com 

All unsolicited submissions and letters sent to us become the property of Tape Op. 

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have an online change of address form or you can email 

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Postmaster and all general inquiries to: 

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and Jackpot! Recording Studio, Inc. (editorial services) 



Please Support Our Advertisers/Tape Op#103/11

I love Tape Op. I can’t believe you got 

Al [Schnier, of moe., Tape Op #102]. I was at a 

music festival a few weeks ago and somebody 

mistook me for Al because we have the 

same receding hairline. Thank you. 

Tommy McKaughan 

My wife and I drove 18 hours back from our 

vacation in Florida to our home in Ohio. We got in 

at 3 a.m. Our son had put the mail on the floor, and 

before we went to bed I saw the newest issue of 

Tape Op. My wife said, “Come on, we have been up 

for 20 hours.” I said, “I will be in there in a little 

bit.” I couldn’t put the latest issue down! I read it 

from beginning to end, and finally crawled into bed 

at 5 a.m. Honestly, that was my favorite issue yet, 

and I am going to do some recording tomorrow. 

Thanks for the inspiration! 

Kevin R. Bowdler 

On the one hand, I completely agree with Mr. 

Baccigaluppi’s recent back page. I am constantly 

ranting that I want Cubase and Pro Tools finished, 

goddamnit! I want them to be like real musical 

instruments: perfected. Sure, one violin or piano 

sounds different from the next, and there’s always 

room for improvement; but they all work the same 

way. Same goes for everything, from Stratocasters to 

drill presses. At some point, the consensus was, “This 

thing is fully baked.” On the other hand? I can’t 

stand where DAW is today. None of them are what I 

imagined when I started 15 years ago... which is a 

desktop music publisher. None of them are as flexible 

as video or desktop publishing programs, in terms of 

simply manipulating objects the way Word, InDesign, 

or Finale let one cut/copy/paste. None have 

particularly great undo. None have version control. 

None have an import/export worth a shit. And none 

offer any reasonable guarantee that you’ll be able to 

open an older project cleanly. I think we are still 

stuck in this mental paradigm (which your magazine 

promulgates) of “mixer,” “engineer,” and “musician.” 

Sound is acquired in one discrete step, mixed in 

another, and then mastered in a third. No author in 

any other medium thinks in such a formal way 

anymore. We’re all constantly creating and editing, all 

at the same time. But DAWs continue to be modeled 

after tape recorders and mixing desks. In short, I look 

forward to the day when there is a simple DAW that 

allows me the same flexibility with audio, MIDI, and 

notation that I have with words in Microsoft Word; 

something that isn’t held back by the look and feel 

of a mixing desk. 

JC Harris 

12/Tape Op#103/Letters/(Fin.) 

While I too dream of a 

DAW that needs no 

upgrades and stays 

stable for decades, I 

disagree on the criticism 

of the “mental 

paradigm” that you 

believe we “promulgate” 

with Tape Op. I think that 

many times the division of labor on a recording project 

can be a good thing. Sure, a blurring of the lines 

constantly occurs (I regularly engineer, produce, mix, 

and perform on my studio sessions); but when it comes 

to the tasks involved in record making, often hiring an 

expert can vastly improve the project. Bringing in a 

better guitarist than myself is an obvious win. Hiring a 

mixing or mastering engineer with more experience 

than oneself can improve tracks immensely. Sometimes 

records are made in isolation by a single person, and 

this can lead to some fantastic, unique results or it can 

result in an unbridled mess. Some records are made by 

selecting the proper group of talented individuals. But 

even inferring that there is only one way to record 

music is to miss the point of all the opportunities that 

are out there. -LC 

I enjoyed John Baccigaluppi’s hammer analogy. 

[“Give Me a Hammer” Tape Op #102] I would only 

add that the carpenter’s clients probably don’t ask 

which brand of hammer he uses... 

Frank Dickinson 

Issue #102 showed up in my email yesterday. I 

love your gear reviews, so I went there first. In my 

latest project I have been struggling with two 

guitars recorded through a Line 6 Pod 2.0 amp 

simulator that seemed okay when I cut the tracks, 

but are harsh sounding as I mix. I can barely tame 

the sound with compression, EQ, and de-essers. It’s 

either too harsh, or too dull, plus the rhythm and 

lead guitar have the same frequency range of 

splatter and were tough to balance. I read the 

review on bx_refinement and within the hour it was 

downloaded and in operation. Even my wife could 

hear the difference. While I’ll be wary of using the 

Pod in the future, I now have a valuable tool that 

can really clean things up. Thanks for the 

heads up on a great product. It came 

along at the right time to rescue my mix. 

Jer Hill 

I adore this plug-in, and have been using it a lot 

to help my recent mixes, even on some tracks I’ve 

cut myself. I’m very happy to have turned anyone 

on to this fine product. I recently met bx’s 

developer, Gebre Waddell, at Summer NAMM, and 

am glad to report that he’s an awesome and 

interesting person to boot. Expect more miracles 

from him in the future. -LC 

Send Letters & Questions 

to: editor@tapeop.com 

I read several issues ago about Larry Crane 

wishing that CDs came with credits in the metadata 

for the engineer, producer, studio, etc. When I 

create a PMCD [PreMaster CD] for pressing purposes 

there is no place except the comments block to add 

this information, which is character limited, so 

only a fraction of the info I edit in is retained. Also 

other info, such as publishing, copywriter, etc. is 

not retained after burning the PMCD (I use 

MediaMonkey). Is there any other way to add this 

info to the metadata that will be retained after 

burning the disc? Or am I just pissing up a rope? 

Jeffrey Simpson 

You are not alone in wondering about metadata on 

CDs. Although it is possible to add credits in the comment 

section, there are some limitations to this approach. First, 

CD Text data is only seen when a disc is played in a CD 

Text-enabled car or home player. Portable players and 

computers do not read information from the disc (they 

pull data from databases, such as Gracenote). The 

second, and perhaps more important concern, is that 

there is no guarantee that a disc manufacturer will “carry 

forward” all of the metadata from the submitted master. 

While many plants do pass CD Text through to the 

production copies, it is not a universal practice. Even if 

you manage to stuff all the comments in, it may not 

make it to the finished copies. Presently there is no ideal 

solution. This explains some of the recent attempts to 

launch album credit sites. The best advice I have is to find 

someone who is a Gracenote partner and have them enter 

the data for you. Some labels, mastering engineers, and 

publishers have enhanced access to production fields in 

the Gracenote Database. While anyone can submit song 

titles and artists names, via applications like iTunes, 

Gracenote Partners have enhanced access to data fields 

(e.g. native language, band website, record label, subgenres, 

etc.). In particular, we can enter musician, 

engineering, writing, and production credits for entire 

albums, or even individual songs (very useful on a 

compilation release). I believe feeding production credits 

into Gracenote is currently our best bet. Even if AES, 

NARAS, or some other body manages to push standards 

through, online vendors such as Apple, Pono, or Streamerdu-Jour 

will more than likely want to pull from an 

established data source. In summary: not only are you 

pissing up a rope, but you have to get in line to do so. 

But so do the rest of us. 

Garrett Haines 

As always, I was delighted to get the 

latest Tape Op [#102]! Right away it flipped open to that 

super-sexy shot of Tom Werman standing in front of those 

[3M] M79s.Hell yeah! But I'm really writing to express 

how impressed I am to see the cover of Family Fun In Tape 

Recording used with your opening editorial! This was an 

extremely important book for me – please see attached 

the review I wrote in 1965 inside the front cover. 

“This is a great book! Given November 15, 1965 on my 

11th birthday.” 

Mitch Easter 



ADK Microphones began in 1997 as 

the dream of Larry Villella – recording 

engineer, piano expert, and vintage mic 

collector – to build quality microphones 

for his friends. ADK’s extensive line of 

microphones now ranges from very affordable 

to top-of-the-line hand-built creations. 

I met up with Larry at SuperDigital in 

Portland, one of his earliest distributors. 

What’s your history with microphones? 

In ‘71 I went to recording school in Boston. Eli Lilly’s 

grandson, George Lilly, was building Renaissance 

Recording Studios in Boston. He went around and 

found some academics to create a recording school, 

and to teach him how to use all this equipment that 

he’d bought. He had a big MCI board and eight brand 

new Neumann U 87s mics. They taught us the basics 

of recording. We’d take this 8-track Scully [tape deck] 

and drag it to old churches to record pipe organs, 

harpsichords, and pianos. The instructor came in to 

class one day and said, “We’re going to spend the 

whole week at The Jazz Workshop recording this new 

guy.” We spent five nights with Chick Corea. Jazz 

piano recording sort of set my life in motion. 

Chick Corea on acoustic piano? 

It was the Circle group, which was his avant-garde 

group with Anthony Braxton, Dave Holland, and 

Barry Altschul. 

Some amazing players. 

Yeah. In the last three years Dave Holland, Anthony 

Braxton, and Chick Corea have all recorded on ADK mics. 

Yeah, it comes back around! 

Forty years later. My life is complete. Chick did a 

recording that’s coming out soon with Jazz at Lincoln 

Center, and they used a pair of our 3 Zigma lipstick 

mics; the SD-C cardioids. 

That must be an honor. 

If I ever run into Chick Corea again, I’m going to tell 

him that he set my life in motion. It’s an honor to 

hear some of these tracks, and to know that was what 

set out to be my life’s work. 

What happened after that? 

I moved from Boston to Phoenix, and I worked at the 

Electronic Music Labs at Arizona State University. I 

had an ARP 2600, a Hagstrom guitar, and a Tandberg 

half-track with sel sync. I used to sit there and 

strum guitar chords on one channel, dump that track 

Behind The Gear 

This Issue’s Creator of Capsules 

Larry Villella 

14/Tape Op#103/Mr. Villella/(continued on page 16) 

by Larry Crane 

over with some synthesizer lead on the second 

channel, and then erase the first channel. I had a 

little ad agency where I went around and sold 

people ads. I made the music beds, wrote the copy, 

and did the voiceover. It actually led to a late-night 

FM jazz show I hosted. 

When did you move to the Portland area? 

I moved to Portland about 15 years ago. 

What brought that on? 

My wife got a scholarship at Lewis & Clark [College] to 

go to graduate school. She now teaches there. We had 

really young kids at the time. So I went from working 

at the Sherman Clay [Pianos] store in Seattle to 

working for the affiliate here in Portland. I sold 

Steinways for almost 20 years. By day I was selling 

Steinways, and by night I was recording them. In 

1997, I just felt like I needed something new that was 

all me. I decided to build some microphones for a few 

of my friends. 

Recording a grand piano is such a 

pleasure, and a task. 

It’s a daunting task. On five different occasions I 

recorded Vladimir Horowitz’s nine-foot concert 

Steinway. That was part of the inspiration right 

there, trying to figure out how to record a concert 

grand piano. I recorded Tom Grant doing jazz, and I 

recorded some of the piano professors in Seattle 

doing classical. 

What was the impetus to build, or 

design, your own mics? 

There was a Wall Street Journal article. At the time I’d 

been collecting mics for 30 years. In a single day, my 

[Neumann] U 47 went up $4,000 and the Wall Street 

Journal suddenly called them collectable investments. 

I had a guy who was going to sell me a [Telefunken] 

Ela M 251 for $11,000 and the article said they were 

worth $18,000. I called him and said I’d give him 

$11,000 for his, but he said, “No. The price went up.” 

I got mad. I said that it shouldn’t have to cost $5,000 

or $10,000 dollars to have a good sounding mic. I 

went to the NAMM show and met some guys in Hall E 

that were trying to sell microphones from China. I 

took a mic home, and it sounded awful. I literally got 

on a plane and flew for 26 hours to meet these guys 

in Shanghai. I said, “Listen, this sounds bad. This is 

what I want it to sound like.” I showed them a 

response curve of a [Neumann] U 67. They sent me a 

prototype, and I said, “No.” Three prototypes later, 

they were starting to get close. I said, “Okay, build 

100 of those.” Rob Schrock [Electronic Musician] 

reviewed our initial A-51, and he said, “I was 

reminded of a U 67.” We were off to the races. Of 

course, a year later the big marketing giants jumped 

in and copied our first mic. 

What was the price point on that mic? 

I think it was $400. 

So it was really affordable. 

At the time, when I was only buying 100 mics, that was 

what it had to be. Now it’s under $200. All of our 

designs are proprietary. There’s nothing off the shelf. 

We’ve moved from $200 or $300 mics into $1,000, 

$2,000, or even $3,000 mics. 

You had started out with very affordable mics and 

then branched into the higher-end. It seems like a 

different trajectory. 

If you’re a high-end boutique company that started out 

with a $10,000 mic and then you want to migrate 

down into the $1,500 or $2,000 mics, you have the 

credibility of your name. But if you’re a little humble 

company, like ADK, starting out with a $300 or $400 

mic and you suddenly start to build high-end mics, 

credibility is difficult to achieve. Everybody used to 

say that it was a great mic for the money. Now, Chuck 

Ainlay [Tape Op #97], Bernie Becker, the late Mike 

Shipley, all said, “Hey, it’s flat-out good. Period.” 

Marketing defies me. People don’t know where to 

pigeonhole us. They go, “Who is ADK?” Our $200 mic 

sounds good! I don’t build anything I wouldn’t 

personally use. I have had people say that they 

bought the Thor mic for $400, and if I have anything 

better than that, they don’t want to know about it. 

Okay, fine! Am I the best bang for the buck under 

$500? Am I the surprise in the boutique market? I’ll 

let the public and the A-list engineers tell you. 

You don’t have a background as an 

electrical engineer? 

Right. I hire that. 

Where do you find people? 

I have a mic wizard in Belgium, JP Gerard, who’s my 

lead design engineer. He hired an aerospace engineer 

PhD from Australia to develop the capsule technology. 

I was the middleman, with years of emails going back 

and forth. The Australian PhD would say that the spec 

was perfect, but JP said that it didn’t sound right, so 

he had him do it over. He’s just this little ball of 

energy and will not suffer fools gladly. It’s got to be 

spot-on. It took us five years to develop the capsule 

technology, and then we actually spent another two 

and a half years testing which transformer matched 

up with which of the five capsules. 

Donny Wright here at SuperDigital 

showed me the case that has all of the 

different 3 Zigma heads and bodies 

that you can swap out. He said that 

sometimes people will take that 

overnight and try to find the combo 

that they want for a certain 

instrument. 




16/Tape Op#103/Mr. Villella/(Fin.) 

Right. The 3 Zigma line has been on the road with Wynton Marsalis for three and a half years 

now. They’ve been battle-tested on tour. Our C-LOL-67 lollipop won his quest for the best 

saxophone mic. There are about five factories in China putting out about 90 percent of the 

microphones in the world today. They may have different brands, but it’s pretty much off 

the shelf. ADK doesn’t do business with any of those factories. If you open our microphones 

up, you see those giant Wima capacitors. If you look at our high-end mics, we designed the 

capsules for them. We put the DNA of the five greatest historical mics into that capsule 

design. You don’t need a bunch of extra EQ circuitry to get a tone. 

Some mics definitely pull out details in the high-end range that 

add clarity, without being shrill. 

Right. The real key that we’ve found in our five year saga of developing a capsule is that, with most 

everything coming from China, if you put it on a high resolution response curve you see these 

little peaky, jagged, sawtooth looking things. It’s not a smooth curve. That’s hell when you’re trying 

to EQ, because you want to boost somewhere around 10 kHz, and this one little peak just 

skyrockets. There’s that grainy, tizzy, harsh, edgy thing. That’s why we spend all that time 

developing our own capsules, to get broadband bell curves, without the jagged edges. That’s why, 

if you want a brilliant mic, our C 12 and 251 flavors are brilliant, without harshness. I think that’s 

the key. That’s really the heart and soul of what I try to do, to have the microphones be musical. 

So how does the company work, at this point? 

We have three factories. There’s the factory that we had built for our high-end 3 Zigma in Asia. 

We have a factory that builds our entry-level mics; it’s ISO 9000 and so clean you could eat 

off the floor. We also have a small factory near Seattle where we build our high-end products. 

The mic you have [Z-67] was handcrafted in the USA. Eighty-five percent of the components, 

and 90 percent of the labor, is American or European. 

People might not know this. 

It’s handcrafted in the USA, and by dollars, 85 percent of the components in there (like the 

Lundahl transformer from Sweden) are European, American, or British. 

With three different manufacturing locations, is there a 

warehouse somewhere? How do you deal with quality control 

and shipping? 

I have a warehouse in Tacoma, WA. I ship almost everything from there. 

What makes ADK unique? 

If I have achieved anything, it’s because I’ve been open to criticism. As I said, with Chuck 

Ainlay, I gave him mics for 15 years and got criticism and feedback. If I’ve got any strength, 

it’s that I’m just a little guy at the hub of a big wheel with spokes going in many directions. 

I’m trying to do what I was trained to do in 1971 as a recording engineer – listen. r 

 



Tanya Donelly 

by Kraig Mason 

In 1985, when I was 15 years old, my best friend’s older brother gave 

me a cassette tape that said “Throwing Muses Demo” on the label. The 

first time I played it I was completely blown away - it was like nothing 

that I had ever heard before. But somehow the fact that the people 

that made the music on the tape lived two towns away made it seem 

tangible. I was already a home 4-tracker and budding songwriter, 

but the existence of this tape made it seem that I could make 

“real” music someday as well. Some 28 years later, through 

many serendipitous connections, I have had the pleasure of 

working with Throwing Muses co-founder Tanya Donelly as a 

producer, engineer, and collaborator. Beyond Throwing 

Muses, Tanya has been involved in the seminal bands The 

Breeders and Belly and has an illustrious solo career. 

Can you give me an overview of the Swan 

Song Series? 

Swan Song Series is a collection of EPs released digitally 

through my site and Bandcamp. They are 

collaborations, primarily with friends from over the 

years, but also with people that I reached out to, such 

as authors and other musicians that I admired but 

didn’t know. I reached out to them to either write with 

me, or play on the music that I was making. There were 

also producers that I wanted to work with, such as 

yourself. Basically, the inspiration for this came from 

the Cabinet of Wonders that my friend John Wesley 

Harding puts together. At the end of those nights, 

people were reaching out to each other, saying, “ Let’s 

write something together.” I followed up on those 

conversations almost immediately. The songs I wrote 

with Wes, Mary Gaitskill, and Rick Moody came from 

those events. From that point I just kept the ball 

rolling. That’s where that was all born from. 

Were you surprised how the results 

came out? 

I was, and I wasn’t, surprised. I went into it wanting to 

push my own boundaries and do something that felt 

more like a village of people making music together. 

That came exactly as I expected. I think that what 

surprised me was just the fact that when I went into 

it, I told everyone not to send me a song that they 

thought would sound like me. That was one of my 

prerequisites. I’m coming to these people because I 

like what they do, so I told them to send me what 

they do, not to try to tailor it to what they thought 

18/Tape Op#103/Ms. Donelly/(continued on page 20) 

might fit me. Everybody pretty much rose to that, 

which was a happy surprise for me. I think it made 

the whole thing much more joyful and fun. For 

instance, if someone sent me words, I wrote music 

that I wouldn’t have written in my own lyrical style. 

If someone sent me music, then the words that came 

out of me would not have come out otherwise. The 

whole process was really wonderful and engaging for 

me, in a way that I hadn’t really felt in a while. Oddly, 

even though it was a massive project with dozens 

and dozens of people involved, it ended up feeling 

like a real community project in a way. It feels like a 

giant band to me. That’s been really wonderful. 

Do you think that the process itself 

created results that wouldn’t have 

happened, had you gone in a more 

traditional direction? 

Yes. Part of that is the fact that I wasn’t just writing with 

other people. It was also the process of recording 

with so many of them. Sometimes I’m in the room 

when things are being recorded, and sometimes I’m 

not. That was a very different experience. I think 

there was more trust. For instance, Jacob Valenzuela 

from Calexico plays trumpet on a song called “Making 

Light.” He came back with this beautiful, perfect 

part. That happened over and over again, and I feel 

like it was a very opening experience for me. I think 

it’s difficult sometimes, as a songwriter and musician, 

to just say, “Here’s my song. Do what you’re going to 

do with it and I’ll accept it!” There was not one case 

where I did that and was disappointed. I was just 

amazed by, and happy with, everything that came 

back. It ended up being a very successful experiment. 

In a lot of ways, you had to act like a 

general contractor for these sessions, 

keeping tabs on the songs in 

different stages of completion in 

different studios. 

I like that. That should be an official musical title. 

“General Contractor.” It did feel like that. 

You would send me an email and say, 

“Hey, are you available on this day? 

We’ll do this piece.” Sometimes it was 

even for pieces that we weren’t 

working on directly. 

I will say that the people that I worked with - you, [Paul 

Q.] Kolderie [Tape Op #22], and Scott Janovitz - were 

people that I already trusted implicitly from the 

production and engineering end of things. By putting 

it into the hands of engineers and producers who I 

could trust, and who I knew were going to get me 

something of great quality, I took less risk in that 

department. 

How many different studios were part of 

the project? 

Tons of them. A lot of people worked with their home 

studios as well and sent tracks in from their homes; 

like Chris Ewen did everything at home. It was really 

kind of all over the place. Probably eight or nine 

studios, at the end of the day. [See sidebar] 

What was your methodology for keeping 

all of it organized and on time? 



I didn’t have any methodology at all. Any time constraints 

were of my own making, so it was very flexible. There 

were several times that I delayed a release because I 

was waiting for something to be mixed or mastered. 

The methodology was all over the place. It really went 

song by song. It depended on who was responsible for 

what, who was contributing what, and if we were 

waiting on a musician to finish a part and send the 

track. Every step of the way was just a very daily, 

organic process. 

No project management software? No 

spreadsheets? 

None. Nothing like that. Everything came together at Q 

Division [Studios], where I mastered half the stuff, and 

with Eric Masunaga [Modulus Studios] who mastered half. 

I think the tightest one was something like, 

“I need this by Saturday.” You were here 

on a Thursday, so I still had to mix what 

we did with Gail Greenwood [of Belly]. 

Oh, yeah. The one with Gail was the tightest one. It was 

hard to get Gail and I into the room at the same time 

for a while. Scheduling wise, not emotionally! 

Something you mentioned once stuck 

with me. With all the time that you 

spent at Fort Apache, it was more than 

just a studio. It was like a creative 

homebase, and a community. Was this 

a way for you to recreate that? 

I hadn’t thought about that; but yes, I think that’s it 

exactly. My ideal music making is like the zocalo at the 

end of the night, when the whole village comes together 

and everybody plays at whatever level of talent and 

enthusiasm that they are able. I love that feeling. It’s 

even greater than being on a team. That’s how the Fort 

felt to me. There were so many people invested in it, in 

and out of those doors, and I do miss that. That was part 

of this too, to pull all those threads together. 

As an artist, do you feel that the studio 

experience lends itself to your creative 

process? 

Absolutely. I think that when the Muses were very young 

and we were just getting started working with Gary 

Smith, in particular, and later [Paul Q.] Kolderie and 

[Sean] Slade [Tape Op #22], it was the training ground 

for us. Fort Apache was where all the pre-production 

happened. That’s where the inspiration came, from 

being in the same room, with the same people, day in 

and day out, for weeks at a time. It absolutely adds 

something. The model of working with another pair of 

ears is really important to me. Almost every producer or 

engineer we ever worked with was as much a part of 

making those albums as we were. We were very open to 

suggestions. We started understanding how important 

the placement of a mic was, or how you can play with 

equipment outside of your own personal gear. That was 

illuminating. I absolutely am old school, in terms of 

how I feel about studios; as well as the people that 

work in them and bring their extra level and layer of 

inspiration to a project. I think that comes directly from 

Gary Smith, I have to say. He’s just very egalitarian 

about how he produces, in terms of listening to 

everyone in the room. I think that set a template for us 

and what we expected from that relationship. 

20/Tape Op#103/Ms. Donelly/(continued on page 22) 

What you did for Swan Song Series is a lot 

different than what you did in the 

past, especially with the bands you 

were in. Making a Throwing Muses or a 

Belly recording, you’re in one place 

for a specific amount of time and had 

to complete a record. 

Right. It’s totally different. This project is not an album. I 

never meant for it to be as cohesive and thematic, or for it 

to have the same feeling. In fact, I wanted it to be as 

scattershot as possible. I feel like with albums, that little 

microcosm of both space and time is really important for 

making something that sounds and feels like an album. 

Clearly this is an arguable point of view, but I personally 

feel like the albums that I love as a listener - and the 

albums I love that I’ve made - have been this finite thing 

where we’re going from one place to another place, we’re 

going with these people, and it’s going to be in this room. 

You hear that. It’s a whole, enclosed piece when you make 

it that way. You have a cohesive thing, as opposed to a 

bunch of songs put in one place to listen to. It’s bigger 

than that. I think the downside is that you can have 

weaker songs that are supported by the stronger one. Now 

I feel like the songs really have to be stronger. If you’re 

doing everything piece-by-piece, or putting out one song 

at a time, they have to be stronger. I’ve been guilty of filler. 

It’s like, “Oh, we only have 12 songs. We should have 14.” 

“What’s that other song you’ve got?” 

“What’s that awful thing that we hated? Let’s do that.” 

You’ve worked with some “big name 

producers.” Paul Q. Kolderie, Glyn Johns, 

Gil Norton, Gary Smith, and Dennis 

Herring [Tape Op #48]. Does working with 

somebody that is also a star in the 

recording world make a difference? 

Yes. I think those were all like blind date situations. We 

were absolutely set up. I think that it worked out, 

particularly with Glyn, who I absolutely love as a 

person and a producer. That was a very good match for 

us in every way; personality-wise and work-wise. He 

brought Jack Joseph [Puig] with him too, which was 

great. They were an amazing team, because they 

totally complemented each other stylistically. It was 

just a great experience. 

That record, Belly’s King, was banged 

out live? 

When we were auditioning and meeting with producers, 

Glyn was the only one who said that he thought we 

should make a live record. We thought that was 

exciting. He said that he’d seen us live and that we 

were a great live band. Of course there are layers to 

that one somewhat, but for the most part King is 

completely and entirely live. That really appealed to us. 

And we were smitten with him, I’ll admit. 

Just from your meetings? 

From his history, the meetings, and the potential storytelling 

hours. I know some people find him prickly, but the way 

it translates to me is that he’s honest. He doesn’t pull 

punches, but he’s certainly not an unkind man. He never 

rubbed me the wrong way at all, not for a second. 

That goes back to what you were saying 

about having another set of ears that 

will be honest with you. 

Yes. His pre-production was brutal and necessary. It was 

eye-opening. It was interesting to work with someone 

who was coming from the perspective of wanting you 

to have everything ready to go when you come into the 

studio. We spent as much pre-production time with him 

as we did recording time. It was really fun, for one 

thing. It felt like we were building something. He came 

at it looking at whether or not we needed a part, or 

whether something was essential. As writers, it’s like, 

“Yes, of course it’s essential! That’s the part where I do 

this, and that’s so important!” In terms of 

craftsmanship, he’s the master. I mean it in the best 

possible way. He’s a songwriter’s producer. 

What about other producers? 

Gil Norton was awesome. He’s wonderful and was a friend 

of ours for years on the back of that. I feel that we 

[Throwing Muses] went into it quite armored. We were 

anxious about what the big, fancy producer was going 

to do to us. We were teenagers, so we were nervous. 

It’s funny. We just felt like he was trying to 

overproduce, putting bells and whistles on. But when I 

listen to that record now [Throwing Muses’ self-titled 

debut], I think it sounds so much like us. It’s so raw 

compared to other stuff. Part of that was us fighting 

things that he wanted to do, but a lot of it is because 

he was dealing with four very right-out-of-the-cradle 

musicians. We were extremely defensive of what we 

were doing, as we should have been; but I think that 

we overreacted sometimes to certain things. Like 

reverb. We were rubbing up against reverb. Now I’m 

like, “Juice it up!” At the time, we were also anxious 

about everything. But he’s a wonderful producer, 

clearly. I don’t think that has to be said. 

One of the techniques that you learned, 

and have used, is the “rule of four...” 

The rule of four! A backup for backups. That was the Kolderie 

and Slade trick, where you sing it four times, don’t worry 

about what’s coming out, and then listen to all four 

together. Most of the time when you blend them it works 

out. The edges smooth themselves out, miraculously. 

It really does work. 

I’ve done it ever since. Another trick that Jack Joseph and 

Glyn taught me was that you sing in the control room 

with the speakers just perfectly aligned, so that it’s out 

of phase where you can’t hear the track in the mic. That 

way I don’t have to sing with headphones. I prefer not 

to sing with headphones. It depends on the song, but 

for the most part I like to hear myself in the room. 

That’s a trick I learned from them that I’ve since 

applied, but it’s not always the best. 

You’ve got to show me how to do that. 

Oh god, I don’t know how to do it myself. Talk to Scott 

Janovitz. He figured it out for me. You get a tiny bit of 

bleed, but I’m willing to sacrifice a little bit of that for 

a good vocal, of course. 

You like it because you feel like you’re 

more in the music itself? 

Yes, and because I’m not alone, standing in a room behind 

glass. Which is fine too. When I’m singing anything 

super personal... everything I do is somewhat 

personal... but if I’m singing something that ‘s 

potentially upsetting to me, I prefer to be behind glass, 

in another room with the headphones on. But 



22/Tape Op#103/Ms. Donelly/(Fin.) 

particularly for songs that I have to sing out and really 

push, I want to be in the room, with the people, and 

have the music in the room with me. 

You’d say that we were going to do vocals, 

line by line. You’d have specific ideas 

about how you wanted to do sessions 

going in. As an engineer, that makes 

it so easy. 

That’s nice to hear. 

And then I’d make the face if I thought 

that what you were doing was out of 

tune. 

Yep, every producer’s got a face they make, or a physical 

quirk that accompanies that. 

You were saying, “I need to be able to see 

you so that I know when you don’t like 

what I’m doing.” 

Exactly! 

For the distribution of Swan Song Series 

you’re using social media, the 

website, and Bandcamp. How is that 

working? 

I love it. I’ve had many calls for vinyl, but really just a 

handful for CDs. I’d be happy to do that, at some 

point. I like it because it’s the first time I’ve ever had 

product control myself. I don’t mean that in any kind 

of micromanaging way. It’s just like having a 

boutique. It makes the floating of everything easier 

for me. I can budget myself. I know what I’m able to 

do and what I’m not. There’s a direct connection to 

the people. I love the fact that someone will be like, 

“Here’s $5 for the new EP,” and then they can write 

me a note! It’s just so folksy and sweet. There’s 

something really nice about reading those. I like that 

personal transaction. It feels more gratifying to me 

right now, at this stage of my life. 

Swan Song Series’ 

Studios Used 

Appleman Studio, Stoneham, MA 

Plan of a Boy, Providence, RI 

Seaside Lounge, Brooklyn, NY 

Urban Geek Studio, Brooklyn, NY 

Praxis Studio, Athens, Greece 

Camp Street Studios, Cambridge, MA 

Moontower Studio, Somerville, MA 

Q Division Studios, Somerville, MA 

Mad Oak Studios, Allston, MA 

Modulus Studios, Boston, MA 

One Ring Zero Studio, Brooklyn, NY 

We need vinyl! 

Yeah, vinyl would be cool. And wouldn’t Sue McNally’s 

paintings look amazing? That’s 60 percent of why I 

want to do vinyl - to get Sue McNally’s paintings in a 

tangible form. She’s one of my favorite artists. I think 

it would look beautiful. 

In my formative years I’d listen to the 

music and I’d look at the cover. 

Artwork was so important. That’s another way of pulling 

people in from your community that you admire. 

Something that broadens the music. Talking about the 

artwork was one of my favorite parts of putting an 

album together. I have felt like that with the Swan 

Song Series. While I’ve felt that satisfaction in having 

her piece accompany each [digital] EP, I would also 

like to hold it in my hands. 

You’re playing live with Throwing Muses 

again. How is that? 

It’s been amazing. It’s just been so much fun. It’s this 

utopian situation for me, because I get to play my new 

stuff, some Belly songs, and then some solo songs. I 

get to do this set before the Muses’ set, which is half 

catalog and half new stuff, and then I get to play a set 

with the Muses! I feel like every night is this 

retrospective thing for me. It’s been gratifying. For so 

long I avoided playing older songs, or songs that were 

too connected to some time in my life that I was still 

struggling with. Certain songs represented something 

inaccurate, or some inaccurate representation to me. 

It’d be too cheesy to do one song, too soon to do 

another, or too late to do another. Now I have none of 

that baggage left at all, so I’ll play whatever song I 

feel like playing. That’s been really wonderful. Playing 

with Kristin [Hersh], Dave [Narcizo], and Bernie 

[Georges] has been wonderful. I love the people in my 

solo band too, so top to bottom it’s been a good 

experience. I think that’s what’s nice about it for us is 

that it’s a very good balance of everybody 

acknowledging that there’s a little bit of nostalgia 

involved; but primarily the Muses are playing new 

songs, and so am I. We’re feeling like when we do play 

the old stuff, it fits in a very nice way and brings the 

room together. I think that we have a balance, 

material-wise, that makes everyone happy. 

You can hear the song itself, but you 

can approach it the way that you want 

to now. 

Yeah. Right. For that reason, I feel like the old stuff fits 

in. These old ones are just part of a lifetime’s body of 

work. So are the new ones. It just feels good. And 

personally, it couldn’t be more fun hanging out with 

those guys again. 

You’re entering 30 years in the music 

business. 

I know. What the hell? 

What advice to you have for anyone 

making music right now? 

My advice has always been the same, which is to trust 

your instincts and surround yourself with people that 

you love and trust. I think you should make sure that 

you’re paying attention to your personal muse, as well 

as being open to influences that are going to enhance 

that; but not to the point where you lose the original 

voice. I feel like that advice is timeless. r 

 

Kraig is at 



Legendary record producer Bill 

Szymczyk helped dial in sounds for The 

Eagles, Joe Walsh, The James Gang, The Who, Elvin 

Bishop, and The J. Geils Band. Many have argued 

that AOR [Album-Orientated Rock] radio was 

launched on a handful of producers’ – including 

Szymczyk’s – watch. His many hits for The Eagles 

only add weight to that theory. 

Bill’s first big break into the 

business as a producer would come courtesy of his 

late 1960’s collaboration with blues legend B.B. 

King. “The Thrill is Gone’s” title may have 

advertised a somber mood, but working side by side 

with B.B., Szymczyk remembers the studio vibe as 

being just the opposite. “He had a big smile on his face 

the first time he heard the first rundown of the mix. This 

was following a call I’d made to him at 2 o’clock in the 

morning. I’d dialed him up and said, ‘I want to put strings 

on this.’ And he said, ‘What?’ Then he said, ‘Well, okay. 

I’ll try it.’ Because he believed in me. So I had Bert de 

Coteaux, who was my arranger at the time, write a nice 

string chart for it. The only thing I told Burt was, ‘I want 

it to be dark. I want it to be not joyful in any way; the thrill 

is gone. I want it to be a dark string chart.’ He brought it 

in and it was hypnotic. B.B. said, ‘I want to come to the 

session,’ and I said, ‘Of course, come.’ I was engineering 

the string overdubs, and glanced over at him. When he 

started smiling, I thought, ‘Okay, I’m good now.’ ” 

“When we started recording ‘The Thrill is Gone,’ the 

basic track for that was cut as the last tune on maybe a 7 to 

11 p.m. session. I think B.B. was playing [his guitar] Lucille 

through a Fender amp, and he recorded vocals while he was 

playing guitar. I only overdubbed him vocally on one cut, 

and that was years later on ‘Hummingbird.’ On B.B.’s 

vocal for ‘The Thrill is Gone,’ and others, I tended to use 

some echo and some reverb; but nothing like we would do 

nowadays, with delays and whatnot. Ahead of the session 

starting, we’d sat down in the studio with the players and 

worked out the arrangement. He said, ‘Okay, I like this.’ 

He was all for it, and we did the whole album with my 

musicians. ‘The Thrill is Gone’ became one of his biggest 

hits. I was just flipping out over that. Working with B.B., I 

was thrilled at being able to record a legend, and have 

success doing it!” 

Following success with B.B. King, 

it was the producer’s kindred collaboration with lead 

guitarist Joe Walsh and his group The James Gang that 

first launched Szymczyk onto ‘70s rock radio. Looking back 

by Jake Brown 

photo by Lisi Szymczyk 

decades later on the sheer serendipity of it all, he hones in 

on his central role in discovering, and helping to shape, 

the solo career of Joe Walsh; something he counts among 

his proudest moments as a producer. “Once I’d had success 

with B.B., the record company said, ‘Maybe you do know 

what you’re doing,’ I kept telling them, ‘I want to sign my 

own band, because I’m not just a blues guy. I want to make 

a rock ‘n’ roll record.’ They said, ‘Okay, go out and find 

somebody, and sign them.’ I had a friend of mine who used 

to be a roommate in New York, named Dick Korn, who 

had moved to Cleveland and was working as the 

manager/head bartender at this rock club called Otto’s 

Grotto. It was in the basement of the Statler Hotel. He said, 

‘Man, there’re a bunch of great acts coming through here. 

You’ve gotta come and check some of them out!’ So I 

started going to Cleveland, and in the course of three or 

four visits, a band called The Tree Stumps – which was an 

awful name – came through. The lead singer was Michael 

Stanley, and I really liked his tunes and his voice. I signed 

them and changed their name to Silk. The next group I 

signed was a three-piece, power trio called The James 

Gang. I made records with both of them. Silk barely 

cracked the charts, but The James Gang got played a lot and 

that was the beginning of their career.” 

Bill l l Szymczyk Looks l o okS 

Back 


In the early ‘70s, between the James 

Gang’s breakout hit “Funk #49,” and later Joe Walsh 

solo smashes like “Rocky Mountain Way,” Szymczyk 

and Walsh set up shop at the studios of Caribou 

Ranch in Colorado. “Joe moved out to Denver just 

shortly after I did. He actually moved up to Nederland, 

Colorado. We’d heard [producer] Jimmy Guercio – who 

I had met a couple times, but not gotten to know very well 

– was living just outside Nederland on a huge ranch and 

building a studio. Walsh and I went over there and were 

astounded at how it looked; it was under construction and 

not quite complete. They had a little MCI 400 console 

and a 16-track reel machine. There was about a two-year 

run where I was up there. It was like inmates running the 

asylum, because there was nobody around. If something 

broke, we had to fix it – me, my assistant, and whoever the 

band was.” Along with recording hits like Rick 

Derringer’s “Rock & Roll Hoochie Koo,” Szymczyk’s 

personal highlight was the recording of the Walsh’s 

“Rocky Mountain Way,” an audio adventure that had 

actually begun “when Joe was producing himself at 

Criteria [Studios, Miami], where he had done the drums. 

He’d done this shuffle track by himself that eventually 

turned into ‘Rocky Mountain Way.’ He brought it back 

L-R: Bill Szymczyk, B.B. King, Phil Ramone, 

backstage at The Village Gate, NY, 1968 

and basically we stripped everything off, except the drums, 

and started over again – all the bass, kick, piano, the 

guitars, and everything. By then he’d had the words, but 

when he first cut the track, he was thinking, ‘Let’s just do 

this blues-shuffle thing.’ Two to three months later, when 

we were working at Caribou, he had the song done, so we 

knew exactly how to go about finishing it. Joe liked to layer 

his guitar tracks; there’re like six or seven guitars of various 

kinds, and the talk box.” 

In 1974, Bill caught the ears of the fastrising 

group the Eagles. The band recruited 

Szymczyk in an effort to shed their softer, country-leaning 

side for a harder-edged sound. This was an ambition the 

group made obvious from their first introductory meeting, 

“Irving Azoff [the Eagles’ manager] set up a meeting 

between me and the band. We had dinner and they asked 

me questions about rock. I was hesitant about doing it – I 

didn’t want to do a ‘cowboy’ band; I wanted to do a rock ‘n’ 

roll band. When they said, ‘We wanna rock!’ I said, ‘Well 

good. If you wanna rock, I’m your man!’ One thing led to 

another, and we started working together.” 

From session one Szymczyk recalled that “with 

the Eagles, my M.O. was to try and keep everything light, 

happy, and moving forward, as well as eliminate as much 

hassle as possible from outside the control room, and 

inside the control room.” From the very first track the 

team cut together, “Already Gone,” it was obvious 

the chemistry was working, with Bill proudly 

pointing to the chart-topper as “the very first cut I did 

with them. That was a Jack Tempchin song they brought 

in. They said, ‘We’ve been playing around with this for a 

while.’ It was a case of, ‘Well, let’s just turn it up and go!’ 

Glenn Frey had the opportunity to play lead guitar, which 

[former producer] Glyn Johns would never let him do, 

because it was always Bernie [Leadon]. Bernie was the 

country player, and Johns gravitated towards that, as 

opposed to Glenn Frey. Frey was not as gifted a musician, 

at the time, as Bernie was; but he really had the desire to 

rock, so I took a lot of time with him on the guitar solos, 

as well as the sounds of the rhythm guitars, and we were off. 

I would maybe use one of three different mics on a guitar 

amp: a [Shure] SM57, an AKG C414, and a Sennheiser. 

I wasn’t double-mic’ing anything in those days, and I 

always tracked everybody in the same room, but I would 

gobo the amps off from one another. We were recording 

at Record Plant Studio A in L.A. – the original 3rd Street 

Record Plant. We were recording on a Quad Eight 16- 

channel console.” 

Mr. Szymczyk/(continued on page 26)/Tape Op#103/25 


Following the success of albums On 

the Border and One of These Nights (a Grammy 

winner for Album of the Year in 1975), Szymczyk 

and the group – who now included longtime 

collaborator Joe Walsh – would embark on their 

most ambitious studio adventure yet, as they 

headed in to record an album that went on to sell 

a staggering 32 million copies. The musical mythos 

of Hotel California would revolve around everything 

one could expect from the making of an epic album, 

beginning with the now legendarily lengthy writing 

sessions. “We’d work for three weeks, then take a month 

off. During that month off is when Don [Henley] and 

Glenn would write lyrics. They had innate talent as 

songwriters, and fed off each other brilliantly, much like 

Lennon and McCartney. They’d go to each other’s 

houses, and then come back to the studio for the next 

session with, ‘Well, here it is.’ Glenn and Don, by that 

point, both knew who was going to sing lead on what song, 

and they would always have decided that prior to cutting 

the lead vocal.” 

The iconic title track, “Hotel 

California,” began after Szymczyk first heard the riff 

off, “a cassette of a bunch of Don Felder riffs and ideas. 

Don Henley picked up on that. He didn’t have any idea 

what the song was going to be about, but said, ‘Let’s work 

on this riff for a while.’ During the acoustic introduction 

of the song, where Don Felder opens with his signature 

riff, he was playing a 12-string, which I recorded with three 

mics. My go-to mic for recording acoustic guitar was a 

Neumann KM 84 – I’ve used the same one since before 

‘Hotel California,’ and I still use it to this day. But Don 

had a pickup in his guitar, off to a pair of small Orange 

amps, and I mic’d them in stereo. The initial opening 

guitar intro is acoustic guitar in the middle, and an amp 

on both sides, with a chorus that is flowing back and forth 

between the two amps.” 

Eventually the producer discovered that to reach 

sonic perfection, the song would be recorded by the 

band three full times before everyone felt they had 

finally gotten the perfect take. He confirms, “We 

indeed recorded that track three times! The first time we 

did it was too fast, but you’re doing a track, and you have 

no idea what the words are, or where they’re going to be. 

When Don would start to get an idea about what to write 

about, he said, ‘Well, this is going to be too fast. We’ve got 

to cut it again.’ So we cut it again. Then he progressed 

further with the song’s writing, and next decided it was in 

Bill Szymczyk, B.B. King at The Record Plant, L.A., 1970 

26/Tape Op#103/Mr. Szymczyk/(continued on page 28) 

the wrong key. The third time’s the charm, and that’s the 

version that everybody knows. By then, he pretty much had 

90% of the lyrics done.” 

By the time he was ready to team Felder and 

Walsh up as a stereo pair on the song’s outro solo, 

the producer remembered feeling Joe’s greatest 

assets as a player shone brilliantly alongside 

Felder’s own, one that went down over, “a two-day 

period working at Criteria Studios. We ran lines out to the 

amplifiers in the studio, but they were both performing in 

the control room. I was in the middle, Joe Walsh was on 

one side, Don Felder was on the other side, and we just 

attacked this ending blend of solos. It took us two days, but 

it is still one of the highlights of my career. There was a lot 

of stop/start and, ‘Let’s try this,’ and, ‘That didn’t work,’ 

‘Well, if we did this with that, maybe that would work.’ 

Piece by piece by piece until before it was done. They were 

equal gunfighters, Joe and Don.” 

Bill joked throughout the process that, “the 

console was my weapon.” By the time the team had 

declared victory and neared the album’s finish line, 

a final flash of inspiration arrived when Walsh and 

Henley took the wheel, co-writing “Life in the Fast 

Lane.” One of rock radio’s most rotated classics, the 



producer instantly recognized the potential of 

Walsh’s riff. “That was Joe’s tune. He brought that lick 

in, and Henley wrote the words. By that point in my 

working relationship with Joe, when I heard a riff of his, I 

could tell when it was a hit riff, and we all jumped on that 

one. Most of the lead solo overdubs were done in the 

control room, but the original basic track would have been 

done with everybody in the studio. Once we started 

overdubbing guitars, they would come in one at a time. 

But for ‘Life in the Fast Lane,’ that’s all Joe; even though 

Felder played some rhythm parts and doubled the lead lick 

an octave higher, it was all support to what Joe was doing 

on guitar.” 

As he wrapped production on what would go on 

to become one of the best-selling rock albums of all 

time, Szymczyk had already set his sights on 

recording Joe Walsh’s third solo studio album, But 

Seriously, Folks... “Life’s Been Good” features 

another one of Walsh’s infectious hooks, and the 

song was a summary of all the glorious excess of 

stardom the Eagles had reached by that point. “To 

get the album underway, we rented a 72-foot yacht out of 

Miami and went down to the [Florida] Keys with a 4-track 

machine and all their instruments. We spent a week down 

in the Keys hashing these tunes out. Pretty much 

everything on the album was rehearsed on that boat. ‘Life’s 

Been Good’ was one of them.” 

Bill favored the Neumann U 87 as his, “basic goto 

vocal mic, at that point. To me, it was a very high-quality 

microphone. Mostly I did not have access to the old U 47s 

and the classic Neumanns. I never had any of those, but an 

87 was basically a U 67, just with transistors instead of 

tubes. It worked great with Joe. There are a bunch of 

effects on his vocals for ‘Life’s Been Good.’ On the verses, 

there’s a digital delay that’s left and right that is maybe 40 

milliseconds on one side, 80 milliseconds on the other. 

Then I take that off on the choruses and put a [Cooper] 

Time Cube on him.” 

In what could have become one of rock’s greatest 

travesties, the producer revealed that the song almost 

didn’t make it on the album. “We got back to my studio, 

which by this point was set up at Bayshore [Recording 

Studios] in Miami. All the way through making the record, 

he was getting more and more hesitant about putting this 

song out, because he thought the public would take it the 

wrong way lyrically. I was the one who was just on him 

constantly, saying, ‘No.’ At one point he wasn’t even going 

to finish it. I told him, ‘You must finish this. This is a killer 

record!’ Finally he agreed, and the rest is history. I did 

change a couple of melody lines in it, so it made it easier for 

him to sing and gave it more of a lighthearted feeling. 

Initially it was (singing in low, slow tone) ‘Life’s been good 

to me so far.’ It was a real kind of down and dour, and I 

said, ‘You’ve gotta be exuberant there. LIFE’S BEEN 

GOOD TO ME SO FAR!’” 

It was the end of the 1970s, 

and Szymczyk‘s run of successful collaborations 

with the Eagles proved true the adage that all good 

things must come to an end. The Long Run would 

become the band’s last studio album for almost 25 

years. “All the way through the making of Hotel California 

everybody was getting along pretty good. But coming off 

the heels of the success of Hotel California, among the band 

there were a lot of expectations. Everybody was like, ‘How 

are we going to top that?’ According to the critics we 

didn’t, but in my mind it was a very, very good album – it 

just took forever to get done. The pressure was seriously 

high, and everybody was getting a little antsy with each 

other. That’s when the dissension in the ranks started. 

Instead of the old all-for-one/one-for-all, it was, ‘What 

about me?’ and a lot of that attitude. They were still a 

team, but instead of everybody riding in the same car, 

eating together, and staying in the same house, it was two 

or three different houses, everybody had their own car, 

and it was more standoffish, if you will. But when they got 

into the studio, 90 percent of the time we all got along 

good and did our work. We would always track together. 

We might replace one thing if it didn’t fit later on, but we 

would do five-piece, live off the floor all the time.” 

One pleasure the producer took great satisfaction in 

with the making of The Long Run came with the fact that 

he was working on his own turf this time around, allowing 

him to maintain a sonic order of sorts. “We recorded that 

record mostly at my studio. There were some things done 

at Record Plant in L.A, but we did most of it in Miami, 

which was the first one we’d recorded at my studio. Hotel 

California was done at Criteria and Record Plant. Right as 

we were finishing I was building my studio, Bayshore 

Recording. It had a relatively dead room, about the same 

size as Record Plant Studio A. It was not a huge room, but 

it worked really, really well for how I wanted the studio to 

sound; regardless of who I was recording. Studios are 

people’s personal taste and, at that time, in 1976, we 

weren’t doing a lot of live-room stuff; things were still 

pretty much dead. It wasn’t until about ten years later that 

the big live-room drum sound came into being and 

everybody was changing to that. The studio had all the 

equipment I wanted as far as outboard gear, which 

included a bunch of [Urie] LA-3a and 1176 [limiting 

amplifiers], a couple Eventide digital delays and 

Harmonizers (which were really, really new at the time), 

my old trusty Cooper Time Cube, as well as a MCI 

JH-500 Series console. I had a little help in designing 

that one, because MCI was right up the street, in 

Fort Lauderdale.” 

But there was a looming question: 

“How do you top Hotel California? That’s the thing I 

remember most about The Long Run. Initially it was going 

to be a double album. They figured, ‘What if we give 

them a double album, and really stretch out?’ We would 

cut track, after track, after track. The songwriting modus 

operandi was that the music would come first; the lyrics 

would come later, to be written to the track. We had 

roughly under 20 tracks, but they were in certain stages 

of completion. We were into this album about a year 

when they realized, ‘Well, hell, we’re never going to get a 

double album.’ So they just concentrated on the ones 

that were the most fully lyrically done, and that’s what 

turned out to be the final track listing. There are about 

eight or nine tracks that are floating around, left over.” 

The album satisfied fans, as well as the band’s appetite 

for one last go-around, selling seven million copies and 

producing three Top 10 singles with “Heartache 

Tonight,” “The Long Run,” and “I Can’t Tell You Why.” It’s 

a perfect swan song for Bill and the band. 

As the 1980’s dawned, Pete 

Townshend came knocking on Bill 

Szymczyk’s door, offering him what would have 

sounded like any producer’s dream gig: producing 

The Who’s Face Dances LP. In truth, the band was 

having a hard time escaping the dark shadow cast 

over them by the recent death of their longtime 

drummer, placing their new producer in the 

unenviable position of making, “their first album after 

Keith Moon had passed away. Kenney Jones was the 

drummer, so he and I were the ‘new kids.’ There were the 

usual band rifts going on. For instance, they didn’t want to 

be around when Roger [Daltrey] was doing vocals, and 

Roger never showed up when we were cutting tracks. I’d 

have to do each one of them individually, almost. That was 

the hardest record I ever had to produce. I worked my ass 

off on that.” 

“Pete was the reason I did that album. He’s the one that 

wanted to hire me.” Szymczyk was able to throw the 

notion of a “concept album” out the window. “Pete 

brought songs in, and because he did not have a cohesive 

Quadrophenia or Tommy vibe to it, it was strictly, ‘Here’re a 

bunch of songs.’ There was no storyline to follow, per se; 

but, unlike the Eagles, he had the songs finished. For 

instance, that bubbly loop in ‘You Better You Bet’ – he 

brought that in and we basically overdubbed everything to 

that. We also had John “Rabbit” Bundrick, the piano 

player, who Pete just loved (and I could see why), playing 

on every one of the tracks while we were cutting. He was 

filling in a lot of the melodic stuff.” 

The producer remembers Townsend having, “five 

or six different amps to go to. We’d put up some mics, and 

away we’d go. As a player, he was the epitome of a slashand-burn 

guy. He would attack it, and it was fun to watch. 

Pete was impressive as a guitar player, songwriter, 

visionary, and just all-around really good guy. I still am in 

communication with him to this day.” While he enjoyed 

his collaboration with Pete, when reflecting on his 

opinion of the album following its release, the 

producer confesses, “I’ll be honest with you. To this day 

I’m not real happy with the mix of the whole album. It was 

tough, because of a lot of the dissention. Plus there was 

some serious drinking going on – not by me, but by the 

band members – so it was a rough record to make.” 

Bill took some time off in the mid 

and later ‘80s to recuperate from the grind of his 

production schedule throughout the previous 

decade. “I didn’t have the desire to be in the studio 24/7 

like I used to.” But he readied himself after receiving 

the call many rock fans thought would never come 

again. Signed on to co-produce the Eagles’ reunion 

album, the aptly titled Long Road Out of Eden, the 

producer set his sights on the strategy of, “wanting 

to take everybody back to the mindset where it was all-forone/one-for-all. 

We initially started out that way. Notice 

how I said ‘initially.’ After six to eight months, it became 

the old ‘me/mine’ kind of thing. ‘Who’s the leader of the 

band?’ ‘Who’s making choices?’ To me, that’s purely ego. 

To get around that to keep work going, I relied on humor 

and just keeping it light. That’s the best recommendation 

I can say, because I was never a dictator in the studio. I just 


28/Tape Op#103/Mr. Szymczyk/(continued on page 30) 

try to keep the whole situation as light as possible. I also try 

to try out everybody’s ideas.”


As the band returned to their old habit of writing while they recorded, the 

band managed to amass what Szymczyk revealed was two albums worth of material. “When 

the record was done I thought it should have been a single album. I thought there was too much 

there. There are probably ten tracks that were cut but never finished, and some of them are 

just astounding rockers. Nobody was really getting exhausted, because we were all older, 

married, and had kids. We were working from 10 to 6 instead of from 2 in the afternoon ‘til 

3 in the morning. Everybody had to go home. One had to take his kid to basketball practice, 

and another had to take their kid to piano practice. It was more family-oriented and daytime 

hours vs. all night. That also meant if two people in the band did have an argument, they could 

leave it, come back the next morning fresh, and hopefully not antagonistic.” 

Bill was also dealing with several new dynamics within the group’s musical 

makeup, first and foremost being the absence of co-lead guitarist Don Felder, whose 

final album with the band had been The Long Run. New member additions also 

translated to there being, “a couple of other differences in the recording process. Don 

Henley was not playing anywhere near as much drums. Scott Crago was playing more than half 

the drums on the live shows. They’d also fired Don Felder. This was when I first met Steuart 

Smith, who is a brilliant musician and could play anything with strings on it. A lot of things 

were different, and most of it was musically for the better, as far as playing goes. I focused on 

Joe Walsh and Steuart both. Joe and Steuart were fine because Steuart wasn’t an Eagle, and his 

ego was totally in check. He brought a lot to the table, and is also credited as a co-producer on 

that album. Me, Richard F.W. Davis (who was the keyboard player and Pro Tools operator), 

Steuart Smith, and Scott Crago, were all co-producers. It says: ‘Produced by the Eagles; coproduced 

by us four or five guys.’ I liked having that kind of democracy, and was happy to be 

back with them again.” 

These days, still making records in his early 70s, Szymczyk 

keeps at it. “What gets me up and going in the studio each morning after so many years 

of doing it? Coffee! I don’t have to be in the studio like I used to, but it’s the creative process 

itself that I still love. [I love] doing what a producer does: here’s your script, the song; here’re 

your actors, the players. You’ve got to guide the whole thing through to the end where it’s a 

great-sounding record. It’s a drug, number one; it still jazzes me when something I have a 

vision for works and turns out good.” After producing Dishwalla’s self-titled fourth 

studio LP in 2005, and ex-Verve Pipe frontman Brian Vander Ark’s self-titled third 

studio LP in 2008, Bill worked with his son in the studio, an experience Michael 

Szymczyk posted about on his Facebook page, sharing that, “In July 2010 my Dad and 

I worked on this EP, and it was an absolute blast to create. I did all the instrumentation, 

(drums, guitars, bass, piano, keys and electronics) and sang lead or background vocals on all 

the tracks, while Dad did what he does best.” 

Szymczyk is clearly grateful for his legacy. “I’m just very, very 

happy that I grew up in the business when I did. I’m blessed, and I thank God every night for 

the wonderful life he’s given me.” Closing with a final reflection on his catalog, in the 

context of favorites, the producer begins, not surprisingly, with, “Joe Walsh, who was 

definitely one of my most kindred collaborations. I found him, signed him to his first 

contract, and we still work together. Most of what I consider my favorite records were not hit 

records. I thought Jay Ferguson’s first solo record, All Alone in the End Zone, was one of the best 

records I ever made. There’s a Mickey Thomas record, Alive Alone, after he left the Elvin Bishop 

Group. I’d signed him to a contract with Elektra, and cut a solo album with him that I think 

is just brilliant. To go way back, there was a very weird jazz record by Howard Roberts that I did 

with Ed Michel called Antelope Freeway [1971] that is one of my favorite records. So those are the 

babies; the other kids grew up, went out, and made money!” [laughs] r 

Jake Brown has written 35 published books, featuring many authorized collaborations 

with some of rock’s biggest artists, as well as the producers’ anthology Behind the Boards 

Vols. I & II. 

Tape Op is made possible 

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From the moment I first heard Joy Division’s two studio albums, 

Unknown Pleasures and Closer, I was affected. Initially I returned the LPs to my friend Steve, saying, 

“These are too gloomy. I don’t want to listen to them.” But soon I was asking to borrow them 

again. These records were like beacons from another planet, in the early ‘80s in the US, and 

also not the easiest items to procure. The other college students I knew were rocking out to 

commercial radio bands like Journey or Foreigner, while I was immersing myself in this dark 

world of post-punk, created by some lads from Manchester a scant six years older than myself. 

Soon I learned that the architect of the LP sounds I adored was a producer named 

Martin Hannett. His specialties included reverbed drums, echoing vocals, icy synthesizers, 

clanking/crashing sound effects, prominent bass, and effected guitars. After a life of constant 

alcohol and drug abuse, Martin’s life was sadly cut short in 1991, due to heart failure. 

As a recordist I have always felt that Martin left a lot behind for us to study and absorb. 

I also feel he played a large part in changing the way record production was perceived; 

he was a precursor to many of the advances that came into play in the studio in the years 

following his late ‘70s and early ‘80s masterpieces. 

This article is composed of excerpts from 

Chris Hewitt’s book, Martin Hannett; Pleasures of 

the Unknown, a slightly chaotic but thorough 

collection of interviews, history, and 

memories published earlier in 2014. Thanks 

to Chris for allowing us to present some of 

this work in Tape Op. For more information 

about Martin, please check out the book, as 

well as the nearly 4-hour DVD, He Wasn’t Just the 

Fifth Member of Joy Division – a film about Martin 

Hannett. Below is partial history of the man 

who produced records for Joy Division, U2, 

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Nico 

[& The Invisible Girls], Magazine, Crispy 

Ambulance, Durutti Column, A Certain 

Ratio, Buzzcocks, John Cooper Clarke, 

Happy Mondays, Section 25, Blue in 

Heaven, and Stockholm Monsters. 

32/Tape Op#103/Mr. Hannett/(continued on page 34) 

Early on Martin was obsessed with having the 

best hi-fi equipment. Listening to and examining 

records became a pastime that would pay off. -LC 

Martin Hanneı 

“`e Possibil⁄ies SÕm Endless” 

compiled and notated by Larry Crane Ïom Chris Hew⁄t’s book, 

Martin Hanneı; Pleasures of the Unknown 

Photo Collage by Gary LÔton 

Neil Pointon: friend, co-worker 

“I met Martin at ICI Blackley [Imperial Chemical 

Industries, where they worked together] in September 

of 1965, on a typical Manchester rainy day. He was 

sitting there in his Hush Puppies with a packet of 

Sterling cigarettes, and he offered me a cigarette. He 

bought a hi-fi system from a shop on Oldham Street 

with his first month’s wages. That’s when he began 

listening obsessively for some unattainable silence 

between or behind the notes. On Saturday morning we’d 

make the routine tour of all the hi-fi and music shops.” 

Bruce Mitchell: drummer, Durutti Column 

“His first LP production was the Belt & Braces 

Roadshow Band. His second production job was 

Slaughter & the Dogs’ ‘Where have all the Boot Boys 

Gone?’ His third job was Spiral Scratch by the Buzzcocks. 

It was what established him in that generation’s eyes as 

the sympathetic producer. It was geography; he was in 

the right place, at the right time.” 



The Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch was the first 

independent punk record, and the third release ever 

by a British punk group (The Damned and Sex Pistols 

were on major labels). It still remains an urgent and 

melodic slab of vinyl. -LC 

Phil Hampson: engineer 

“Tuesday, 28th December, 1976. Buzzcocks set up, 

we mic’d up, and started sorting out the sounds. I was 

used to loud noise, but this was special. ‘It’s totally 

distorted,’ says I. ‘Yeah, great!’ says they. We got a 

sound, and then barely touched the faders. They 

played, and we recorded. Although the songs were 

recorded as live takes with minimal overdubs, we were 

using 16-track on 2-inch tape at that time, so 

everything was on individual tracks – and recorded with 

some separation, which meant that we could play 

around with the mix later.” 

Richard Boon: Buzzcocks’ manager 

“Although he did have set ideas, it depended on the 

toys he had in the studio. Sometimes the gadgets 

eclipsed his interest in the music he was supposed to be 

producing. He’s as inventive as he can be within a 

limited budget. The studio is a playground.” 

Howard Devoto: vocalist, Buzzcocks, Magazine 

“Martin was the only person we knew in Manchester 

that was known as, or called themselves, a producer. 

Martin felt restricted by the sessions.” 


“I was trying to do things, and the engineer was 

turning them off. ‘You don’t put that kind of echo on a 

snare drum!’ I’d have whipped it away and remixed it, 

but he erased the master because he thought it was 

such rubbish.” 

Mick Middles: journalist 

“I first heard of Martin Hannett [from] the 

Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch EP. It had an intelligent 

energy; something strange was going on. It would set 

a benchmark.” 

Martin had a long history in the Manchester music scene 

before the Buzzcocks, running Rabid Records and booking 

bands. He became a partner in the legendary independent 

label, Factory Records, which released records by Joy 

Division and many of the artists he recorded. The first release 

by the label was Martin producing Durutti Column’s 

ironically-titled debut, The Return of the Durutti 

Column. –LC 

Chris Hewitt 

“Hannett had always wanted to be a record producer, 

but the occupation requires a tremendous [amount of] 

discipline. The advent of new hardware in the early 

1980s, and the constant refinements in high technology 

have turned the modern studio into a clinical operating 

room. Martin wanted to offset the barrier between the 

booth and the mixing room, so he preferred to record as 

many instruments as possible right by the desk.” 


Vini Reilly: guitar, piano, Durutti Column 

“I first met Martin in about 1977 when we [Ed 

Banger and the Nosebleeds] did the first record on Tosh 

[Ryan] and Martin’s label [Rabid]. [He was] incredibly 

charismatic; one of those people who communicated 

more by what he didn’t say than what he did say. Martin 

had a sort of aggressive dominance with me. He was 

being completely oblivious to my ranting and raving in 

a studio with him. It was my first album for Factory, in 

1979, and he was messing around with all this very 

obsolete synthesizer stuff – plugging pins into little 

sockets and making noises. I was very ill, at that point. 

I sat there, and after about two or three hours began to 

scream and shout at him. Every so often he would look 

up and say, ‘You’re being a bit irrational there, Vini,’ and 

carry on. All of a sudden these noises became sort of 

bird noises. I had my guitar plugged into the desk; DI’d. 

I’d asked for a delay, because I used to use tape delay. 

He said, ‘You can’t use tape delay. Use this.’ He’d plug in 

some piece of technology he’d had developed. When 

these bird noises came up I immediately thought of a 

tune, and I started playing along. In the space of about 

a minute he made a very basic rhythm pattern with the 

bird noises and it went down to tape. I overdubbed one 

guitar and that was the track. The whole album was 

done like that, in a very strange way – in that sense he 

was the direction of that album. Martin wouldn’t let 

anything stand in the way of a perfectly original piece 

of art. Nothing would be sacrificed, unless it became too 

obtuse or imperfect. Everything had to be perfect, in 

every way.” 

Tony Wilson: Factory Records co-founder 

“It doesn’t matter if Martin falls asleep under the 

mixing desk. Even in his sleep Martin is creative.” 


“Songs unfold themselves to me. The object is to 

capture somebody’s attention and keep it for a 

satisfactory [amount of] time. I’m not always that 

interested in the content, or the words, or even the 

track. I’m more interested in the feeling. Originality 

exercises the intellect, working out how it got to be 

original, from all its influences. Or you can just let it 

shock and amaze you. To me the technology is fairly 

straightforward. Technology just makes it work faster. 

Digital recording will sort it out, but you can’t buy that; 

you have to lease it from 3M. There are record industry 

standards, but what do they mean? All I care about is 

that they should be recognisable as records.” 

Joy Division’s debut album and follow up remain the 

most recognized of Martin Hannett’s studio achievements to 

this day. By taking a raw, moody punk group and morphing 

their sound into power and texture, he created something 

unique, new, and lasting. The bass guitar became much of 

the melodic focus, the drums were isolated and treated with 

effects, the guitars often shimmered as a background texture. 

It was a whole new way to envision a rock band. At the time 

the members of Joy Division were shocked by the results, as it 

was a far cry from their powerful live shows. 

-LC 


“Joy Division – there was a lot of space in their 

sound. They were a gift to a producer because they 

didn’t argue.” 

John Brierley: owner Cargo Studios, engineer 

“I’d only just built Cargo when he came in to record 

A Factory Sample with Joy Division. I’d heard of Martin 

before – he had a bit of a reputation as a ‘name 

producer.’ We had two enormous reclining chairs behind 

the desk in the control room, and once he was sat in 

one of them there was no moving him. We didn’t have 

an awful lot to say to each other, which actually suited 

us both. I expected him to tell me where he wanted 

mics placed and what sort of sound he wanted, but it 

soon became evident that that was going to be left to 

me. I soon realised that he expected to sort out any 

problems with the sound during the mix. In this respect 

we worked well together. I did most of the recording 

side – he did the mixes. He liked working with me 

because I didn’t hold long, incessant, irrelevant 

conversations. I would leave him alone to do what he 

wanted to do, and I worked fast. I was always up for 

trying anything out, which Martin always appreciated, 

like placing the drums downstairs and having the mics 

recording the kit upstairs. Recording trumpets in the loo 

was another one. Plugging one effects unit into another, 

and then another, and so on produced some amazing 

effects; sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.” 

Chris Nagle: engineer 

“No other engineer at Strawberry [Recording Studios, 

Stockport, UK] would work with Martin. Martin tended 

to tape everything, rehearsals and run-throughs 

included, and took delight in mistakes. The first time 

Martin turned up at Strawberry, the session was to mix 

A Factory Sample. This fella walked up, carting all this 

gear under his arms, and he said, ‘The first rule is there 

are no rules.’” 


[On the Strawberry Recording Studio control room] 

“There’s a lot of depth in this studio. From behind the 

mixing desk you look into some sort of a tunnel. [Joy 

Division’s] Unknown Pleasures was fun. Closer was quite 

depressing, for obvious reasons. A bit of a strange social 

climate. It took 13 days and 13 nights to record – hard 

work. Ian wasn’t very well. Despite that – the clouded 

retrospect – it still has a good atmosphere, in a way, 

though the sound suffers. The content is more cohesive, 

much more accurate, much more powerful. The sound is 

certainly unique. We used a half-completed construction 

project as an echo room – a huge shell, with plaster walls.” 


Strawberry Recording Studio control room


Ms. Marks/(continued on page 24)/Tape Op#102/23

Stephen Morris: drummer, Joy Division, New Order 

“I was alright with what Martin was asking us to do 

mostly; although he did make me use an aerosol can on 

the 12-inch version of ‘She’s Lost Control,’ like you see 

in the film Control. He shut me in a room with the tape 

cleaning fluid, and made me press it in time with the 

song. The booth was filled with noxious fumes by the 

end. I think he was just trying to kill me. If I’d lit up a 

fag, the whole of Strawberry Studios would have gone 

up in smoke. The unusual sound I like best is on ‘Atrocity 

Exhibition.’ I had a Simmons SDS-V and Synare 

[synthesizer drum pads], which we got out and put 

through this horrible fuzz box. My drumming on Closer 

was a disco/tribal thing, and Martin pushed his studio 

equipment to its limits. He had me do the snare, then 

the hi-hat, and then the hi-hat again, in an almost 

robotic style. Martin did the mixing during the middle of 

the night, because it’s when your brain is at its most 

creative. He liked the unsociable hours and the 

isolation. I think he’d do a little speed, if only because 

he was on borrowed time and we had to get it done.” 

Peter Hook: bass, Joy Division, New Order 

“The equipment we used for Joy Division sessions were 

the Arp Omni-2, the [Powertran] Transcendent, and the 

AMS delays. Bernard [Sumner] used an Altair Power 

Attenuator between his Vox UL 730 amp and the cabinet, 

and fed his guitar through Melos [Tape] echoes and an 

MXR graphic pedal. A set of chimes were fed through the 

AMS delay to get the effect that can be heard in 

‘Atmosphere.’ Chris Hewitt owns the original set of chimes.” 


“Re-recording Ian Curtis’s vocals, Martin said, ‘He 

really can’t sing.’ The next minute I said, ‘He can sing; 

just listen to that vocal.’” 

Bernard Sumner: guitar, Joy Division, New Order 

“On early Joy Division recordings, Martin was a 

catalyst and an experimenter. I’ve worked with other 

producers since Martin, and the point of their job is to get 

a hit record. Martin’s job was to create an environment of 

experimentation. We worked at Cargo [Studios] in 

Rochdale; a box-type place, a good sound. ‘Atmosphere’ 

was done there. A lot of A Factory Sample was done there. 

At Strawberry [Studios], Martin used to work with a tape 

op and assistant engineer; a miserable git called Chris 

Nagle. He’d sneer at the band all the time.” 

Manchester’s favorite “punk poet,” John Cooper 

Clarke, made many of his classic recordings with Martin and 

the “house band,” The Invisible Girls, of which Martin 

played bass in as well. Martin’s obsession with sounds is well 

evident on these albums’ vocal treatments. -LC 


“It did hit me after a while that Martin and John 

[Cooper Clarke], with their habits, did used to disappear 

a lot at Ridge Farm Studios, during the second John 

[Cooper Clarke] album [Disguise in Love]. Martin and 

Steve Hopkins [keyboards] used to work with a 

supposed deck of cards: ‘Right, the key for the next 

number is F. Run that sequencer; the next note will be 

G. What are we going to do with that?’ Steve tinkled his 

piano then Martin would possibly put a bass to it. John, 


in my experience, had his poems ready; Martin had a 

tune in mind, John would take a listen, and then he’d 

usually run through it in one take.” 

Steve Hopkins: keyboards, co-producer 

“I did the rational mathematical computing side of it, 

whereas Martin provided the anarchistic, surreal, dada-ist 

type of elements. Say I was trying to record a piano part; 

Martin would say, ‘Steve, could you make it a bit more 

Bavarian and less Transylvanian?’ I was left to interpret 

this, but a lot of the time I got it right. Phil Spector was 

one of Martin’s heroes. He studied not only his techniques, 

but also his psychological ruthlessness in sticking to ones’ 

production vision. He would look for spaces with unusual 

acoustical properties. We’d go into the shower room at 

Arrow Sound and have the engineer trail 200 metres of 

cable, then we’d flush the toilet and record it, and so on. 

We discovered that the lift shaft was remarkable for its 

rebounding echo, so we’d place a microphone at one end 

and get John [Cooper Clarke] to balance precariously at the 

other. Then he’d shout his poem into the lift shaft. On many 

of the Clarke albums, Martin paid care to the qualities of 

John’s voice; virtually every track has a particular treatment 

of the reverberation and ambience around the vocal. On a 

few tracks there are things that the listener would presume 

are instruments, such as a xylophone; but in fact it’s John’s 

voice that has been fed through so many effects units that 

they’re coming out as notes.” 


“[Sometimes] Martin would feed vocals to Auratone 

[speakers] at the top of the lift down into a microphone 

in the cellar. There was a load of wasted time in the 

studio at Strawberry with Martin, but the end product 

was special, and that outweighs any wasted time.” 

Soon others were searching out Martin’s production 

skills, and in the case of Pauline Murray he even provided a 

loose band, as he had with John Cooper Clarke. -LC 

Pauline Murray: vocalist, Penetration and 

The Invisible Girls 

“He just seemed to have the knack of putting 

everything in the right setting. He works in a totally 

different way to any other producer we’ve recorded with. 

He doesn’t even replay the songs on the tape very much. 

He has it all in his head. He’s a weird bloke, but we work 

really well with him. I had been stuck in a rut, and I 

needed someone like that to show me some sort of light. 

Martin was just the right person.” 


“I don’t get people ringing me up all the time. I must 

be quite elusive; it took Pauline Murray six months to 

track me down. I don’t get asked to do a lot of things – 

the idea of me working with a band like The Clash would 

be disastrous.” 

After singer Ian Curtis sadly took his own life on the eve 

of a US tour, the remaining members of Joy Division 

eventually regrouped as New Order and set off to make their 

first single (featuring “Ceremony” and “In A Lonely Place”) 

with Martin. The record has a heavily reverbed and 

compartmentalized sound, but the hard part was finding a 

new vocalist. -LC 

Peter Hook: bass, Joy Division, New Order 

“Later, after Ian’s death, Martin was involved less 

and less with New Order. We had to wrestle the mixes off 

him. A lot of the equipment that Martin brought into 

the control room and studio rooms at Cargo, Strawberry, 

and Pennine [Sound Studios] could be grouped into the 

category of ‘stuff to waste time with’ in the studio. 

When we went to record ‘Ceremony’ and ‘In A Lonely 

Place,’ Martin just thought that all three of us were 

dreadful and that the three of us couldn’t sing. He just 

thought we were shit. I remember that Bernard had a 

last go at the end; he was convinced he could do it 

better. That was how it became his vocal. Before that, 

the vocal on ‘Ceremony’ was a combination of the three 

of us. He sort of became the singer by default, really. But 

as our sound evolved in New Order, it became quite 

natural for him to sing and then play around his vocal. 

I think that was quite useful to creating the New Order 

sound. In Joy Division, he used to play across the vocal, 

whereas in New Order – because he couldn’t sing and 

play at the same time – he used to play ‘round the vocal. 

So I think it sort of created our new sound.” 

Among the bands intrigued by Martin’s production of Joy 

Division was a young group from Ireland named U2. They 

coaxed him to Dublin’s Windmill Lane Studios to record 

their second single. It certainly carries all the U2 hallmarks 

of their early era; but, as one might guess, the bass is 

prominent and the drums are a bit more echoey than their 

debut album, Boy. -LC 

Tosh Ryan: Rabid Records label partner 

“Martin wouldn’t go back to Ireland to record U2. He 

did ‘11 O’Clock Tick Tock’ and he wouldn’t do anymore. 

He only liked to work from Strawberry [Studios], and 

travelling to Ireland was not something he even 

considered. He remained at Strawberry in Stockport. U2 

were young and impressionable.” 

Paul McGuinness: U2 manager 

“He didn’t think much of the facilities [at Windmill 

Lane Studios]. There were some special pieces of 

equipment he made us rent from London and ship over.” 

Larry Mullen, Jr.: drums, U2 

“He was asking me to do a click track. I wasn’t sure if I 

could play in time with one. I must really have done 

Martin’s head in. He listened to the track over and over 

again, constantly playing it back. I think he was highly 

medicated; as the session went on, he became more and 

more incoherent. Despite his condition, he did a great job.” 

Martin always had a different attitude with the studio 

than producers that had come up the ranks as engineers. 

But, in many ways, I feel he truly listened to what was 

happening with his recordings, and that he quickly could 

formulate a vision of how a production should sound – a 

skill not many master. -LC 


“I never look at VU meters. If I want that certain 

drum sound, I get it from tape compression. Most of the 

time I keep the volume low because I want the sound 

in front; clear and crisp.” 



38/Tape Op#103/Mr. Hannett/ 

Chris Hewitt 

“After Martin became a studio engineer, he would 

often go ‘round to musician Dave Lunt’s house with 

pockets full of cassettes of different mixes he had done, 

but on getting to Dave’s he would take a look at the 

shelves full of jazz records and dive headlong into 

playing some of the LPs instead of listening to his 

cassette mixes.” 

Martin was keenly aware of how spaces translated to 

recordings. Much of his production work involved capturing 

drums with no ambience and later treating them in the mix. 

No tool was more infamous in his hands than the newly 

introduced AMS dmx 15-80 delay. -LC 

Stuart Nevison: AMS (Advanced Music Systems) 

“Whilst Martin Hannett was starting to carve his own 

niche in music production, my small company, AMS, not 

25 miles north of Manchester, was working on projects 

of digital audio processing. In the music recording 

business there are two significant elements; the 

tracklaying and the mixing process, which I think Martin 

had a fascination with.” 

Chris Hewitt 

“AMS was Advanced Music Systems, and were 

established in 1976 by Mark Crabtree and Stuart 

Nevison. In 1978 AMS introduced the world’s first 

microprocessor-controlled, 15-bit digital delay line. By 

October 1978, they had provided Hannett with this AMS 

dmx15-80 delay for him to use on the Joy Division song 

‘Digital’ at Cargo. Crabtree and Nevison had been 

aerospace engineers who moved into the design of 

professional studio equipment for the manipulation and 

control of sound. The first product designed by the 

company was the dm 2-20 Tape Phase Simulator, 

notably used by ELO [Electric Light Orchestra], 10cc, and 

Paul McCartney.” 


“The ideas were always there, but at the end of the 

‘60s a digital delay line was implemented using these 

things called shift registers, which were enormous, 

unreliable, and used too much electricity. When little 

bits of memory started to arrive, those clever guys at 

AMS stuck ’em in a box. Whilst you are recording, you 

take all the clues off the snare sound that the ear 

needs to recognise a room – we have to put them back, 

otherwise it will sound odd. The value I usually set the 

display on the AMS dmx 15-80 delay at represents the 

first reflection boundary of a room, so by selecting 

different values, you can effectively change the size of 

the room. The Marshall Time Modulator performs the 

same function as the AMS dmx 15-80, but in a 

different way, with the result that it has got a different 

set of parameters. If I can establish a room sound with 

the AMS, and also establish a room sound with the 

Marshall Time Modulator, and put them both in the 

mix, then I’ve got the sound of the walls of the room 

rushing in and out at a fantastic rate. Of course, you 

don’t want to hear all that up front, so you bury it in 

the track. As for drums, I love echo and drum 

synthesisers, but I got a bit worried about using 

repeats after I had a fit of quasi realism. I still do ’em 

in a fairly subliminal way. Some of it’s from reggae. 

Reggae drumming is fairly simple diagrams.” 

Tony Wilson: Factory Records co-founder 

“Unbeknown to me, until I found out years later, 

Martin goes and meets these guys in a car park on the 

moors above Burnley [Lancashire, England], and tells 

them the sound he’s imagining [while he’s] off his head 

on fucking drugs. He drives back to Manchester at 

midnight. Meanwhile they drive back to their shed and 

they build the world’s first digital delay machine, the 

AMS digital delay, which is the most important outboard 

equipment of the last 50 years. It was 15 years later, 

when some guy stopped me and said, ‘I want to thank 

you. One of your partners changed my life.’ When I 

realised it was AMS, I said, ‘No, you changed his life by 

giving him that equipment.’ He said, ‘Don’t you know 

where it came from?’ I had no idea it came out of 

Martin’s head. The first time he ever worked with that 

digital delay machine was on the song ‘Digital.’ The first 

time Martin moved music forward was with the digital 

delay machine, which changed drum sounds forever. Did 

you know the most sampled track in hip-hop history is 

ESG’s ‘You’re No Good’? That was Martin in a New York 

basement with three great singers.” 


“Those AMS dmx 15-80s were used on every aspect 

of Martin’s productions, from his infamous ‘walls 

rushing in and out’ philosophy, to the short 85 

millisecond delay that New Order incorporated into 

their live production, to phasing and flanging on his 

John Cooper Clarke work. Martin’s number one rule was 

‘never wipe a mistake.’ It may bug the hell out of you 

as a musician, but you never know how you later might 

be able to incorporate that into a track; i.e., put it in 

reverse, feed it through a bunch of effects, see how 

that sounds, and bring it up at random somewhere in 

the mix. Sonic holograms were created out of various 

equipment and sounds in Strawberry.” 


“That’s been the biggest change in the last ten years; 

the enormous flood of digital effects. It started off with 

cheap digital delays, and now it’s cheap digital echoes. 

For £485 you can get the latest [Alesis] QuadraVerb that 

does four digital things at once: delay, chorusing, 

reverb, and equalization. They’re gifts to the 

imagination, really. You can do all of those difficult 

things, without ever getting out of your chair.” 

Vini Reilly: guitarist, Durutti Column 

“He was always ten years ahead.” 


U2 were not the only band to have a brief recording 

experience with Martin Hannett. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the 

Dark (OMD) worked with him at Cargo Studios on their debut 

single for Factory Records, although they used their own demo, 

“Electricity,” as the A-side. -LC 

Andy McCluskey: vocals, bass, OMD 

“We were very young and inexperienced, especially in 

recording studios. Martin Hannett was rather intimidating 

and seemed a bit bonkers to us. Both Paul [Humphreys] and 

I definitely remember him climbing under the desk at 

Strawberry [Studios] when we were mixing overnight and 

going to sleep for some considerable time. Paul and I were 

like, ‘You wake him!’ ‘No, you wake him.’ Err… ‘Let’s just 

leave him then!’” 


“Electronic music is a bit frightening. It gives a lot of 

potential for accurate amounts of energy that you can’t get 

out of instruments. I was definitely pleased with OMD’s 

‘Electricity.’ It was a great tune.” 

Martin’s deepening problems with alcohol and drug abuse 

eventually caught up with him, and erratic studio sessions sadly 

became the norm. -LC 

David Wood: engineer 

“In March of 1985, I enrolled to study sound recording 

at John Breakell’s School of Sound Recording (SSR) which 

was based [in Spirit Studios] in a basement on Tariff Street 

in Manchester. I’d heard that there might be an opening to 

do work with a guy called Martin Hannett. I immediately 

called him. I arrived early at Strawberry [Studios] and 

Martin was already there, which I think was the one and 

only time he was there before me. The studio was amazing, 

but I was quite surprised at Martin’s reaction towards me. 

I’d driven for over an hour and I’d agreed to work for free 

to gain some experience. Initially he was really tense with 

me, although I realised within a couple of days that he was 

like that with everyone. In time, Martin was very nice to 

me. I often saw another side to him with people – it was 

clear quickly that Martin was a drinker and drug user. Martin 

had recorded a young Irish band called Blue in Heaven and 

wanted to make some edits and cut the parts up to 

experiment with. It seemed a very high profile release to 

me, as the band was signed to Island Records and Martin 

told me that Bono of U2 had chosen them as one of his 

favourites. In ‘85 they released their first LP, All the Gods’ 

Men, which, apart from one track, was all produced by 

Martin. The album had a thick texture; heavy bass, and 

strange vocal. Whilst doing the Blue in Heaven edits, I 

realised why Martin had asked me to go in and help. He had 

a hand tremble and was unsteady with the blade on the 

splicing block. I felt a little sad, and selfishly disappointed, 

that the only reason he needed some help was due to his 

problems. But I was happy to be there, getting the 

experience, even though these were clearly dark times for 

him. After the Blue in Heaven edits, I’d been in touch a few 

times with Martin to see if there was anything else I could 

get involved with; but it was summer and I had loads of 

playing going on, so it wasn’t a problem that he hadn’t. 


Mr. Hannett/(continued on page 40)/Tape Op#103/39

Martin got back to me in August to tell me that I 

could do some edits soon. The first day back, Martin 

seemed to be shaking more, but I might have just 

been aware of it a bit more. He started immediately 

moaning that the band hadn’t had enough material, 

so there wasn’t going to be as much for me to do as 

he’d said on the phone. I really liked Martin, and he 

had some great stories about his days recording at 

Cargo, Arrow, and Central Sound Studios, but I found 

him terribly unpredictable.” 

Colin Richardson: engineer, producer 

“I was looking forward to working on the Happy 

Mondays’ album with Martin, as he obviously was well 

known through his work with Joy Division. I had met 

him briefly at Cargo, in about 1980, when I first started 

there, but it was more of a hello in a corridor rather 

than a working relationship. The Bummed album 

session for the Happy Mondays was at The 

Slaughterhouse, Driffield, Yorkshire, although, as per 

usual Hannett practice, it was mixed at Strawberry 

Studios. When Martin turned up on the first day, his 

appearance had changed dramatically from how I 

remembered him. He was now about 20 stone [280 

lbs], very disheveled, and always seemed to have a 

runny nose, which I put down to a cold at the time. As 

a successful producer in my own right now, I think I 

know how a session should run – the producer should 

be in charge, at all times. Well, this one was an utter 

shambles. The band was given no direction, at all, as 

to what was going on. Martin sat on the couch reading 

magazines 95 percent of the time. On a 25 day session 

he did not bother to turn up on seven days, with no 

prior warning. It was quite a relief when the session 

somehow ended. I like things to be organised when I 

am working, and this was completely the opposite. I 

was not involved in the mix – I just tracked the album. 

Later on, when the final mix was finished, it sounded 

like someone had gone really overboard on the reverb 

and delays on the instruments, and it had the effect of 

washing the whole band out. My thoughts were that 

this type of sound in the late-‘70s sounded good, but 

this was the late-‘80s. It needed to be drier and more 

contemporary for the Happy Mondays to bring out their 

dance elements. It was a shame he died so young, but 

for most of this session he looked quite ill to me.” 

Now all we have are memories and artifacts. Martin 

Hannett left an enviable legacy behind because he had a 

vision for what recorded music could be. By studying his 

work I’ve become a better engineer and producer. I see a 

different door one can take into making albums, one that 

is richer, deeper, and more unique than I ever imagined on 

my own. Thank you, Martin. -LC 

 

40/Tape Op#103/Mr. Hannett/(Fin.) 


“I haven’t done that much compared to people like John 

Leckie, but what I have done has all been a bit odd, don’t you 

think? Maybe I look a bit catalytic?” 

“Right now I’m reading an article about strange facts 

concerning the location of pure tones. A certain tone always 

seems to come from straight above your head. The ear has a 

lot of transfer functions, so it peaks and soothes in various 

directions. There’s a lot to think about. At a certain 

moment you reach a point where the 

possibilities seem endless.” 



So what’s the history of Indigo Ranch? 

Mike Pinder and I built it. Mike was the original 

principal in Indigo Ranch. The Moody Blues did their 

last album, Octave, as a full group with Mike there, 

which I have a platinum album for engineering. But 

Mike and I basically built it for our own in-house 

projects. It was never intended to be a commercial 

studio. We ordered the absolute best equipment. We 

were originally going to get a Neve or an API console, 

but we ran into these guys from Aengus. This was the 

best console we’d ever heard. On the day of delivery 

of the console in 1974, we’re waiting for the truck, 

and this guy comes strutting down the driveway. He 

says, “Hi, I’m here to supervise the installation of the 

console.” We said, “No, that’s okay. We flew David 

Hawkins in from England.” He had done probably half 

of the big installations in Europe. Very, very sharp 

guy. We said, “Thank you anyway. What was your 

name?” He says, “Deane Jensen.” [laughs] 

Yeah, like, “Stick around.” 

We didn’t even know who Deane Jensen was. We had 

just come back from Europe, and Deane didn’t have 

the fame there that he had here. David Hawkins knew 

who he was, and said, “Don’t send him away!” So 

they start putting the console in. About an hour later 

Mike and I were sitting out on the bench in front of 

the studio, looking at the ocean while having a cup 

of tea, and David comes out. We said, “What do you 

think of this Deane guy? Should we just send him 

home?” He said, “After an hour of working with this 

guy, I feel like he should be doing the console, and I 

should be soldering AC cords.” Deane was just a 

wonderful guy. He was our in-house tech for the first 

couple of years. He hated to even have the world 

know that he could solder; he liked to be thought of 

as the design guy, and not the diagnostician, builder, 

or anything like that. But Deane did everything for 

Indigo for the first couple of years, including 

changing out all of what were really good electronics. 

Mike (L) & Richard (R) 

42/Tape Op#103/Mr. Kaplan/ 

Richard Kaplan 

The Legacy of Indigo Ranch 

interview by Larry Crane 

Indigo Ranch, nestled on 60-acres in the hills of Malibu, 

California, operated from 1974 until 2006, under the guidance and 

obsessions of Richard Kaplan. Clients took advantage of his 

meticulously built studio, 400 guitar amps, and rare 

Aengus console. Artists as diverse as Neil Young, Neil Diamond, 

Olivia Newton John, Jeff Lorber, Korn, Sepultura, and Limp Bizkit 

all made albums at Indigo Ranch. We tracked down a “retired” 

Richard in Venice Beach, for a long chat. 

The Aengus was probably the best-sounding console 

I’d ever heard, as delivered, and Deane said, “We’re 

gonna make it better.” He designed an op-amp for us, 

the JE-918, which we used for all the mic preamps. It 

was his best shot at the amp module for a mic pre. 

How did you end up at Indigo Ranch, as 

well as living out there? 

I was living in a basement in Woodland Hills, California, 

having just returned from the Midwest where a 

partner and I had run the Nova Lights show. Nova 

Lights was the first on-stage laser show in the world, 

written up in TIME magazine in the ‘60s. We were 

doing polarized lights and laser techniques. The first 

album I did with Mike Pinder, after we opened the 


studio for personal use, was called The Promise and 

the cover is a photograph of one of my polarized light 

crystals. Mike had married the daughter of Samuel Z. 

Arkoff, of American International Pictures – he 

produced all those B-horror movies in the ‘50s. Her 

cousin was one of my best friends, and Mike 

happened to be talking to him about stage lighting. 

He said, “You should talk to this guy Richard.” So, 

Mike came over and visited me, I showed him some 

of the lighting stuff I was doing, and he said, “I’ve 

never seen anything like that! I want you to fly to 

England. I want you to be the special effects guy for 

The Moody Blues.” A month later, I was on my way to 

England. They went on tour, and I ended up going 

with them all over America and England, as well as 

being their photographer. 

People forget how huge that band was at 

that time. 

They were the biggest band in the world for two years. Mike 

and I got to be best friends. I was his sort of right-hand 

man, lackey, gopher, photographer, and special effects 

lighting guy. He was building a little studio in his house, 

and he was going to have this Aengus console shipped 

to England. England’s economy was approaching the 

bottom in ‘73, and he said, “This is crazy to finish this 

studio up here. I want to live in the United States. Let’s 

go find a place in America and build the studio there.” 

We started looking at properties, all the way from Santa 

Barbara to Costa Mesa, and nothing seemed to be right. 

We found a property in Santa Monica, this great big blue 

building. Then I got a call from Mike, and he said, “I’m 

in Malibu.” We drive up to this place, it’s like a mile of 

dirt road, and we finally get to the end and there’s a onestory 

ranch house with a big parking area in front of it. 

The ranch was actually owned by the owner of the 

Stetson Hat Company. John Barrymore, Sr. was his best 

friend, and the Stetson guy lived back East. John was a 

horrible alcoholic, so when they had to dry him out for 

a play or a production they would send him up to this 

place where he couldn’t get out. As we were building the 

studio there were a lot of boards that were loose, and 

behind every one of them was a 50 year-old bottle of 

something. 

So you turned the house into a studio? 

We built the studio largely on Mike Pinder’s acoustic 

intuition. The control room was the best-sounding 

control room I’ve been in before, during, or after. I 

took every penny I earned and put that into gear. It 

was a phenomenal collection. 

I remember reading about all the mics. 

I had 50 tube limiters, including a Teletronix LA-1, a 

Fairchild Conax [Model 602], which Deane Jensen 

redesigned so that it would be useful as more than a 

mastering limiter, and a Fairchild Model 666 – the 

Devil’s limiter. 

The studio started in ‘74, and we know 

that people started throwing out 

tube equipment around then. Were 

you finding good deals? 

Oh, bless their hearts, I was! It was from people that were 

switching to solid-state; I wasn’t buying junk. When 

you find some gem lurking in a studio’s storeroom 

nowadays, it usually needs to be completely restored. 

I never cared what the specs of anything were; I always 

cared what it sounded like. If it sounded better, that’s 

what ended up in the racks at Indigo. 

When did Indigo Ranch shift from being 

a private studio? 

In 1975 or ‘76. Canned Heat was our first customer; they 

came in and recorded half a side of an album, and 

then the world literally beat the door down. We had 

hundreds of great albums that came out of there. 

What do you think the appeal was? 

It was the sound. People were hearing little demo bits 

that were coming out of there, and it was like, “God, 

I’ve never heard anything like that.” Back in the ‘70s 

and ‘80s, when Indigo first started, you’d hear an 

Indigo record on the radio, and it would just 

obliterate whatever was played in front of it or after 

it. The sound was just dazzling. 

What other clients did you start getting? 

Bob Margouleff (who had worked with Mike Pinder – he 

helped mix The Promise album) brought in another 

engineer, Chris Brunt, and they liked the sound. Bob 

brought in Billy Preston, and then just client after 


Mr. Kaplan/(continued on page 44)/Tape Op#103/43

A Trip to Indigo Ranch 

On my first trip to L.A., in 1976, we drove out from 

Houston in the middle of summer with my band, 

Buzzbone, and arrived in the middle of the night. We 

stayed in a motel at Topanga and Ventura Blvds. The next 

morning we drove through Topanga Canyon to the Pacific 

Coast Highway and headed up to Indigo Ranch. They had 

these cool little chalets we stayed in – total So Cal hippie 

vibe. We rehearsed for two days in a beach house with our 

producer/engineer Chris Brunt and spent the rest of the 

week recording. They had Deane Jensen’s Aengus console 

– one of three, I believe. The weather was perfect – you 

could see Catalina Island every day, which is rare. It was 

like Maui up there! I never made it past Santa Monica Pier 

into town on that trip, so my first impression of L.A. was 

a little skewed. But I knew then that moving to L.A. was 

in my future. 

-Dusty Wakeman, Mojave Mics, producer, engineer, bassist 

client. Then Chris Brunt started bringing all his 

projects in. He brought in guys from Earth, Wind & 

Fire, plus many jazz clients. Albums like Caldera (with 

Eduardo del Barrio), Ronnie Laws’ Flame, and Hubert 

Laws. Jazz people just started swarming to us. 

And you attribute that to the quality of 

the equipment? 

Deane Jensen. He was the guy. Deane looked at a studio 

as not simply being a bunch of components stacked 

together. He looked at it as one integral unit. He was 

very much into level and impedance matching. That 

studio was so full of transformers. Good transformers 

are like the difference between a Cadillac and a 

Volkswagen. 

So he would go into some of the 

equipment and replace transformers? 

Not usually in the equipment. He would have an 

external matching transformer. The one thing he did 

change transformers in was on the 3M tape machines; 

he would go in and put his own in. The console was 

all Jensen transformers, from the mic pre, to the 

output transformer in the EQ, to the transformers in 

the fader amps. 

Did anyone ever record outside? 

Yes, we did a fair amount. Our very first recording after 

the Pinder album was the Chumash Indians, who are 

the coastal Indians in California. Indigo Ranch was in 

Solstice Canyon, and it had been their holiest of 

ceremonial grounds. They came twice a year to 

celebrate the high holiday of sun worshipers, the 

summer and winter solstices. The Chumash expressed 

an interest to come back and do their first solstice 

44/Tape Op#103/Mr. Kaplan/(continued on page 46) 

drumming festival since the turn of the century. They 

set up their drums outside. There was an old chief with 

them who said, “This is the spot.” We ran mic cables 

out to the spot, with some Neumann mics with 

windscreens. We said, “Go ahead and play a little bit, 

and we’ll get the levels.” They start playing, we get to 

the point where we’re satisfied, and we’re like, “Okay, 

start from the beginning.” The vibe got real heavy, and 

about two minutes later the chief comes walking into 

the control room with his arms folded, and said, “You 

cannot play that song twice in one year.” We never had 

anything like that happen again in the next 35 years. 

The back door of the studio led out to this porch that 

was all cement. Oftentimes bands would leave the back 

door open and put a mic out there [while tracking] to 

get that Led Zeppelin “down the staircase” stone 

effect. In that cement room you’d get a delay of the 

drums. It would be mono of course, because it’s gone 

through the door and out into this other room. That 

was an often-used sound. 

You’re a founder and owner of the 

place, but you also engineered 

through its history. 

If I wasn’t the actual engineer, I usually ended up 

setting up everything for them anyway; getting all 

their sounds, and walking away. I’m not a guy who 

grabs for credits. I probably should have, but I didn’t. 

I would just get everything going and then quietly 

disappear in the background and maintain the thing. 

How did you learn about session flow 

and things like that? 

It was interesting. I had been working with Mike Pinder 

on The Promise album, and then a couple of bands 

came in with their own engineers. I was always 

assisting and learning what I could. But I had 

engineered with Mike, and then when Neil Young 

came in, I was the engineer. I do have a real knack 

for it. I was just lucky to get a start working with topname 

groups before I knew what I was really doing, 

but I was also giving them what they wanted. I had 

some engineering on virtually every album that came 

through there, even when I was not the engineer or 

the assistant. There were a lot of albums that I 

straight-out engineered, and a lot of the albums that 

I engineered that I actually produced. You’d get 

producers who came in, and they spent their whole 

time in the other room on the phone. They’re like, 

“Did you get a good take yet?” I’d say, “Yeah, I did; 

and we’re working on fixing a vocal part.” It’s like the 

producer takes credit for being on the phone talking 

to the record company. 

When did Mike decide to not be involved 

in Indigo Ranch anymore, and how 

did you deal with that? 

Around 1978 or 1980 he wanted to move on; he’d gotten 

married and wanted to put his equity into a house and 

various other things. We worked out a buyout for the 

equipment and the property that took years to pay off, 

but we did it. We continued our good friendship and 

relationship through all of that. It was an amicable part. 

Neil Young did a number of records at 

Indigo Ranch. 

We got a call for Neil Diamond to book a session, because 

he lived in Malibu and had heard how great the sound 

was. He booked a session and, at the last minute, after 

we were set up for him, he canceled. A month later, we 

get another call, “Neil wants to come back in,” and he 

cancels again. Another month later we get a call, “We’ve 

got to get Neil in tonight.” They said, “We want you to 

be set up for drums.” They were scheduled to come in 

the early afternoon. We’re sitting there, and we get a call 

at about 8 o’clock saying, “We’re still coming!” Around 

10 o’clock they finally show up, and they go straight into 

the room and say, “We want it dark in here.” So, we turn 

off all the lights, and have one or two candles going. A 

guy comes into the room and introduces himself as the 

producer. He says, “Are you ready to record guitar and 

vocal? You’ve got to be ready; there’s no getting things 

set.” On the second note of the song I realized it’s Neil 

Young, and not Neil Diamond! Because they had called 

and said, “We’ve got to get Neil in!” All this paperwork 

is sitting out on the console for Neil Diamond, and I just 

kind of nonchalantly flip the paper upside down and 

proceed. We got six songs that ended up on Neil Young 

albums in one night. He said it was the most usable 

material they had ever gotten, and they loved the sound. 

They even used my rough mixes. I ended up doing ten 

albums with him. The producer was David Briggs, who 

ended up being one of my closest friends. He brought all 

sorts of projects up to Indigo. 

The studio attracted people who would 

repeatedly use it. 

Working with George Martin 

To have him come into Indigo… that was a guy. About 

halfway through the album, with the band American Flyer, 

George was talking to the band and he was saying, “See if 

Richard will give a discount on the studio time if we call the 

album Indigo.” So, the main guy comes over to me and he 

says, “We were wondering, if we call the album Indigo, will 

you give a discount on the studio rate?” And I said, “That’s 

an interesting concept. Why don’t you ask George if he’ll 

give you a discount on the production if you call the album 

George?” Later that day, George comes up to me, puts his 

arm on my shoulder, and says, “Well, it’s all decided. The 

album’s now called Indigo George.” And we laughed. Neither 

one of us had to give a break. He understood what had 

happened. Another interesting story about George Martin – 

he always had a locked briefcase. Everyone was always 

wondering, “What’s in the briefcase? Is it a bottle? Is it 

secret papers?” And one day, he had left his briefcase open 

and walked out of the room, so everybody goes over to it 

to look and see what’s in there. There was a Cadbury 

chocolate bar and a Beatles songbook. That’s what he had 

in his locked briefcase –the big secret. -RK 



Near the end Ross Robinson [Tape Op #79] did Korn, 

Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, At the Drive-In, Glassjaw, 

Soulfly, and Sepultura. I engineered a number of 

those. And then my assistant, Chuck Johnson, 

became his in-house engineer, until Ross fired him 

for not being dependable. I mixed the second Korn 

album [Life is Peachy] because Chuck just didn’t 

show up. Chuck got credited on most of that stuff; 

but I did a lot of the engineering because it would 

be the first two or three hours of a session where 

you’d get all the sounds together, and then Chuck 

would show up. I’d have everything together, they’d 

be recording with Ross, and Chuck would come in 

and sit in the engineer’s seat. But that’s okay. 

That’s part of being the owner 

sometimes. 

Yeah. I know what I did. They know what I did. And 

Chuck’s a great guy. Chuck has since cleaned up 

his act, and to this day is a very wonderful guy 

and a brilliant engineer. 

I heard Ross Robinson would get the 

bands pretty riled up. 

Ross would go out in the live room and leave the engineer 

in the control room to get things right; he trusted 

Chuck and I. He would dance around, whoop and 

holler, scream, make motions, and give them cues. If 

it sounded great in there, it better sound great when 

he walked back into the control room. He knew how 

to get the bands fired up into getting takes that were 

unbelievable. David Briggs was also a master at that, 

but in a completely opposite fashion. Ross would get 

the bands into almost a spiritual high. Briggs would 

get them so rattled and uptight that they would 

perform just to escape his wrath. [laughter] He knew 

how to push people’s buttons; he would get the most 

incredible performances out of people, in the exact 

opposite way of Ross, but equally valid. 

It seems Indigo Ranch had a really 

unique vibe. 

There’d be this musical ghost that appeared at various 

sessions; I don’t know what to think about that. We 

had a UFO sighting on the property that was seen by 

a dozen straight people. Even the Malibu sheriff saw it! 

There were all kinds of amazing things that happened, 

and amazing people coming in and out of there. r 

Visit for more from Richard’s interview, 

including more about archiving Bing Crosby’s radio shows. 

The Aengus console from Indigo Ranch now resides at 

Rock Garden Studio in Wisconsin. 

For more about Indigo Ranch and Richard: 

 

Go to https://www.flickr.com/photos/101051783@N04/ 

to see tons of photos of the rest of Richard’s impressive gear 

collection which he is auctioning off in one single lot. 

Contact Richard at: indigoranch77@gmail.com 

bonus article: 

http://tapeop.com/interviews/103/richard-kaplan-bonus/ 

46/Tape Op#103/Mr. Kaplan/(Fin.) 

Mike Pinder and Indigo Ranch 

One of the earliest sessions I did in my early twenties 

at my first “real” studio job was with Mike Pinder, who lives 

in Northern California, in the foothills above Sacramento. 

That was almost 30 years ago. I don’t remember a lot of it, 

but I remember that Mike knew his way around a studio 

and was a nice guy, which was good, since I was a bit 

nervous about working with one of the founding members 

of The Moody Blues. When Larry sent me the Indigo Ranch 

article for layout, I thought it would be nice to track Mike 

down and get his side of the story. -John Baccigaluppi 

What brought you from the UK to California 

before opening Indigo Ranch? 

My ex-wife was from Los Angeles. She wanted to move back 

with our young son. As I had always loved my tours and 

visits to California, I was happy to move across the 

ocean. I was tired of the English rain and was ready for 

some California sunshine. 

What about the property at Indigo Ranch 

made you think of using it for a 

recording studio? 

I wanted some place where I could have a house, as well 

as a recording studio; and I loved the privacy and view 

of the ocean from the Malibu property. 

You came up with the name The Moody 

Blues from the Duke Ellington song, 

“Mood Indigo.” Did that same song 

inspire the Indigo Ranch name? 

Yes. I always loved “Mood Indigo.” Moody was used, and 

Indigo was left. 

Was the studio originally for personal use? 

Yes. When I lived at the Ranch, I only recorded for personal 

use, although I did do a couple of projects for friends, 

and friends of friends. 

What prompted opening up the doors as a 

commercial studio? 

I moved to Hawaii with my new wife, Taralee. Richard 

Kaplan and Michael Hoffman bought the property and 

the studio from me. They opened the studio 

commercially at that time. 

Did you retain an investment in 

Indigo Ranch after you started 

working for Atari? 

I never formally worked for Atari, but I did use the Atari 

Computer for music recording. It was the beginning of 

MIDI and Atari computers were ahead of the game, at 

one time. My friend, Greg Whelchel – a keyboardist from 

L.A. and band member for The Pointer Sisters – and I 

were both using the Atari for sequencing and sounds, 

and we did demos at some of the NAMM Shows. 

Do you still have a home studio for 

your use? 

Yes, I still have a home studio. Some of the hardware I use 

is Digidesign. I dabble around and it is occasionally 

used by two of my sons, Michael Lee and Matt Pinder. 

They record professionally as the Pinder Brothers and do 

solo projects as well. 

You’re well known for being an early 

adopter of the Mellotron and 

popularizing it, but you’re clearly 

comfortable with new technologies 

and adapting them for musical use. 

I love that musicians can record at home. Given the sad 

shape of the music business, it is essential that 

talented singer/songwriters can easily afford to record 

their own music. On the one hand, it levels the playing 

field a bit. The music died when corporations took 

control and began producing a homogenized version of 

music. True creativity was stifled. The genius of the 

‘60s music scene was that there was diversity and 

creativity on every level. Today’s young people are fed 

TV shows with bland showbiz formulas. I think it is 

harder than ever for young people today to discover 

true musical talent. By that I do not mean a good 

singer – you can find a good singer at your local talent 

show. I mean a true musician, skilled at playing and 

writing songs that you want to sing along with; songs 

that become the fabric of a life. I thought that with 

technologies like the Internet, musicians would have 

access to their audience. But, unfortunately, it is 

ponderous to wade through a lot of semi-talented 

musicians to find the gems of music that are really 

melodious and meaningful. 

Anything else you want to add about 

Indigo Ranch, or working with 

Richard? 

Living and working at Indigo Ranch was a wonderful 

experience. I was surrounded by friends and talented 

people. It was really a loving, supportive, and creative 

environment. Richard is a very warm and intelligent 

guy, and learning engineering was second nature to 

him. Richard and I were very dear friends, and became 

close, like brothers, during those days. It was a special 

time for me, and I think the magic of Indigo remained 

for the musicians that followed. r 

The Bing Crosby CBS Radio 

Recordings (1954-56) 7 CD box set 

These are original masters of a radio show that was done 

from 1954 to 1956. Some of the tapes I got had 3M 

numbers on them, and it’s among the earliest known tape. 

The Buddy Cole Band was four guys, with keyboard, bass, 

guitar, and drums. It was like a cocktail band, and Bing 

would sing. It was all done live; there was no multitracking 

in those days. They went into a studio, and each guy had 

a mic. These were guys that could play. It’s probably the 

biggest splicing project ever done in analog tape. I did 

over 50,000 splices. The tapes were poorly stored. Many of 

them had been flooded; the boxes were melting, the tapes 

were molding. I had to go through, inch by inch, with a 

camel hair brush to wipe off the mold, restore each of the 

splices, and fix where they had torn. -RK 

 



Giles Martin certainly comes from an enviable 

musical pedigree. His father, the legendary producer 

Sir George Martin, had more number one hit records, 

and broke down more barriers in the recording studio, 

than anyone in the history of recorded music. But for 

anyone who maintained the idea that Martin’s son 

inherited his father’s mantle when The Beatles’ Love 

project was announced in 2004, the success of that 

Grammy-winning, multi-million selling album 

(initially created for the Cirque Du Soleil Las Vegas 

show) quieted any critics. Since then Giles Martin has 

overseen several key Beatles related projects, 

including The Beatles’ groundbreaking game for Rock 

Band, as well as Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison: 

Living In The Material World documentary and 

companion album. He also acted as executive 

producer on Paul McCartney’s 2013 album New, in 

addition to making time to score films like Noble, 

which recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. 

His latest project is the mono and new surround mixes 

for the newly restored version of The Beatles first film, 

A Hard Day’s Night, which was recently released in 

theaters, as well as on Blu-Ray/DVD. 

Tell me a little bit about your 

background and how you ended up 

in your dad’s profession. 

I originally wanted to be a composer. That’s what I was 

driven towards. I started writing music for 

commercials when I was in college, although I 

Giles Martin 

“The Idea is The Important Thing” 

by Jeff Slate 

studied literature. When I was about 16 years old, my 

father started losing his hearing – he needed 

someone to be his ears, if you like. He didn’t want me 

to go into the profession, in any shape or form. I was 

quite good academically at English. He wanted me to 

get a proper job, I suppose. He didn’t want it to be 

exposed that he was losing his hearing, since he 

wanted to go on working, so I started working as an 

assistant, out of necessity on his part. 

This was around the time of The Beatles’ 

Anthology? 

Yes, the Anthology era. [1995] I was hanging around in 

the studios with him during school time and he’d 

want me to come in and listen to things. At first it 

was sounds like cymbals, because that’s where his 

hearing loss was. He’d have a quiet word with me and 

explain certain things. I remember he asked me who 

I thought should be engineering Anthology. I thought 

he should get Geoff Emerick [Tape Op #57] to do it, 

because it just made sense. Also, when Paul 

[McCartney] wrote asking for a producer [for what 

became Chaos and Creation in the Backyard], around 

2005, my dad asked me [my opinion] and I suggested 

Nigel Godrich because I thought he’d be good. He’s 

not as much a music producer as he is an engineering 

producer. That worked out well. Eventually I had 

some success writing and producing while working 

with different artists. I worked on Anthology 2 with 

my dad, because it came at a break between my 

studies. I was perfectly happy working away on my 

own thing; I had no aspirations to do Beatles work. 

When the Love project came up, I had with a concept. 

My dad wasn’t around because he wasn’t well at the 

time, and Neil Aspinall [head of Apple Corps] asked 

me if I could experiment with something that hadn’t 

worked in the past. I said that I reckoned I could 

create something by just chopping the tapes up. I’d 

heard the tapes, because I’d worked on Anthology, 

and tracks sounded live to me. Since it was live 

recordings, I figured we could create a live show out 

of the tapes. It became much more psychedelic as we 

got more into it, but that was the plan. 

Was the Love project a mash-up idea from 

the beginning, or did you think of it in 

terms of complete songs at that point? 

No, it was a mash-up from the beginning. I wanted to 

create a live feel. I know that’s a ridiculous thing to 

say, a live feel by doing mash-ups, but I already knew 

that I could get the drum solo. I already had the 

concept of the show opening with the drum solo from 

“The End,” which I knew I could combine with “Get 

Back.” It sort of worked out from there. The piano 

chord from “A Day In The Life” going into it... it just 

worked backwards. I knew when I spoke to Neil that 

I could do it. I wasn’t sure if other people would like 

it or not, but I knew that I could get it to work. I 

didn’t really have much connection with The Beatles 

at all before that. It came from doing the Love show, 


48/Tape Op#103/Mr. Martin/(continued on page 50) 

Giles at AIR Lyndhurst courtesy of C A Management & RecordProduction.com


which thankfully was critically acclaimed. Working with 

The Beatles continues to surprise me. I didn’t really feel 

deserving of it. It’s quite a big mantle to have. I 

remember after I did my demo of Love, with four or five 

tracks, everyone got enthusiastic. I remember saying to 

a friend of mine that I’d been asked to do this thing, 

but I wasn’t sure if I should do it. I didn’t know if it was 

because of my dad getting me the job, or because it 

was passed down. I’d avoided deliberately doing any 

kind of Beatles projects that felt passed down to me, 

probably to my detriment. I just didn’t want to go down 

that route. This friend of mine, who’s a producer and 

engineer, asked me if I had any idea how many people 

would love to be working on this. He said that if I 

turned it down I’d be completely crazy. I figured if I 

could put the teenage bitterness to one side and stop 

thinking about what other people would think, I could 

just enjoy myself and be honored that I had the chance 

to work in that situation. So that’s what happened. 

Let’s backtrack a bit and talk about the 

Hayley Westenra album Pure, which 

you worked on before you worked with 

The Beatles. What did that entail, and 

how was that different from the 

Beatles work? 

When I started to pursue this, everybody thought I knew 

what I was doing, but I had no idea. Honestly speaking, 

I wasn’t very good. I didn’t have a huge talent, and I 

think I made some pretty terrible records. I ended up 

getting a job working for Rob Dickins, who was head of 

Warner [Music UK]. I made some pretty bad records for 

him. He taught me a lot – he would play me “No Scrubs” 

by TLC and tell me that he wanted projects to sound like 

that. I’d have a computer set up with Logic, and it made 

me realize that there are no excuses for not making things 

sound good. People don’t care. You can’t say that you 

didn’t have the right speakers or whatever. People won’t 

care. The benchmark is there; that’s what he and my dad 

taught me. The expectation is so high. I learned how to 

make voices sound good, which is the most important 

thing. If you can make a record and the voice sounds 

good, you’re halfway there. Then I left Rob Dickins to do 

the Queen’s Jubilee Concert in Buckingham Palace. After 

that, I couldn’t get any work. My manager told me that 

the only thing he could get me was Hayley Westenra, a 

15-year-old classical singer. I told him, “No. I want to do 

rock and roll.” He said that there wasn’t anything out 

there. They sent me a vocal track. I put some strings, 

guitar, and piano in the back of it, and they really liked 

it. The album sold two million copies in the U.K. It really 

wasn’t my style of music. A friend of mine said that once 

you learn how to make things sound good, it gets kind of 

boring. There are thousands of people who know how to 

make a record with the right EQ on it, and it’s going to 

sound professional. With Hayley Westenra, she was just a 

really nice girl –she still is. The funny thing with that was 

that I remember Paul McCartney telling me, “Well done 

with that record,” because it sold massively in the U.K. It 

sort of gave me success. I was offered so many classical, 

and crossover classical, records by everyone. I was the 

person to go to. I turned them down and didn’t get paid 

for six months, because by then I knew I wanted to do 

The Beatles’ Love project. I knew in my mind that it was 

going to work, and that’s what happened. 

How have your views of using technology 

evolved? Certainly you must be a cut 

and paste guy, having grown up in a 

world far removed from the one your 

dad lived in. 

I wasn’t, actually. I started in the studio when I was 

young, so I had to learn later how to use computers. 

A lot of the young guys who have heard the Love 

project, or other things I’ve done, think I’m some sort 

of guru, and you can hear their sighs of 

disappointment when I try to operate Pro Tools. I 

mean, I can do a mix, but when people start talking 

about using shortcuts it’s like, “I know undo!” The 

Beatles’ thing was interesting, because I thought 

when I did it that I’d do what everyone else does and 

create a tempo map. But as soon as I found out how 

to chop things in time, it didn’t sound good to me. I 

actually used it like a tape machine. My sessions had 

no grid, nothing. I just did it by feel. 

You didn’t use a grid for Love? 

No. I just found it too constricting. I wanted the songs 

to move. 

Really? But surely there was some 

stretching...? 

Yeah, if there was a song coming after another song, it 

had to follow the tempo. Then, when that [new] song 

took over, that would be the song in charge. 

But that was stretching... 

I had to do it all in my head. It’s just more of a creative 

thing. I’m not anti-technology, in any way. I know 

Geoff Emerick is actually, slightly, anti-technology. I 

embrace it thoroughly. But the idea is the important 


thing, whether you’re chopping up tape or doing it in 

the computer. It can sound bad both ways, no matter 

how good your technology is. 

It’s interesting you would say that. Do you 

have favorite pieces of gear and D/A 

converters? 

I’m distrusting of someone who walks in the studio, looks 

around, and says, “I can’t work in here.” I think that 

you should just use what you have. There’s no reason 

why anyone should complain anymore. That said, I 

don’t like certain types of monitors. I don’t trust them. 

Yeah. Let’s talk about what you do like. 

I use Adam S3-As, which are older monitors. I like them 

because they’re very good on vocals and snare drums. They 

have a ribbon tweeter; they’re not good at top and bottom, 

but that’s something you can worry about later. If you can 

get the mids right, you’re generally okay. I use those, and 

I’ve used them for ten years. I haven’t gone wrong so far. 

What about D/A converters, plug-ins, and 

that sort of thing? 

I used to use Apogee. I really like Apogee, and I like Bob 

[Clearmountain, Tape Op #84] and Betty Bennett, who 

look after Apogee. Recently I’ve been working with Pro 

Tools, and I’ve been using the HDX system. I’ve had 

some great experiences. I’ve played the game because 

I’ve been working on 5.1 mixes. I find that the discrete 

5.1 digital world is great for film, but for music it 

sometimes suffers. In the Scorsese film, George 

Harrison: Living In The Material World, and when I was 

doing A Hard Day’s Night, I ended up putting it on an 

8-track, 2-inch tape because I liked the fact that it 

sounded like it gelled a bit better. 

I think most people are pretty familiar 

with the 5.1 mixes that are on The 

Beatles’ Anthology, and are probably 

familiar, as well, with the 5.1 mixes on 

the Help! DVD and Blu-Ray. 

And I did Magical Mystery Tour between that. 

Right, you weren’t involved with the 5.1 

mixes on either Help or Anthology, 

correct? 

Magical Mystery Tour was the first 5.1 I did. Yellow Submarine 

(1999) and the others were done much earlier. I was 

doing Love, I think, when they were doing those. So no, 

I wasn’t involved in those. They’re pretty good. 

You were obviously very familiar with 

what was there on the multitrack 

tapes. I assume that everything had 

been digitized over the last few years 

while you were working on Love. 

Yeah. We re-digitized a lot of the tracks at a higher rate, 

with better converters. You can always do better. We 

were quite diligent with that. 

I talked to Jimmy Page [Tape Op #102] a 

week or so ago, and he wouldn’t even 

tell me the rate that he recently did 

the Led Zeppelin remasters at. He said 

they were at a “very high rate” 

because he’s worried about someone 

coming along in 20 years when he’s 

not around. 

We have pretty much everything at 192 kHz, 24-bit. 

What were the technical obstacles that 

existed when you were making the 5.1s? 

The obvious technical thing is that we didn’t have six tracks 

[of audio]. That’s over-simplistic, as you know, but “She 

Loves You” is just mono. We tried doing various things. 

It’s done on a track-by-track basis. The tracks were 

designed to be mono – in the purest sense. Go back to 

when you’re initiating how you record a track; you have 

to envision in your mind how you’re going to hear it. You 

can only really envision what you know, unless you’re very 

forward thinking. The Beatles were certainly forward 

thinking, but they weren’t thinking about surround 

[sound] when they made A Hard Day’s Night. The thing 

with film is that you’re watching dialogue. It’s coming 

out of the central channel, even if you have left and right 

speakers. It’s almost like hitting a mono with a toffee 

hammer. You have shards of sound around you, but you 

have a central focus. 

When I went to the screening of A Hard 

Day’s Night, I was alone, so I walked 

around the room and literally put my 

ear up to the speakers to hear what 

you’d done. It’s almost as though the 

left and right channels are the 

band, and the center is the vocal, 

with a bit of background band and 

percussion, maybe. The rear is fairly 

ambient sounding. 

Yeah. I’m mixing for the film. I’m not mixing for some sort 

of crazy release. It’s not like the Love thing. I’m mixing 

for the film, so I want to make people feel like they’re 

hearing the records they know, but I want the audience 

to feel closer to them. That’s my goal. I want them to 

feel what I feel when I listen to the tape in the studio. 


I want people to feel the energy. That’s the other key 

thing to me. The Beatles weren’t old when they recorded 

those songs. I want that to come out. Sometimes we’d 

put songs on playback in [Abbey Road’s] Studio Two to 

create ambient sound, and then record the band in the 

room to create surround that way. 

Is that what you did for “She Loves You”? 

I think so, yeah. It also has crowd in it. We did that for 

everything, just to see if we wanted to use it. It’s easy, 

once you have it set up. You’re trying to create a world. 

I don’t believe you want to be in a situation where you 

feel like you’re turning around to hear sounds. You want 

to have a situation where there’s expanded stereo. We 

compared the 5.1 to the stereo and the mono in the 

mix room all the time. You want the 5.1 to be 

composed, not distracting. We wanted it to sound the 

way that we remembered hearing it. When I did the 

George Harrison film there was concern from various 

people, I think even Martin Scorsese himself, that I 

should have more of a hand in “All Things Must Pass” 

to modernize it. I thought, “No.” I wanted it to sound 

the way I remembered it, and how I remember it is as 

a soaring, beautiful piece of music. The 5.1 lets you do 

that. It takes it closer into your head; just the nature 

of facing forward and having speakers behind you. This 

is what people forget about. They think about 5.1 as 

hearing strings in the back, or whatever. With 5.1 the 

sonic image gets closer to your forehead, if that makes 

sense. You can get things to move closer. 

In a lot of movies, you have dialogue 

and then the music will jump a 

couple of decibels. 

Yeah. I think that it has to complement the film. From the 

reviews I saw, I think it does that. We pieced together 

scenes, kind of like archaeology, finding the speech 

tracks for the film. I also worked thinking that if the 

music were too clean, it wouldn’t sound like it was part 

of the film. My concern was that it had to all fit 

together as one piece. The thing I’ve learned from film, 

and working with really good film mixers, is that what 

you don’t want to do is to surprise people too much 

sonically. You want to comfort people and take them on 

a journey. If you do anything that’s just showing off, 

you’ll take people out of the suspension of disbelief 

that they’re under. 

What shape were the tapes in? Did you 

do what you did with Love, where 

you lined everything up from 

separate session tapes? 

I wish we had done that, but Hard Day’s Night was done 

before they started bouncing 4-tracks. So that wasn’t 

there. We used techniques to try to extract guitars 

slightly. We were developing new techniques that aren’t 

there yet. This golden chalice of de-mixing isn’t quite 

there, but we’re getting closer. I don’t want to use the 

words “stereo spread” because that doesn’t work either, 

but we developed some pretty new techniques. I can 

widen a mono track and instruments. As soon as it’s not 

good for the track, or as soon as you start hearing 

anomalies going on, you have to stop. On A Hard Day’s 

Night I used techniques to try to make it as real as 

possible. There’s an element of de-mixing going on, 

because otherwise, if I wanted the vocals on the center, 

52/Tape Op#103/Mr. Martin/(Fin.) 

as I do, and you’ve only got one other track, you’re going 

to have everything in the center. As you said, I put the 

band left and right and the vocal center, and then maybe 

the room sound from Studio Two in the rear. As my dad 

always said about mixing; it’s an attempt to create a 

version that’s the best live performance that there is. The 

further intention is to paint new pictures. I would say 

that this new version of A Hard Day’s Night isn’t painting 

new pictures. It’s the former. 

There was a clarity and definition to George 

Harrison’s 12-string on “I Should Have 

Known Better” in the scene where 

they’re in the luggage cage. The 12- 

string seemed just a little sharper. 

“I Should Have Known Better” was one of the songs that 

I kept going back to. Bizarrely, it was one of those 

tracks that is much brighter than you remember it. 

John [Lennon]’s voice sounds great, but the track is 

way bright. I went back to it loads of times. I think we 

try and go for clarity. We try to hear the instruments, 

because that makes it sound more live. 

Were some tracks more challenging than 

others? “A Hard Day’s Night” sounded 

like it may have been harder to deal 

with sonically. 

I would say “A Hard Day’s Night” was the most difficult, 

because as soon as you move the vocals to the center 

on that song, it changes the way the song sounds. I 

went back to it so many times. The drums on “A Hard 

Day’s Night” are very sizzly. 

Ringo [Starr]’s cymbal work is all over 

that record, isn’t it? 

Yeah, it’s all over it. As soon as I moved the vocal over to 

the left, it solved everything and it sounded great. But 

then, for me, that went against what I was trying to do, 

if that makes sense. I thought, as a film experience, 

that I wanted it to be the way that the film was made 

by [director] Richard Lester. So I’d agree with that. I 

can’t defend it. Hands up! 

I’m trying to pick out the things that I 

could tell were challenging. 

That absolutely was. It was quite challenging. The most 

challenging thing actually was the spoken word. That’s the 

most challenging thing, because it sounds so distorted. 

What did you do? Were you able to locate a 

lower generation source? 

We had a CD reissue that’s cleaner sounding, but it has no 

top on it. We had a lot more hiss going on with ours 

than they did on theirs. But for me, I’d rather have a 

bit more hiss and make it sound natural than trying to 

be too clean. Another hard thing was the weight and 

expectations of the people who are going to be 

listening to your work. The Beatles are going to hear 

this, and there are also people who really, really care 

about the outcome. 

You seem to have a sense of the mantel 

of The Beatles’ legacy. You have to 

please them, but you are aware, too, 

that there are people out there who 

care an awful lot about the music, 

even picking the mixes apart. How 

does that weigh on you, or factor into 

your work? 

When you’re doing the work, you can’t think about it all the 

time. Otherwise you’d be paralyzed with doubt. You’re 

working by yourself, with your engineer, and you’ve got 

concepts and ideas that might be wrong or right. But you 

try everything you can think of then you step back and 

think, “Okay, [how would this sound] if I were a Beatles 

fan?” It’s now become their music as well. It’s become 

music that belongs to the generations. The last thing that 

I want to do is any harm. Somebody said to me that Love 

was their favorite Beatles album. It’s not a Beatles album! 

It’s them, but it’s not. On one hand, if I can make people 

discuss things and listen to music – not just listen to it, but 

hear it – that’s great. That’s what drives me. If people don’t 

like what I do, it’s generally because they love the originals 

so much and they can’t bear to hear anything else. I respect 

that. I listen and respect what people have to say. You have 

to. You can’t be distracted by it, but you have to honor it. 

You had to have a sense of that summer of 

1964 and what was going on at the time. 

I’m sure you’ve heard stories from Paul, 

Ringo, your Dad, and anyone else 

around them. What is your feeling about 

that time, having lived with A Hard Day’s 

Night over the last year or two? 

I think it’s energy and commitment. I think that ‘64 was 

the year my dad had 32 number one records in the U.K. 

with different artists. If you look at the ‘64 tour diary 

of The Beatles, it’s just fascinating. It’s actually on the 

Internet. You look at it and think, “When did they 

record?” I remember looking at it thinking that it was 

just completely bonkers. You see a four-day gap, and 

they made an album there. 

Yet it’s the first record they’d made that 

was all Lennon/McCartney originals, 

plus all those B-sides and EPs. 

For me, that’s the most shocking thing. They seemed to 

warp time. I sat down with Paul last year, and we talked 

a bit about it. He quite enjoys it. He’s the same person, 

really. My dad is still the same person. But you just get 

older. There was no ceiling in anything they did in ‘64, 

and that revealed itself in ‘66 and ‘67. They had their 

heads down. Their ambition was to take over the world 

with great music. The only way they could do that was 

by shouting and being as energetic as they could in front 

of a microphone. Even when they sang quietly they were 

loud. That’s what shocked me most when I got the tapes 

out. They’re gentle because they’re great and have 

emotion, but they always have a ruggedness to them. r 

 

 




Crane Song 

Avocet 2 monitor controller 

Confidence. Transparency. I like my monitor controllers 

like I like my politicians. I want confidence that I am 

hearing what is and what is not there. Confidence that the 

choices I am making in terms of signal processing are the 

right ones. Confidence that I have chosen the best mic 

and preamp for the source. Confidence that what leaves 

the studio is going to translate to the real world. And most 

importantly, I do not want a spin on it. Dung heap or 

gleaming golden chalice of light — just give it to me 

straight. The newly updated Avocet 2 from Crane Song is a 

device that delivers that confidence and transparency — 

and so much more. 

I have been a fan of Dave Hill and his gear for a long 

time. From Summit Audio to Crane Song and Dave Hill 

Designs — many glorious pieces have been produced 

under these monikers. He is not rehashing or recreating 

the past, but rather pushing the boundaries of technology 

and audio gear. Dave Hill was one of the first with the 

belief that A/D and D/A conversion could be so much 

more than the status quo, when he created the Crane Song 

HEDD [Tape Op #26], a converter that to this day is still 

considered by many to be one of the best. So, when the 

opportunity arose to review a new version of the Crane 

Song Avocet, I jumped at the chance. 

Crane Song gear is handmade in Superior, Wisconsin, 

and everything about it says no compromise. Build, look, 

feel, and sonics are all, well, superior. 

The Avocet 2 is an analog monitor management tool, 

with discrete Class A electronics and a newly redesigned, 

fourth-generation D/A converter (more on that later). The 

main unit is an elegant 2RU-height rackmount box with a 

clean, brushed-metal front plate that has the ubiquitous 

green Crane Song light and a 1/4’’ TRS headphone jack. The 

back is packed with XLR jacks for three analog inputs, three 

digital inputs, and three speaker outputs — all stereo. 

There’s also a second TRS headphone output, as well as 

optical and RCA jacks if you prefer S/PDIF format for digital 

input 1. On-the-fly gain trim is available for each of the six 

inputs. The Avocet 2’s functionality is controlled by a welldesigned 

desktop remote. The main volume knob is a 

comfortable size, has a nice resistance, and is stepped in 

1 dB increments from −32 to +12 dB. The text around the 

dial is marked in 2 dB increments, but LEDs encircling the 

knob display each dB step by lighting one or two at a time. 

Adjustments of the volume knob result in small clicks from 

the main unit due to the use of relays, inspiring confidence 

in the analog audio path, which remains safe and clear inside 

of the main unit, without need for a detrimental detour 

down a long remote cable. 

Many mix and mastering engineers are already using the 

original Avocet — and for good reason. The capabilities and 

sound of the Avocet cannot be beat. Having level-offset on 

all of the input sources is an indispensable feature that 

should be standard on every monitor controller. I was able 

to level-match every source using an SPL meter, allowing me 

to make real-world judgments between the unprocessed 

analog 2-mix coming directly from my summing amp; the 

mix with bus compression and EQ via the digital input from 

my DAW; and reference sources such as CDs, and files 

streaming wirelessly via my Airport Express. Additionally, the 

Avocet offers speaker defeat, polarity flip, mono mode, 

speaker dim, mute, and talkback. It can even truncate the 

selected digital input to 16 bits. Moreover, output 3 can be 

dedicated to an active subwoofer and used in parallel with 

output 1 or 2. All digital sources are up-sampled to over 

200 kHz and jitter-reduced for maximum accuracy. Up to four 

Avocet rackmount units can be chained together to facilitate 

5.1–7.1 surround mixing. Metering is configured out-of-thebox 

to display input signal from −46 to 0 dB in 2 dB steps, 

with multiple options available via internal jumpers. 

The headphone section accepts three sources: the 

selected main input; the post–volume/polarity/mono 

version of the main input; or the aux input, independent 

of the main input selection. All three headphone sources 

have dedicated volume trim. The headphone amp in this 

unit sounds beautiful, is well thought out, and is user 

friendly. Once headphone sources and levels are set, it is 

as easy as hitting the mute button to defeat the mains for 

tracking in the same room or for critical listening sans 

bleed. Likewise, assigning an artist mix to the headphones 

is as simple as feeding the Avocet’s aux input and 

choosing that for the headphone source. 

At this point, if you want to learn more about what the 

Avocet offers in terms of routing and control, you should 

download the manual from the Crane Song website. The unit 

has many more features than there’s room to discuss 

here — including integration with other devices — and 

options abound in its control set as well as in the hardware 

jumpers, trims, and pads inside the main box. 

While the functionality of the Avocet 2 is the same as 

previous versions, what is not the same is the newly 

reworked D/A converter. Dave Hill has invested over two 

years of research, trial and error, and countless 

experiments into his new, fourth-generation DAC, and it 

was certainly worth the time. Improvements have been 

made in the quartz crystal reference oscillator responsible 

for the Avocet 2’s clocking, and the result is a significant 

reduction in jitter. When I spoke to Dave Hill and 

mentioned I was not an overly technical chap, he laid it 

out, in what I’m sure were the simplest terms possible: 

“We use a sample-rate converter to do jitter reduction, 

and it up-samples to about 211 kHz. The reference 

oscillator has ultra-low phase noise, which translates to 

extremely low jitter. It is very difficult to achieve this kind 

of performance. Custom parts, custom quartz crystals — 

let’s put it this way, to make it significantly better, when 

you are using $30–$40 parts, and throwing a bunch of 

them away due to poor performance, they become 

$300–$400 parts. I’m not sure at what point you stop 

hearing things, but I am asking it to do something that is 

at the edge of its capabilities. The part that is in the 

Avocet 2 measures a phase-noise floor of about −115 dB 

at 10 Hz off the center frequency, which is really quite low. 

As a comparison, I put in a part that was at −105 dB and 

did a listening test, and you can hear the difference.” 

What I love about trying to convey what something 

sounds like with words, is that you have to take the time 

to listen and train your ears to discern what it is you are 

trying to hear. In the case of jitter, I have never had a 

way to effectively identify and judge what jitter in the 

clock signal does to audio or how it even presents itself. 

There is an excellent explanation on the Crane Song 

website called “The Jitter Files.” It is a set of critical 

listening tests that lets you train yourself to hear clock 

jitter and its effect on various sources. Song examples 

are presented in their final, mixed form and then with 

only the artifacts of jitter and inaccurate clocking. What 

blew my mind was that what I perceived as warmth was 

actually jitter coloring the midrange. Why is this a big 

deal? If you are hearing mud or maybe what you perceive 

as “warmth” in playback that is not actually there, and 

you reach for EQ as a remedy, you are altering the audio 

unnecessarily. If playback is not as pure as it can be, you 

are guessing. Two months ago, I couldn’t tell you what 

picoseconds were, let alone that a reduction from 13 ps 

to less than 1 ps would make a significant difference in 

my work, but it does. 

This stuff is subtle. And to the average listener on 

an average playback system, it may ultimately be 

irrelevant. However, as Mr. Hill noted, “There is always 

going to be someone with a better system, and the 

flaws will be evident.” 

I asked Dave what all of this R&D and the 

improvements to the DAC would do to the cost of the 

Avocet 2, and he said that when all was said and done, the 

price would not increase. Personally, I would pay more, but 

I quickly realized that Dave Hill is not trying to turn a 

quick buck. He has dedicated his life to this pursuit of 

pushing the boundaries of audio quality. 

Because of the depth and layers of functionality in this 

unit, it is not a monitor controller you will plug-and-play 

out of the box. In advance of my receiving the unit, Tim 

at Crane Song contacted me to schedule a walkthrough of 

the unit with their head tech. After a short tutorial, I was 

off and running. Basically, the unit is set up in layers. 

Several of the buttons have a second function that is 

accessed by using the “Shift” button. Some of these 

include accessing the headphone sources and individual 

levels as well as optional subwoofer configuration. 

Importantly, once I understood the thought process 

behind the unit’s design, it all became very intuitive. 

When I first started using the Avocet 2, my impressions 

were very positive, and they haven’t wavered since. I like 

the sonic image both side-to-side and back-to-front; the 

super-smooth and even response across the entire 

frequency range at any volume; the stellar transient 

response that becomes very apparent when listening to a 

snare drum, because it actually sounds like a snare drum 

in the room; the deep functionality, level-matching 

offsets, and other useful options; and of course, the 

supreme clarity. Sound-wise, everything is so perfectly in 

focus and defined that it allows you to “see” the mix, 

which opens new doors to the placement of mix elements. 

I love watching clients and friends sit in the mix position 

and reach out between the speakers to touch the top of 

the singer’s head because its location in the sound field is 

so strongly represented. When a listening experience is 

that tangible, it is a powerful thing, and it changes the 

listeners’ emotional connection to what they are hearing. 


54/Tape Op#103/Gear Reviews/ 

This is what making, recording, and mixing music is all 

about. Put your left foot in.

Moreover, I am convinced that because of the 

Avocet 2’s superior clocking and signal path, my brain 

doesn’t have to work as hard, and therefore, listening 

fatigue comes much later in the day. At the end of a recent 

run of 10–12 hour days, I was still making good choices 

in terms of balances and EQ — and even the end-ofsession 

roughs sounded close to finished mixes. 

Over time, I simply became addicted to the unit. The 

result of all of this time, energy, and technical prowess is the 

most beautifully transparent and detailed monitor controller 

I have ever heard. Both analog and digital sources are 

rendered with extreme accuracy. Integration of the Avocet 2 

has been a huge time saver, and its use has produced better 

results. At the end of the day, none of the tech specs matter 

one bit. The Avocet 2 with its new and improved DAC sounds 

awesome. We are humans making music for humans (and 

maybe some plants too), and the tools that facilitate 

emotional resonance and assist in translation of artistic 

intent are indispensable. If a new monitor controller is on 

your need-to-get or upgrade list, you would be doing 

yourself a serious disservice by not giving the Avocet 2 a 

serious look, and more importantly, listen. 

($2,999 MSRP; www.cranesong.com) 

–Geoff Stanfield 

KRK 

Rokit 5 G3 active monitor 

Anyone who has read my previous reviews may know 

that two years ago, I left the comfort of my trusted 

Oakland studio to start mixing primarily in my 

apartment in Brooklyn. I started working right away 

with the speakers I happened to have with me — Rokit 

5 G2 monitors — planning on upgrading them as soon 

as I got settled. I immediately (and surprisingly) felt 

very comfortable mixing on them, and managed to 

eventually completely forget that I wasn’t supposed to 

use “cheap” speakers for professional mixing. Since 

then, I have auditioned about six or seven similarlysized 

speakers of very varying prices, and the Rokit 5 G2 

has held its own quite nicely, even against speakers 

three times its price. The most recent audition was for 

the next generation Rokit 5 G3. 

Physically not a whole lot changed from G2 to G3; it 

still has the telltale yellow glass-aramid composite woofer 

cone, 1’’ soft-dome tweeter, and slotted bass port on the 

bottom of the face. The outline of the box changed a bit, 

becoming slightly less rounded and more angular, with a 

trapezoidal bevel defining the shape of the faceplate. The 

back is also mostly unchanged, with the same I/O 

(balanced XLR and TRS, plus unbalanced RCA), and the 

same two controls the G2 had (volume as well as HF level 

adjustment), plus one more — a LF level adjustment with 

four positions (−2, −1, 0, and +2 dB). I’m glad the G3 has 

the extra control, and I’ll tell you why in just a moment. 

The first thing I encountered after plugging the Rokit 5 

G3s into my speaker-switching matrix was that I thought 

they had arrived DOA. No sound came immediately out of 

them, although the logo on the front was glowing, and I 

was sure audio was passing down the line. Roughly a 

second later, though, I heard the audio gurgling up from 

the murky depths, and within another second, there was 

full-color audio blazing through the G3s. It turns out that 

the Rokit 5 G3 goes into an “Auto-Standby” mode when it 

hasn’t been fed any audio for thirty minutes, unlike any 

other studio monitor I have come across in my 17-plus 

years of hanging around pro-audio equipment. I find this 

“feature” a little unsettling and rather odd, since I feel like 

any power saving during this sleeping is completely 

overshadowed by the likelihood of cranking up the volume 

of whatever is feeding the speakers during that second of 

silence, only to experience a loud surprise when it wakes 

up. Plus, there’s that moment of “huh, what’s going on?” 

when switching over to them for the first time in a half 

hour, and anything unexpected like that interrupts your 

mix flow, which ain’t good. 

Aside from that functional issue, I think this is a fine 

speaker. It’s more different sonically from the G2 than I 

thought it’d be. I find the G3 warmer in the top, that is to 

say that I can hear more high-end detail on the G2. The 

G3 is also a little tubbier in the low and low-mids than the 

G2, which I already feel is a little on the boomy side. Even 

after notching the LF adjustment down a couple of dB, the 

G3 still has an ample amount of low-mid info, at least 

living a foot from the back wall in my small mix room. As 

for true low end, well, it is still just a 5’’ woofer, so if you 

really want to hear subs clearly, you’ll need a subwoofer — 

or full-bandwidth headphones — but that’s the case with 

any speaker this size. As for the high end, even with the 

HF adjustment bumped up a dB, the G2 has a fair amount 

more sizzle, and I consider it to be dark speaker! 

The takeaway is that the Rokit 5 G3 is really quite good 

for its extremely low price tag of $300 per pair. I’ve grown 

to like it more and more, as it burns in and I get used to 

its sound. I think I’ll hold on to my G2 pair for now, but 

that has as much to do with familiarity as anything else. 

The G3 is warmer and “rounder,” and therefore may sound 

better to some users, but I would definitely recommend 

coupling them (as with any small, affordable monitor) 

with some headphones that have both frequency extremes 

better covered (I rely heavily on my Audio-Technica 

ATH-M50 [Tape Op #63]), to make sure your subs and 

sibilance are both kept in check. 

($149.50 street each; www.krksys.com) 

–Eli Crews 

TASCAM 

UH-7000 mic preamp 

& USB interface 

Instead of offering eight or more inputs loaded with mic 

preamps in a never-ending quest for bang-for-buck, some 

companies are designing two-channel units that put the 

emphasis on quality rather than quantity. Such is the latest 

USB interface from TASCAM for both Mac and PC. The 

UH-7000 costs about the same as a mid-priced multi–in/out 

interface, but its analog I/O is limited to two channels, with 

two built-in mic preamps. It’s capable of 24-bit, 192 kHz 

operation, and TASCAM has done a bang-up job of making 

this a high-end unit with premium sound. 

The UH-7000 is a 2RU-height, half-rack unit, but it is 

made for tabletop use, with feet and no rack ears. 

Connection to computer is via USB 2.0. The drivers and 

firmware should be checked, downloaded, and installed 

before firing up the unit. Installation, including new 

firmware, was as smooth as a shoulder rub. The front panel 

is simplicity itself with three buttons and three knobs. The 

power button on the left is single function, but the two 

smaller buttons on the right do double duty. If you push 

the left button, the UH-7000’s Mixer Panel application 

opens up on your computer, while the right-hand button 

toggles the link state of the output volume knob. Link 

controls the headphone and main volume together, while 

unlink, no surprise, gives control of only the headphone, 

resetting the main output to full volume. If you hold 

either button down, phantom power is engaged for its 

respective mic input. The rest of the front panel is 

occupied by the 1/4’’ headphone jack and status LEDs for 

sample rate, link, and phantom power. That leaves plenty 

of space devoted to each channel’s input knob and 

associated 20-segment meter. The knobs are big, feel 

solid, and offer just the right amount of resistance. The 

peak-hold meters hang for a second at the highest point, 

providing great ease in setting input volume. They are nice 

enough that I wish they could be switched to output. The 

back is busier, with XLR mic inputs, 1/4’’ TRS line inputs, 

and XLR line outputs. XLR jacks handle digital I/O, 

switchable between AES/EBU and S/PDIF formats. Analog 

and digital I/O can be used simultaneously, for up to four 

channels of audio between the UH-7000 and your chosen 

DAW. There are no instrument-level DIs on the unit, and 

neither are there inserts. 

The included Mixer Panel software is straightforward yet 

flexible, incorporating a three-tabbed UI. The Interface tab 

is for status and settings like driver version, sample rate, 

clock source, etc. The Mixer tab is for controlling the 

UH-7000’s onboard mixer. When set for the default 

Multitrack Mode, it offers mixing of input signals to the 

DAW, routing of input and DAW signals to the outputs, and 

a cross-fader for low-latency monitoring. You can choose 

either the mic preamp or the line input for each analog input 

channel. The digital channels can be mixed and routed 

separately from the analog channels. Plus, the mixer has 

access to four virtual output channels from the DAW. 

Switching to Stereo Mode simplifies everything, mixing 

everything into a single stereo track that goes to the DAW 

and all of the UH-7000’s outputs simultaneously. The Effects 

tab is for the built-in effects. The usual suspects are 

available, including various dynamics, EQ, and reverb 

effects. I found the latter most useful, allowing the artist to 

hear reverb in the monitor mix without having to commit 

reverb to the DAW recording. 

When I first listened to the UH-7000 during playback 

of a song I was almost finished mixing, the first thing that 

jumped out at me was the vocals, and I immediately felt 

that they could use a touch more reverb. I could hear just 

that much deeper and cleaner into the song. At home, I 

use a long-in-the-tooth but still useful TC Electronic 

Studio Konnekt 48. It delivers excellent sound for a home 

studio, and I never experienced any problems transferring 

projects between home and studio. The difference in 

conversion quality between the TC and the TASCAM is 

obvious to the trained ear. The TASCAM’s capture is a little 

deeper and more distinct, so the edges of the sound, 

especially distorted guitars and such, are smoother and 

more realistic. The UH-7000’s preamp is an even bigger 

step up in quality. Although transformerless (like just 

about every other built-in preamp design), it’s smoother, 

with no hint of the graininess found in the TC and most 

interface preamps I’ve tried. It even holds its own against 

standalone preamps like my Rupert Neve Designs Portico 

II [Tape Op #82] and Warm Audio units [#91, #97] at 

home, as well as the Neve and API preamps at The Kitchen 

Studios. Not to say that the TASCAM preamp sounds like 

these transformer-based designs — its sound isn’t as “big” 

as Neve’s, and its highs aren’t as sweet as API’s — but I 

wouldn’t hesitate to use it alongside these for its clear 

image and full lows. The only thing I wanted was inserts 

for the TASCAM preamps so I could use analog compressors 

going in. John Painter at The Kitchen thought that the 


Gear Reviews/(continued on page 50)/Tape Op#103/55

UH-7000 was a steal just for its preamps. Importantly, 

the UH-7000 doesn’t offer direct outs for the preamps, 

so our preamp evaluation required both A/D and D/A 

conversion for the TASCAM, which makes for quite a 

compliment on both the TASCAM preamp and 

conversion! 

TASCAM has hit a sweet spot with its UH-7000 — 

great converters, mic preamps that can play with the 

big boys without being sent home crying, and a price 

the working stiff can actually justify. For the 

singer/songwriter, DJ, location recordist, or in-the-box 

musician, the UH-7000 delivers a step up in sound 

quality from the usual fare. And with its digital I/O, you 

can integrate its premium mic preamps and converters 

with a multichannel interface that you already own. 

($599.95 street; www.tascam.com) 

–Alan Tubbs 

Massey Plugins 

THC Distortion Stompbox plug-in 

The Massey THC (Total Harmonic Corruption) plugin 

is a no-nonsense analog-modeled distortion 

“stompbox.” THC has the same familiar controls — 

drive, filter (tone), and level — that you’d find on your 

average overdrive or distortion pedal. But that’s where 

the similarities end. THC really does sound like it’s 

“corrupting” the signal — walking the line between 

digital clipping and something from a Van Halen 

album. I’ve used at least a dozen different distortion 

plug-ins, and this one is definitely a bit different. Let’s 

get one thing out of the way; I’m not suggesting that 

you try any type of distortion plug-in in place of a tube 

amp, but there are plenty of other uses for such a 

handy little noise-maker. 

On a parallel drum bus, THC delivers instant 

intensity. It’s gritty and blown out, and the filter 

throttles the cymbals that typically become harsh when 

distorted. Particularly on room mics, this thing can get 

nasty, in a good way — and in a hurry. I recently was 

given a song to mix in which one of the guitar tones 

was flubby and weak, so I cranked up THC and blended 

it in to add some bite. As long as you’re not shooting 

for a B.B. King tone, THC can come in handy. When used 

on vocals, THC renders them immediately ready for hip 

beer commercials, so long as you add some slap back. 

However, of all of the scenarios that I tried, my favorite 

was adding THC to reverbs and delays to make them less 

digital and soft sounding. Even turning up the drive 

5–10% and then low-pass filtering down to 5 kHz can 

make your generic “Hall 1” preset sound useful. For 

instance, on a recent mix, I was having trouble making 

a slap-delay plug-in sit in a track that was dark and midheavy, 

but THC provided some overdrive and helped to 

bring the delay onto the same plane as the dirty vocal 

track. It’s also important to note that if you’re using 

AAX plug-ins, THC features a wet/dry knob for even 

more flexibility. 

All of these scenarios involve using THC as a 

mixing tool, but if you find yourself doing lots of earcandy 

production, distorting intros or breakdowns, or 

are just looking to upgrade from using ampsimulators 

to dirty up your tracks, download the demo 

of THC and try it out for yourself. 

($69 direct; www.masseyplugins.com) 

–Dave Hidek 

Graefe Designs 

TruTone Head 

We’ve all seen photos of studios that own a wall of guitar tube 

heads. Certainly, having a dozen or more amps to choose from 

might be ideal, but the total cost can be prohibitive for a studio 

owner. After all, when top-shelf heads cost several thousand 

dollars each, you can buy an amp farm — or a lot of recording 

gear. With that in mind, I’ve been trying to build a small 

collection of very flexible recording amplifiers. While discussing 

maintenance on our Sony console with Tom Graefe, I learned that 

he was about to market his hand-built guitar amps. Graefe spent 

years working for MCI/Sony in their Florida facility. In Electrical 

Engineering circles, he is known for his high headroom, high 

signal-to-noise ratio designs. While I am very familiar with tube 

amp designs and features, I wanted to give the Graefe TruTone 

Head a deep review. I enlisted Dave Cerminara. When he’s not 

touring as the lead guitarist for Legs Like Tree Trunks, Dave does 

a lot of engineering work. Having someone who plays and records 

full time seemed to be the right call for a piece of gear like this. 

–Garrett Haines 

The Graefe TruTone is an all-tube 50 watt unit available as a 

head or in a 1x12 Combo configuration. Powered by a pair of 

EL34s, the TruTone offers the front end of two classic guitar 

amplifiers — a Fender Twin Reverb and a Marshall JCM800, labeled 

“USA” and “British Voice” respectively. The Twin setting exhibits 

the same rich low end and full-bodied response as the original, 

with plenty of headroom before breakup and a clean top end. The 

Marshall side rolls off some of that low end and instead presents 

a tighter, more defined midrange, especially in higher gain 

scenarios. This attenuated low end is super beneficial when 

pushing the amp into extreme distortion as it sits nicely above my 

kick and bass without having to reach for an EQ. It also sounds 

much more natural than simply turning the bass knob down. 

The rest of the TruTone’s front panel is deceptively simple with 

all the standard amp controls — gain, master, treble, middle, bass, 

and presence — but there’s a “Mo Bass” feature which I’ll get to 

in a second. Gain and master controls work in tangent as is to be 

expected — gain down, master up for clean, and vice versa for 

overdrive. Unlike other amps, however, the TruTone responds to 

pick control and heavy/light handedness, meaning that even with 

gains all at 11, the amp goes crystal clean when given softer 

plucks (you can see a demonstration of this feature at the Graefe 

Designs website). This not only makes the amp a pleasure to play 

but also makes the lack of a footswitch or channel selector a 

complete nonissue. Also worth noting here is the amp’s remarkable 

signal-to-noise ratio, even at these most extreme settings. 

Somewhat hidden is the unlabeled push/pull feature on the 

gain control for more drive. The added gain stage tastefully 

boosts the amount of distortion without going into unusable 

sizzle-crunch like certain hi-gain heads love to do. More 

importantly, pulling the gain maintains the overall balance and 

character of the selected amp voicing; it extends the overdrive 

without adding a nasty midrange bump or rolling off more lows. 

Between the two input voices and added gain stage, the TruTone 

offers an incredible range of options, not to mention the tone 

controls are some of the most responsive I’ve encountered. 

Now back to the Mo Bass control, which doesn’t add some 

incredible low end, but instead tightens the top end and adds 

unreal articulation to even the most overdriven setting. 

Initially, I assumed this was some kind of built-in parallel 

compressor as it accentuated pluck in a similar way to, say, a 

Barber Tone Press, but Mr. Graefe clarified that the control 

actually handles negative feedback at lower frequencies, thus 


56/Tape Op#103/Gear Reviews/ 

allowing for more controlled lows and tighter highs. This is not 

an EQ but exactly the type of feature you’d expect from a man 

with 40 years of experience building recording consoles.

The amp runs at 4, 8, or 16 Ω. Effects can be inserted via an all-tube line-level loop that 

can be placed in series or parallel (cool!) — perfect for using rack effects processors. There 

is no built-in reverb tank, as doing so would compromise the signal-to-noise performance. 

The Graefe TruTone can cover a lot of sonic ground. But unlike some flexible designs, the 

Graefe does everything well. If you want one or two amps that can cover your needs, the 

Graefe is a first choice. The quality of the hand-made construction puts it on par with the 

finest recording gear. Buy one, and you won’t have to worry about upgrading down the road. 

(Combo $2625, head $2325; www.graefedesigns.com) 

–Dave Cerminara 

Moog 

Minifooger analog effects pedals 

Moog Music has been making big, sophisticated pedals — Moogerfoogers — since 1997. 

They’re amazing pedals with lots of synth-inspired modulation features, but they’re pretty 

expensive and are too complex for my puny brain. For me, Moog’s new stripped-down 

Minifooger pedal line is more like it. Compared to their older siblings, the Minifoogers are 

smaller, simpler, and less expensive. They feel more like traditional guitar pedals, and the 

effects themselves are more traditional guitar effects: boost, distortion, delay, tremolo, and 

ring modulation. But the features and sounds are still clearly Moog. Each pedal includes an 

expression pedal input, and the controls on each pedal are very interactive. 

For the past few months, I’ve been working on an LP for Sie Lieben Maschinen — oldschool 

post-punk jams. Bassist/guitarist/main-dude Josh Newton lives on the other side of 

the country, and he’s been tracking straight into Logic using amp simulators, then sending me 

his DI tracks to re-amp. So I’ve done tons of re-amping lately, which has been educational and 

super fun. With good performances already tracked, I can take my time and experiment with 

pedals, amps, and mics. If you haven’t ever done this, get a re-amp box and do it! You’ll find 

yourself hearing things you never have time to hear in the heat of a normal session. Anyway, 

over the course of this record, I found myself using the MF Delay and MF Trem all over the 

place. The MF Delay is just fantastic — dark and crunchy. It can do 700 ms of bucket-brigade 

delay, and it has a great-sounding pre-delay distortion that’s controllable via the Drive knob. 

Buy this pedal. The MF Trem is another winner. I have a few solid tremolo options in my 

studio — a silverface Fender Twin, a ‘60s Ampeg Jet, a Boss TR-2 — and the Moog is a very 

different beast than all of them. The MF Trem wave-shapes are complex, weird things; and at 

some settings, the tremolo effect creates enough phasing to get into rotary-speaker territory. 

My Boss TR-2 sounds boring and pedestrian in comparison, and the MF Trem has gotten lots 

of use on the SLM songs. 

I also used the MF Drive on a number of sessions. Distortion pedals are funny — there 

are millions of them, they’re hard to describe, and sometimes one is the right thing and 

sometimes it isn’t. The MF Drive is a thick, nice sounding overdrive that’s flexible and works 

well on a number of different sources. It includes a resonant low-pass filter, which seems like 

a cool Moog-ish feature, but in actuality, the LPF didn’t do much for me. The resonance is 

pretty mild and I wasn’t able to get sick filter-sweeps out of it. I need to spend some time 

controlling the cutoff with an expression pedal to see if I like it that way. Anyway, as a 

distortion pedal, it’s cool. It made the cut on a number of Sie Lieben Maschinen guitar tracks, 

but my favorite use of this pedal was on vocals. I’ve been trying to get “out of the box” more 

by running pedals as insert effects — send the recorded track to a re-amp box, then into 

some pedals, then back into the computer via a DI. Recently, I mixed a steamroller of a 

sludge/noise EP for North Carolina’s Power Take-Off. Gus’s vocals are an intense shout/spoken 

thing, and I spent a good hour or two hunting for the right vocal chain. I ended up with the 

MF Drive into the MF Delay. The MF Drive sounded gnarly and interesting without being wooly, 

and the MF Delay sounded great while I torqued on its knobs as the re-recorded vocal take 

went back into the box. Awesome! 

Because I’m not a fan of ring-modulation effects in general, I spent the least amount of 

time with the MF Ring. But I do want to mention that the MF Ring has an expression pedal 

control over rate — which lets a player find useful modulation spots while playing. [Even if 

you’re not a ring-mod fan, Moog suggests trying the MF Ring on sources that you might not 

consider initially, like snare and kick drum. –AH] 

Yes, I took a few Minifoogers to band practice too, but this is a recording magazine, right? 

Here’s the takeaway from band practice: the other guitar player in my band is buying an MF Delay. 

Like other Moog products, the Minifoogers carry a two-year warranty (when registered) 

and are built in the Moog factory in the U.S. Of course, nowadays there is no shortage of 

innovative boutique pedals at this price point, but Moog has done a great job with these 

pedals. They sound great, and they’re fun to dial in. The MF Delay and MF Trem in particular 

are clear winners. 


(MF Boost $139 street, MF Drive $169, MF Ring $149, MF Delay $199, MF Trem $179, EP-3 

expression pedal $40; www.moogmusic.com) 

–Scott Evans 

Gear Reviews/(continued on page 58)/Tape Op#103/57

58/Tape Op#103/Gear Reviews/(continued on page 60) 

Tonecraft Audio 

363 tube DI 

The 363 is the first product from San Diego–based 

Tonecraft Audio, but owner Jon Erickson is no 

newcomer to the studio equipment scene. Most 

notably, he spent some time at A-Designs Audio and 

was chiefly responsible for the Pacifica mic preamp 

[Tape Op #49], among other products. A bass player 

himself, Jon set out to make a DI that would be just at 

home in a live setting as in the studio, and he gave it 

a feature set that makes it more versatile than most 

other DIs on the market. 

Jon was gracious enough to personally drop off the 

demo unit at my new studio, Rarefied Recording, where 

he walked me through the basics of the box. It has your 

usual input and thru 1/4’’ connections, but it quickly 

diverges from your run-of-the-mill DI from there. In 

addition to a customary XLR output, it also has a 

separate TRS output. Each output has its own 

dedicated level control and ground lift, and the 

usefulness of this will become clear later in the review. 

Besides the large input gain knob, the unit also has a 

Baxandall EQ with ±20 dB of boost/cut and a true 

bypass switch. 

The look and heft of this thing is already 

impressive, but when you turn it on, you are treated to 

even more of that gut feeling that the box has mojo. 

You can totally hear and feel the current humming, and 

the front panel has a beautiful back light that comes 

up slowly. The mechanical hum may be concerning to 

some who plan to put the unit in the live room with 

active mics, but in practice, I did not find it to be a 

problem. Jon explained that he’s switching to a custom 

toroidal power transformer that has no audible 

mechanical noise on all units moving forward. 

I hit the ground running by giving the 363 a go on a 

Jerry Jones Bass6 for the band Feathers (Home Tapes). 

Since I also have an A-Designs REDDI [Tape Op #53], it 

was only natural to start with a quick comparison. The 

REDDI is a great tube DI, and I and other engineers 

who’ve worked at Rarefied have gotten great sounds from 

it. So in no way was the REDDI sounding bad in 

comparison to the 363. However, the added feature set of 

the 363 really set it apart and gave it a clear edge over 

the REDDI in this instance. Both units go after that 

classic and sought-after Ampeg B-15N sound, and having 

one of those too, I can tell you that both DIs have it, but 

one annoying thing about the REDDI is that the output 

is often not hot enough, which leaves you needing to put 

it into another amplification stage. The 363 does not 

suffer from this problem. Another note of contrast is that 

the REDDI basically just has one sound. With only one 

gain knob and no EQ, there’s not much you can do to dial 

in the desired tone within the unit itself, often leading 

me to use an EQ after it. The 363’s built-in EQ is great. It 

gives you options to really fatten things up on the low 

end and tweak the high end to taste. I found the 

frequency selection by Jon to be excellent. Having control 

over input and output level also lets you drive the unit 

into saturation while not overloading the next stage. 

Now comes the bit about the dual outputs. I am a 

big fan of parallel compression for bass because it allows 

the punch to be retained while simultaneously 

smoothing out the playing and generally filling in the 

sound. While it’s not a big deal to use a mult to split the 

signal, not everyone has mults or a splitter handy. Plus 

with a mult or split, you have to send the same amount 

of signal to both receiving devices. The independent dual 

outputs of the 363 negate all of these issues. The sound 

I was getting on the Jerry Jones was already amazing, 

but after adding in a parallel path through my Bill Skibbe 

[Tape Op #44] “Red Stripe” 5-9C, a compressor styled 

after the LA-2A, I was in heaven. 

Later in the session, I also had a chance to use the 

363 on a Farfisa Mini Compact organ. I got excellent 

results again, and just a dab of EQ went a long way to 

perfect the sound. 

A few weeks later, Jon surprised me with an adapter 

he cooked up for the unit that allows you to plug in a 

microphone. I tried it on a vocal for my buddy Michael 

of The Paper Thins. More gain was required to pull the 

signal up from a Shure SM7B [Tape Op #36], but that is 

a notoriously low-output mic. Jon told me he is 

working on a new adapter that will have more gain. 

Regardless, the sound was still great and had a rich 

low-frequency response as you might expect. To make 

up for the lack of gain, I simply ran the 363 into a 

Purple Audio MC77 compressor. I was going for a 

distorted sound, so I really cranked it up. I had Michael 

sing into a Placid Audio Copperphone mic [#85] at the 

same time and mixed the two mics together. After 

doubling the vocal take, it was the best vocal sound 

Michael said he’s ever gotten for himself, and I was 

equally impressed. I think the 363 has a lot of potential 

as a mic preamp with all its tube/transformer beefiness, 

EQ, and input/output gain. 

A bunch of freelancers work out of Rarefied, and 

they were eager to try the unit out too. Dan Maier (who 

has recorded a lot of heavy bands like The Locust) had 

this to say: “The 363 is perhaps the most versatile tube 

DI on the market. While recording a vintage P-Bass, I 

found that overdriving the input produced a very 

musical distortion.” 

Additionally, visiting engineer Mario Quintero offered 

up this review after using it for bluesy rockers, Spero: “I 

love it! One of the fullest DIs I’ve ever used. The EQ is 

really useful and helps clear up the top and high-mid 

while bringing out the ‘fat,’ without sounding flubby or 

farty. I even used it on clean guitar and loved it.” 

Finally, Mike Butler, from the fantastic San Diego 

studio The Lost Ark, had two units over at his place and 

tried some unusual things with them: “One of the most 

interesting things for me was actually strapping a pair of 

363s across the stereo bus while we were tracking. I 

really didn’t know what to expect, but man, it sounded 

killer. It was surprisingly clean and subtle at low gain 

levels, but it imparted a really nice depth to the sound. 

When pushing the gain a bit, you get some nice 

saturation and harmonics. As expected, when pushed too 

hard, the mix got a bit mushy, but there was definitely a 

sweet spot that would be cool with the right track.” 

Surprise, surprise — this demo unit is not going 

back to Tonecraft. 

($1250 MSRP; www.tonecraftaudio.com) 

–Roy Silverstein 





Dangerous Music 

Dangerous Compressor 

When the Dangerous Compressor was first announced, I 

knew that it would be something special, like all of its sibling 

products in the Dangerous Music line — despite its seemingly 

simple set of controls. I heard quickly from veteran reviewers 

Garrett Haines and Eli Crews, both of whom wanted to sign up 

for the review. So our demo unit did some traveling before GH 

and EC sent me their words. I also asked esteemed mastering 

engineer Greg Calbi to contribute, knowing that he owns one 

of the first units off of the assembly line, and his thoughts 

close the review below. –AH 

Garrett Haines: Everyone at the 2013 AES show talked 

about the new “Dangerous Music mastering compressor,” but 

in my experience, this is a stereo compressor first and 

foremost. While I could see it being used on mastering 

sessions, I think mixing and tracking engineers would find this 

as attractive as any bus compressor on the market. I would 

describe it as a transparent dynamics processor. I tried to 

abuse the unit in a mastering environment but could not get 

it to distort under reasonable circumstances. 

My two-sentence summary: It sounds like one of those 

$8,000 digital mastering compressors was created in the 

analog realm — kind of like reverse modeling. This is a highheadroom, 

high-speed, high-fidelity analog unit. And once you 

hear it in action, you’ll understand how useful that kind of 

design can be. 

AH: That’s three sentences, not two; and you originally 

gave me four. 

Eli Crews: I have long been a fan of Dangerous Music’s 

excellent product line, so I was intrigued when I saw the 

Dangerous Compressor come to market. With its mastering 

product pedigree, I had a feeling it was going to excel in 

2-bus duties. 

Physically, the Dangerous Compressor is sleek and 

compelling — a marriage of modern and classic aesthetics. The 

black faceplate is accented by variously colored, self-lighting 

pushbuttons and large edgewise meters (think Neve 2254 or 

API 525), and you’ve got your standard compressor controls on 

large, machined aluminum knobs. Tactilely, I find the buttons 

and knobs on the Dangerous pleasant and easy to use. My only 

reservations about the functionality of the controls have to do 

with recall. I was frankly surprised that the Gain, Threshold, 

Attack, and Release controls aren’t stepped or detented. (The 

Ratio control is stepped, with eight positions between 1:1 and 

20:1.) In addition, the orange-on-black color scheme and 

backlit buttons don’t easily photograph with a phone, which is 

my preferred recall method for my stereo-bus processors these 

days. This is a unit better documented the old-fashioned way, 

with a template or simple o’clock settings. 

AH: I spoke to Dangerous Music’s Bob Muller about recall, 

and his explanation was enlightening: 

“With an analog stepped attenuator, you can have a 

maximum of 23 positions, which would not allow fine enough 

steps and would limit the versatility of the unit. I think we 

have all felt the frustration of ‘one click is not enough, but 2 

is too much’ — especially in the sensitive realms like 

threshold, attack, release, and make-up gain. We looked at the 

‘quasi-stepped’ method employed by some manufacturers of 

using a regular potentiometer with a toothed plastic ring 

underneath, but we didn’t like the feel at all, and the 

repeatability when measured is sometimes not all that precise. 

“We opted for the middle road, which was to gang Gain and 

Threshold while in stereo mode so that both channels track 

exactly, and to give enough range to the controls so that the 

box could handle any situation, while at the same time 

limiting the scope of the controls so that everything falls in 

the useful range. No 5 second release time for example — I 

never understood the usefulness of that!” 

EC: On the stereo bus, the first thing I noticed is how little 

inserting the Dangerous changed the sound of my mix. 

Bypassing the unit (via the Engage button, which employs a 

true hard-wire bypass) confirmed what I wasn’t hearing. The 

headroom and transparency of the Dangerous put it into a 

different category than the other stereo compressors I 

regularly use. I can say without hesitation that the Dangerous 

Compressor is the most hi-fi compressor I’ve ever had in my mix 

chain. Thing is, I don’t always favor the most hi-fi gear for 

every duty. On a mix for Eric + Erica, a band with an airy singer, 

sparse instrumentation, and lots of ambience and dynamics, 

the Dangerous excelled at keeping the dynamic range in check 

without changing the vibe I’d created in the mix. In other 

words, it did exactly what many people want from a 2-bus 

processor of any sort: it made the mix sound better in a subtle, 

intangible way without any indication of a strong sonic 

stamp — and I happily and readily printed my final mixes 

through the Dangerous. However, on a mix for Zun Zun Egui, a 

loud British psych-dance band with a ton of energy and many 

overdubs, switching in the Dangerous left me missing a little 

of the sound of my current main stereo compressor, the Smart 

Research C1LA [Tape Op #98]. Although they are both based 

around VCAs, the two compressors have completely different 

sounds — that is to say, the C1LA has much more of one. I 

can really hear it working, in a way that I like, to give the mix 

a “tougher” sound. If loud rock is your bag, you may or may 

not find the Dangerous too transparent for your tastes. 

None of that is to say that the Dangerous Compressor is a 

one-trick pony. In fact, it’s extremely versatile, with the ability 

to tailor the sidechain via Bass Cut and Sibilance Boost buttons, 

as well as XLR inserts for external sidechain processing if you 

need more precise EQ’ing or filtering of your control signal. 

There is a Smart Dynamics switch, which I found myself 

leaving on all the time. Apparently, it allows the detection 

circuit to address peaks and averages independently, assigning 

a specific slope for each, which definitely sounds pretty smart. 

There’s also a Soft Knee switch, as well as a switch for keeping 

attack and release values automatic or giving yourself manual 

control over them. Finally, there’s a Stereo button, which gangs 

the Threshold and Gain knobs of the left channel to control 

both sides. I found the Stereo setting way, way more useful 

than on most stereo compressors, since it still uses the 

independent left and right signals to trigger the compression. 

This means that mixes through the Dangerous Compressor 

won’t suffer from over-compression of centered elements and 

under-compression of panned or out-of-phase ones, which is 

often the case with stereo compressors that use a single shared 

detector. Moreover, the dual-detector scheme is also better 

suited for mid/side processing if that’s how you’ve set up your 

mix bus. (The Dangerous doesn’t have a built-in M/S matrix 

itself.) Interestingly, the Attack and Release controls remain 

independent in stereo mode, giving you finer control of 

transients that are panned (or allowing you to adjust the 

dynamics differently for mid/side). 

GH: After going through a range of uses, I focused on two 

areas: using the Dangerous Compressor to smooth out uneven 

mixes, and adding punch to slightly dull tracks. 

For smoothing, I found that the auto attack and release 

did a nice job either as a starting point or a final setting. I’m 

normally skeptical about auto settings, but whatever 

Dangerous did under the hood made sense to my ears. This is a 




ox that sounded like a big-board bus compressor, but with 

less sonic imprint. That’s actually good. Some 2-bus boxes 

give you glue in exchange for a reduction in clarity. I 

appreciated the “do no harm” nature of this unit. I often left 

the Dangerous Compressor patched to give a haircut for any 

wandering transients. And I didn’t feel guilty either, because 

the unit is quiet and did not diminish any mix run through it. 

For punch and smack, I went manual all the way. Anyone 

with a lot of compression experience will tell you that attack 

and release are the high stakes section of the casino. If you 

get those settings right, the payoff is significant. From hip 

hop to classic rock, I was able to bring a more aggressive 

back beat out of a variety of sources. 

EC: To see if the Dangerous Compressor could indeed 

imprint a serious sound on an individual track, I ran a few 

different single instruments through the Dangerous at 20:1, 

with a hard knee and a fast release. I could certainly push 

it into areas where I could hear heavy compression artifacts, 

most noticeably on short, percussive sounds. On a vocal, the 

Dangerous Compressor never quite got pumpy and breathe-y 

the way a Distressor [Tape Op #32] or an 1176 can, but it 

did give the vocal a nice thick heft that would be very useful 

in the right context. On drum overheads, the “abused” 

sound actually worked quite well to even out the elements 

of the kit, and never got overly harsh on the cymbals. Finetuning 

the attack allowed me to find the perfect balance of 

impact versus ambience. Again, I have other compressors 

that can get a much more extreme sound; if the Dangerous 

has a fault here, it’s only that it remains fully musical even 

when pushed hard. I know that doesn’t sound like a fault — 

it only is to somebody that sometimes likes their gear to 

crumble a bit under pressure. But at the end of the day, I 

found many ways of using the Dangerous on single elements 

that sounded great to me. 

The takeaway here is that the Dangerous Compressor is 

an excellent product at a fair price, especially for a device in 

its class. Its versatility and sonic stealth should make it very 

attractive to anybody looking for an alternative to their 

current 2-bus squeezer, or for two more independent 

channels of tracking or mix compression. I put it squarely in 

the category of “does its job without calling much attention 

to itself,” which every serious studio should certainly have 

as an option. Even if you think of yourself as somebody who 

favors compressors with a sound, I’d recommend checking 

out the Dangerous to see if it can fill a hole in your 

toolbox — perhaps one you didn’t even realize was there. 

Greg Calbi: The Dangerous Compressor was sent into my 

studio early this year for a demo, and I never let it leave my 

studio after hearing what it could do. The most remarkable 

feature is its uncanny ability to push the melodic elements 

of the mix forward while maintaining all the separation in 

the low end, which always seems to collapse when hitting 

other stereo compressors. In my setup, the Smart Dynamics 

button is in all the time, and it seems to enable me to get 

just a little more level on my mastering for all those levelhungry 

clients without sacrificing the sense of dynamics. 

Chris Muth should be congratulated on creating an essential 

tool for my mastering projects. 

($2,799 street; www.dangerousmusic.com) 

–Eli Crews , 

Garrett Haines , 

Greg Calbi 

Warm Audio 

WA76 compressor 

Warm Audio only recently began making some noise 

with their affordable, well-built WA12 [Tape Op #91] and 

TB12 [#97] mic preamps, and at the 2014 NAMM Show, 

Warm dropped a bomb by releasing the WA76, a FET 

compressor based on the legendary UREI 1176. The catch 

here is that the WA76 hit the streets with a price of $599. 

The original UREI 1176 cost almost $500 when it debuted 

in 1967, and today, the Universal Audio branded model 

retails for just under $2,000. Warm Audio’s take follows the 

circuit design of the Revision D version of the 1176. The 

Rev D, one of many revisions, can be considered the 

“standard” 1176 and incorporates UREI’s low noise (LN) 

circuitry and improved circuit board layout. Similarly, the 

currently produced Universal Audio 1176 reissue takes 

after the D and E versions, where the E version simply 

allows for both 110 and 220 V operation. 

The WA76 mimics the look of the blackface 1176 with 

very similar knobs and switches, but also sports Warm’s 

signature orange logo. The rear panel drops the 1176 

barrier strip connections and instead provides XLR and 

balanced 1/4’’ inputs and outputs. An external 24 V wallwart 

power supply connects to the rear panel, and a 

thoughtful input pad switch also lives on the back panel. 

The WA76 follows the original 1176’s design very closely, 

even sourcing the original input and output transformers 

from CineMag. So the form factor and the critical elements 

resemble the original as closely as possible with two minor 

changes. First, the attack knob on the original had an “off” 

position that allowed the unit to be run as a line amp 

without any compression. The WA76 loses this feature, but 

you can still bypass the compressor by simply deselecting all 

the ratio buttons. Second, like the original, the WA76 

provides tons of gain (over 50 dB), but the WA76 provides 

an input pad switch (−23 dB) that effectively allows more 

control over the amount of compression, which I find 

especially helpful when used with modern mic preamps that 

don’t provide an output trim. 

The controls of the WA76 resemble those of the original 

with input gain, output gain, attack, and release knobs, as 

well as pushbutton selectors for ratio and metering 

functions. Also like the original, the attack and release 

times range from crazy fast to moderately fast: 20 to 

800 microsecond attack times, and 50 millisecond to 

1 second release times. Interestingly, the input knob is 

finely detented, but the output knob turns smoothly. 

Ratios can be set at 4:1, 8:1, 12:1 or 20:1, and the “all 

buttons in” mode also works. Threshold varies 

automatically with ratio, and the input control determines 

the drive into the compressor while the output control 

provides makeup gain after the compressor. This is a 

completely discrete circuit with a Class A output amplifier, 

and the unit’s noise floor stays very low with proper gainstaging. 

Like the original, the illuminated VU meter can 

display gain reduction or output level referenced to either 

+4 or +8 dBm. 

In use, I found the overall compression to be slightly 

more grabby than a very good example of an original 

Revision D, which seemed to have a slightly softer knee — 

possibly due to aging components. The WA76, however, 

provided a subtle but very nice low-mid push which helped 

vocals and bass come forward in a mix. I attribute the 



sonic color mainly to the CineMag transformers, which 

impart their flavor even when the compressor is bypassed.




I found that I typically ran the input knob only at about 

9 o’clock to provide a few dB of compression at 4:1, and the 

output knob lived around 1 o’clock. I also tended to use the 

middle positions of the attack and release, whereas on the 

vintage unit, I particularly like the slow attack and fast release 

settings. I often use an 1176 just to add a bit of presence to a 

vocal, with its slightly edgy tone, and I could get the same 

effect with the WA76, but also with the smooth low-mids that 

the transformers provide. Overall, the WA76 stands up 

extremely well to my collection of compressors, which include 

Summit, UREI, Inward Connections, Focusrite, and a few 

custom pieces. The entire build quality belies the low price, and 

some may even overlook the unit for fear that corners were cut. 

I don’t see anywhere that quality was compromised, but some 

clever cost-saving processes were used, and the external power 

supply helps trim costs, as well. 

With vintage and reissue 1176 units costing almost four times 

as much as the WA76, it’s an easy call to check one (or two) out. 

I know Warm Audio will have trouble keeping these in stock. 

($599 street; www.warmaudio.com) 

–Adam Kagan 

Exponential Audio 

R2 Stereo reverb plug-in 

I’ve been on a mission over the last seven or eight years to 

find a reverb plug-in that fills the void left by not being able 

to place a microphone, say, 5–20 ft away from a source. I’ve 

used just about every big-time reverb plug-in out there, and 

while some are better than others in terms of “believability,” 

I’d easily place Exponential Audio’s R2 Stereo in a first-place tie 

atop my list. 

After a few days of using it, and being continuously 

baffled by how good it sounded, I reached out to its 

developer, Michael Carnes (whose name you may recognize 

from his many years at Lexicon as principal engineer), for 

some enlightenment. His response helped me to put some 

pieces together: “Many earlier classic reverbs had all sorts of 

noticeable modulation. This was originally done because the 

modulation helped break up room modes. It wasn’t natural, 

and no modern reverbs use those techniques any longer. But 

it turns out that a lot of people liked the sound of the 

modulation. So I wanted a reverb where that could be an 

artistic component rather than a technical workaround.” 

With that information in mind, I dug a little deeper into R2 

to see what it was made of. One reverb litmus test of mine is 

the quality of the plate setting. To me, a boring plate is just... 

well, boring. Much like I do with Pad Thai or Mattar Paneer, I 

find myself keeping mental notes on my favorite plates, and 

R2’s was again among the most musical that I’d ever used. (It 

should be noted that R2 offers a very extensive library of 

presets to choose from, as well as several variations of those 

presets depending on what you’re looking for.) 

Allow me to explain. There are two key factors that have 

made me abandon most of my other reverb plug-ins for R2. 

First, the reverb tail is full of motion and grit, so it doesn’t 

sound like an algorithm or convolution. Don’t get me wrong, 

it’d probably lose in a shootout with a real EMT 140, but most 

of us don’t have one of those lying around. The thing with most 

digital reverbs is that they sound “soft” to me, as if they don’t 

contain quite the level of sonic interest that occurs when 

recording actual ambience or using a physical spring or plate. 

To my ears, R2 gets you a heck of a lot closer; I have little fear 

that I’m going to make my mix more “digital” sounding when 

I pull up the aux fader. You can even control the type of chorus 

that’s shaking the reverb, which is a really nice option to have 

depending on what sort of depth you’re looking for. The second 

factor, which should not be overlooked, is that R2 sits nicely in 

my mixes without equalization, aside from a high or low–pass 

filter, depending on the scenario. Obviously, you and I mix 

differently, but I feel that so long as your sounds are generally 

balanced, incorporating R2 should be effortless. If your work 

experience sounds anything like mine, I strongly suggest giving 

R2 Stereo a trial run. 

($299 direct; www.exponentialaudio.com) 


MicRehab 

Miktek CV4 mic modification 

How do you get a $10,000 sounding mic without 

bankrupting your studio? Send it to Shannon Rhoades at 

MicRehab, that’s how. Specifically, I’m talking about the Miktek 

CV4. To be fair, the stock mic is good right out of the box. The 

mic is sturdy, the PSU is beefy, and the price is friendly — 

especially for independent studios without deep pockets. 

However, when the SPL is pushed, the capsule seems to pinch, 

resulting in a harsh, metallic overtone “zing” found in the 

upper frequencies that seem impossibly hard to dial out. This 

characteristic appears to be the result of the Chinese-made 

capsule used in the stock CV4, which makes this a prime 

candidate for a mod. 

Shannon Rhoades might be a name that is unfamiliar to 

some, but he is definitely the real deal. Shannon is the force 

behind MicRehab, an independent upstart specializing in 

modding, reskinning, and restoring mics of all brands and 

varieties, from vintage to modern-day models. Before 

MicRehab, Shannon worked with his brother Tracy Korby (Korby 

Audio Technologies) building and repairing new and vintage 

microphones. The brothers then moved to Nashville to maintain 

Blackbird Studio’s vast vintage mic collection. While at 

Blackbird, Shannon also spent four years helping to launch 

Miktek, where he became intimately familiar with the CV4. 

After leaving Miktek, Shannon took over mic managing duties 

from his brother at Blackbird and began his own venture, 

MicRehab. Needless to say, his credentials speak volumes. 

So what does Shannon’s mod entail? The bulk of the mod 

comes from replacing the stock Chinese capsule with a custom 

sputtered gold (or nickel), 3 micron (and in some cases 

1 micron!) mylar capsule. This is what makes Shannon stand 

out among the rest. There are probably less than a handful of 

people in the country that sputter their own capsules, let alone 

with the degree of craftsmanship that Shannon brings. I 

suspect there are other components of the mic that Shannon 

mods (backplate, capacitors, etc.), but he is keeping a tight lid 

on his proprietary “secret recipe” — at least for now. 

After receiving my CV4 back from Shannon, I was eager to 

get a session underway, and thankfully, my client was willing 

to let me have some fun with the new CV4 on a tracking 

session. We recorded both electric and acoustic guitars, as well 

as male vocals (brooding, indie-pop). The signal chain was 

relatively simple: CV4 to one of two preamps — EZ1290 (a DIY 

Neve 1290/1073 preamp replica) or CAPI VP28 [Tape Op 

#95] — captured through a UAD Apollo [#95], and monitored 

on a pair of Spiral Groove Studio One speakers (in a well-treated 

control room). Tracking electric guitars proved to be somewhat 

underwhelming. I think I would have preferred a 

ribbon/dynamic combo in this case; however, switching over to 

acoustic brought the smile back. The CV4/VP28 combo was just 

what the doctor ordered — bright, jangly, and full of body and 

wood. But let’s be honest, we’re here for the vocals, and man 

did they sound good. I mean, really good. 




The mod has a frequency response that stays 

consistent throughout the dynamic range. It’s got better 

quality midrange information and responds to EQ really 

well. Compared to the stock mic, Shannon’s mod is much 

smoother with more body and character. The stock CV4 

could be a little “bitey” in the 2–3 kHz range, but the mod 

relieves this. Importantly, the “zing” is gone. Some 

describe the modded CV4 as “warm, vintage, and creamy.” 

While this all rings true, I would simply say that vocals I 

recorded through this mic sound “finished.” 

While no one will claim that the modded CV4 is a copy 

of any vintage mic, Shannon’s inspiration for its sound 

comes from Jeffrey Steiger’s (CAPI) beautiful Ela M 251. 

In my opinion, this mod is worth the price of 

admission, because it will get you in the same league as 

the über-expensive vintage mic superstars that few of us 

will ever be able to afford. Shannon will tell you, that’s 

been his mission all along. So go out and pick up a new 

(or used) Miktek CV4 (or actually, any mic), and give 

MicRehab a buzz. He will chat with you about what you’re 

after and make sure that you’re happy with what you get. 

CV4 stock versus mod sound samples can be found on 

RealGearOnline.com, and as other forum members have 

agreed, the differences are not subtle. If you have 

questions, Shannon Rhoades 

is happy to answer your emails. 

(Modification of customer’s mic $800; 

www.micrehab.com) 

–Adam Monk 

Ehrlund Microphones 

Ehrlund EAP 

Acoustic Pickup System 

When I record acoustic guitars, I use a mic. A real one. 

Mainly mono, but sometimes stereo — especially if it’s a 

one-voice, one-guitar recording — but definitely a mic; 

no pickup transducers for me thank you. Why? Because I 

don’t like the quack attack — the poultry-like sound 

emissions that emanate from acoustic pickups, especially 

the under-the-saddle kind. I don’t want that sound on a 

recording track. 

For live recordings, sure, it’s convenient, the sound 

is predictable, and it’s one less thing for the FOH guys 

to fiddle with, one less live mic on stage. Besides, the 

acoustic guitar sound is usually buried by every other 

instrument in the band anyway. If it’s a singersongwriter 

situation — one vocal and one guitar — I’m 

still going to use a transducer because the mic sound on 

acoustic instruments isn’t always practical in the 

onstage environment. 

But what if you could get both? What if you could get 

the pure mic sound along with the freedom and 

convenience of an acoustic pickup? That’s what Ehrlund 

Microphones is proposing with its EAP acoustic pickup 

system. The system includes a triangular shaped 

transducer that’s placed on the acoustic instrument — 

guitar, mandolin, standup bass, whatever — using 

adhesive paste and then connected to the EAP preamp. 

That preamp feeds from a TRS cable to a PA, acoustic amp, 

or recording input — and voila. You’ve got the best of 

both worlds. 

I gave it a try the other night on a recommendation 

from a friend. He knows I’m big on recording acoustic 

singer-songwriters, and I know that almost all of them 

prefer to play and sing at the same time. Could the 

Ehrlund be the answer? I set up a test using my Collings 

C10 and played a finger-picked selection, a strummed 

piece, and some picked solo notes. I compared that to my 

L.R. Baggs Element, an amazing pickup that always gets 

rave reviews when I play live. Here’s what I heard. 

It was easier for me to get a good sound fast from the 

Baggs, which is no surprise since I’m familiar with it. But 

it definitely had the quackiness to the pick attack I like 

to avoid on recordings. With the Ehrlund pickup, it took 

me a much longer time to find a good sound. I tried it 

above the sound hole around the 12th fret and hated 

what I heard. I tried a few more positions. Some were 

better, some were worse. But then I put the transducer 

down around the lower bout, diagonal from the saddle, 

and got a great sound. A pure sound. A mic’ed sound. No 

sign of quack, not even when I strummed the guitar or 

picked it hard. Impressive. And as promised, when I 

removed the transducer from my Collings, the adhesive 

paste (think putty) didn’t leave any marks on the guitar. 

When I first heard about this pickup, I thought it would 

be great for live performances. It would, but I doubt it’s 

practical for most people — perhaps a classical guitarist, or 

a singer-songwriter in a controlled environment. But I think 

this pickup would work great in a recording environment, 

especially for singer-songwriters who want to sing and play 

at the same time. I tried that myself, and while I could 

barely hear my voice on the guitar track, it was minimal, 

likely due to the construction of the pickup, which is linear 

as opposed to omnidirectional. In other words, the part 

that presses against the guitar picks up sound, but the 

opposite end does not. 

It’s pricey and quirky (did I mention the putty?), so it 

won’t be for everyone, but singer-songwriters and 

recordists who want to bolster the sound in a low-profile 

way will like this innovative device. The preamp features 

1/4’’ I/O, volume control, and a polarity switch to help 

eliminate feedback. A high-to-low switch adjusts the 

input signal, as the low level is recommended for acoustic 

bass. The preamp is powered by an included 9V battery. 

($599 street; www.ehrlund.se) 

–Mike Jasper 

EVE AUDIO 

SC205 2-way monitor 

TS107 subwoofer 

As someone who has been using ADAM monitors 

fairly religiously for the past seven years or so, I became 

quite interested when I heard that the former CEO of 

ADAM Audio had started a new speaker company, called 

EVE Audio. It turns out that the ADAM and EVE speaker 

lines have pretty much one thing in common — pleateddiaphragm 

tweeters based on Dr. Oskar Heil’s Air Motion 

Transformer — but the similarities seem to stop there. 

Roland Stenz, the aforementioned CEO, is apparently on 

a mission to perfect monitor design. As such, the EVE line 

is a departure from ADAM, and it’s full of innovations 

intended to contribute flatter, clearer monitoring to the 

average engineer’s meter bridge or desktop. 

The first such innovation worth mentioning is that all 

control of the speaker’s filtering, equalization, and 

volume is accomplished via DSP. Yes, that D in there is 

for Digital, so it means that all the audio coming out of 

the speakers has gone through an extra A/D stage after 

leaving your mixing desk or converters. I’m happy to 

report that I didn’t realize this until I had already been 



using the SC205 monitors for a while, so I didn’t 

approach them with an analog-only bias. This helped




preclude any irrational fears I may have had about 

degradation due to conversion within the speaker, 

which is accomplished via a high-quality Burr-Brown 

24-bit, 192 kHz ADC. If the conversion is coloring the 

sound at all, it’s inherently part of whatever coloration 

the speakers themselves impart. Since there are no 

digital inputs, an A/B of the conversion is impossible, 

and in my opinion irrelevant. 

(Technically speaking, there is also a D/A stage that 

follows the DSP, but not the kind that you see in a 

standalone converter. The DSP section connects directly 

to each driver’s Class D [Pulse Width Modulation] 

amplifier, without the typical PCM or PDM–based DAC 

providing conversion to an analog signal beforehand. In 

other words, the Class D amp, a passive filter, and the 

driver combined work together as a system that 

converts the digital signal into sound waves.) 

DSP functions are all accessed via a single rotaryencoder/button 

on the face of each speaker. Volume 

level is shown on a series of tiny LEDs surrounding the 

knob. There are settings to illuminate either a single 

volume LED or all LEDS up to that level, and the LEDs 

can be made to shine brightly or dimly. Volume 

adjustments are made in 0.5 dB increments in the meat 

of the range, down to 2 dB increments at −48 dB. Access 

to such precise and evenly-matched adjustments makes 

whatever small cost there may be of A/D conversion 

totally worth it. Other DSP duties include high-shelf 

(above 3 kHz) and low-shelf (below 300 Hz) cut/boost 

capabilities, as well as a “Desk Filter” adjustment, which 

either cuts 180 Hz or boosts 80 Hz. All of these filters 

have a maximum boost of 3 dB and a maximum cut of 

-5 dB, in 0.5 dB increments. I kept the speakers flat 

throughout my testing period, and never felt the need 

for filter adjustments, although it’s nice to have the 

option when necessary. 

I guess that means I thought the speakers 

sounded pretty good right out of the box. I love the 

smoothness of the SC205’s Air Motion Transformer 

tweeter. (The AMT is commonly referred to as a “folded 

ribbon tweeter,” but it works quite differently from a 

standard ribbon driver, and it has many advantages 

over a linear ribbon transducer. I encourage you to 

refer to the Internet if you’d like to know more 

specifics about the technology.) As for the upper 

midrange on the EVE, I found it robust enough to 

judge what’s happening in that range, but easy to 

listen to for hours at a time. I tend to rely on 

headphones for the final checking of sibilance, and 

cymbal and guitar harshness, but that’s the case no 

matter which speakers I use. Even though my current 

mix room is quite small, and I’ve had issues with other 

similar-sized speakers getting boomy in the low 

midrange due to proximity to the back wall, the SC205 

sounds much flatter and truer in that range, even 

without any equalization. I attribute this fact to a 

critical difference from ADAM speakers, which is that 

EVEs have their bass ports in the rear of the enclosure, 

and they are long rectangular ports designed to 

minimize distortion in the low frequencies, even at 

higher SPLs. (This is a good time to mention that the 

LEDs on the face of the speakers blink when the A/D 

converters are getting overloaded, which is a handy 

way to ensure that any distortion you’re hearing isn’t 

coming from the speaker system itself.) 

Of course, the SC205 model is only sporting 5’’ 

woofers, so it only faithfully represents frequencies 

down into the mid–50 Hz region. When my pair 

arrived, I had been toying with the idea of getting a 

sub for my home studio, since I started doing more 

actual mixing here than I had originally envisioned. I 

had just started to mix an album by Zun Zun Egui, a 

really interesting British band with a lot of dance and 

Jamaican influence. It was clear that I was going to 

need a better window into the frequencies they had 

laid to tape, but a big heavy-duty subwoofer seemed 

like overkill for my small space. EVE Audio’s TS107 

subwoofer, supplied by the kind Bruce Bartone at 

TruNorth Music & Sound, came to the rescue, and the 

timing couldn’t have been more perfect. This is a 

compact subwoofer, small enough for my space, and 

the extension of the TS107 down to 36 Hz really 

helped a ton when dealing with the kick and bass 

fundamentals and subtones of the Zun Zun record. 

The TS107 comes with a remote, which enables you 

to adjust almost all of its parameters without crawling 

under your desk. Since you daisychain your main 

speakers through the TS107, this gives you remote 

volume control and a single-button mute for your whole 

speaker system. You can also use the remote to flip the 

polarity of the TS107, mute only the subwoofer (which 

bypasses the 80 Hz high-pass filter to the mains, as it 

should), adjust the subwoofer’s relative volume, and 

change the corner frequency of the subwoofer’s lowpass 

filter (in seven steps between 60 Hz and 140 Hz). 

A dedicated LFE input as well as a 300 Hz LFE filter 

mode allows you to use this subwoofer in a true 2.1 

configuration. Of course, it took some futzing with 

position, polarity, subwoofer level, and LPF frequency to 

find a place where I felt that the TS107 was helping and 

not hurting my mixes, but it feels dialed now. Now when 

I bypass the subwoofer, which I often do to make sure 

the low end also feels right on the small speakers alone, 

I really miss it. 

In general, I find judging speakers a really difficult 

task, since what “sounds good” is so relative, and can 

even shift over time. That being said, after a couple of 

months of use, I still really like the way the SC205 

speakers sound, and working on them every day makes 

me happy. I appreciate that mixes done on them 

translate well, and I also enjoy listening to my favorite 

records through them. For me personally, in my small 

home mix room, they completely deliver, and even 

more so when coupled with the TS107 subwoofer. I 

purchased this set of speakers, and I plan on 

auditioning the bigger models in a few months when 

I’m setting up the control rooms of our forthcoming 

Brooklyn studio Figure 8, so I would call that a 

definite thumbs-up. 

(SC205 $599 street each, TS107 $599; www.eveaudio.com) 

–Eli Crews 


see more of our 

bonus/archived 

reviews online! 




Subatomic Software 

Audulus synthesis & processing app 

I’ve been a bit stymied on how to start this review off, so I’ll 

run all three of my potential intros by you: 

1. To the guy who got upset by my review of I Dream Of 

Wires, in which I said all the music in that documentary film 

sounded kind of boring and too similar to me — I’m afraid I 

still feel the same way. On the other hand, the music I’ve heard 

from the online community using the $15 Audulus iOS app is 

much more interesting and varied. Moreover, on a philosophical 

level, I’m stoked by the fact that lots more people can afford 

this app than an actual analog modular synthesizer. 

2. Does anybody remember Turbosynth, an icon and 

GUI–based synthesis application for the Mac that Digidesign 

(now Avid) first released in the late ‘80s? It was super cool and 

easy to use, and it implemented a lot of different synthesis 

algorithms in software, allowing users to port synthesized 

sounds to a hardware sampler. I’d been looking for something 

similar without success, until I dug into Audulus. 

3. My last semester of college in 1983 was completed at 

Stanford University Center for Computer Research in Music and 

Acoustics (CCRMA), and I remember spending an entire summer 

programming FORTRAN code into a big mainframe computer in 

order to get a few seconds of sound out of the computer. An 

iPhone or an iPad running Audulus completely blows that 

mainframe out of the water with every benchmark possible. 

Moore’s law is crazy! I can’t imagine what that mainframe at 

Stanford cost! (Ironically, one of the computer music 

compositions of that era by CCRMA Founding Director and FM 

synthesis inventor John Chowning was titled “Phoné.”) 

So, what is Audulus? Audulus is a modular music synthesis 

and processing app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It can be likened 

to Turbosynth, the early Digidesign program, but it can also be 

compared to music programming environments like Max, Csound, 

and SuperCollider. Wikipedia has an excellent overview of this 

concept and lists some of the available software 

environments. 

Unlike a typical plug-in or virtual instrument that locks you 

into whatever the programming team decided would work best 

for the particular EQ, compressor, synthesizer, etc., an audio 

processing or programming environment allows you to create 

your own instruments and effects, either from scratch or with 

modular building blocks. For example, in SuperCollider, you’d 

type in a line of code to create a sine-wave oscillator: 

{ SinOsc.ar(440, 0, 0.2) }.play; 

Higher-level modular environments use graphic elements 

and pre-coded modules to do the same thing, so it’s much 

easier to get started and create and process sounds than it is 

with a code-based system like SuperCollider or Csound. The 

granddaddy of modular/GUI environments is Max, currently 

maintained and published by Cycling ‘74. It’s a mature, stable 

environment, and it’s very powerful and versatile. There’s not 

much you can’t do with Max. But it costs $400 and won’t run 

on an iPad. I’m pretty committed to the iPad as an instrument 

and synthesis environment, and $400 was a bit of a barrier for 

me as a “re-entry level” tinkerer getting back into software 

synthesis and coding. I looked pretty seriously at CSound and 

SuperCollider, but ultimately, I liked the fact that Audulus was 

graphical, affordable, and both iPad and Mac compatible. But, 

before I move on, I should point out that Audulus (or any 

graphic interface) can be much more clunky than a codebased 

system. For instance, to create an additive synthesis 

module with 15 harmonics in SuperCollider, you need only 

these few lines of code: 

SynthDef(\addSynthArray, 

{ arg freq=300, dur=0.5, mul=100, addDiv=8, 

harmonics = #[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,8,9,10, 

11,12,13,14,15], 

amps = #[ 0.30136557845783, 0.15068278922892, 

0.10045519281928, 0.075341394614458, 

0.060273115691566, 0.050227596409638, 

0.043052225493976, 0.037670697307229, 

0.033485064273092, 0.030136557845783, 

0.027396870768894, 0.025113798204819, 

0.023181967573679, 0.021526112746988, 

0.020091038563855 ]; 

The same function in Max or Audulus would be a fairly 

complex, visually busy patch. But the upside of this for people 

who are more graphically-oriented like me (and other nonmathy 

type folks) is that it’s much easier to drag oscillator and 

filter modules around a screen and connect virtual patch cables 

between them, than it is to learn how to code something like 

a filter. This is where environments like Turbosynth, Max, and 

now Audulus shine. 

Before I move on, I should also mention Native Instruments 

Reaktor. This is also a very versatile synthesis and processing 

environment, but from what I can tell, it’s a bit harder to get 

under the hood in the way you can with Max and Audulus. 

Reaktor seems a bit more aimed at a plug-and-play audience just 

looking for new sounds, who are a bit less likely to actually create 

a new synthesizer module from scratch. Also, I was a bit turned 

off by Reaktor’s GUI, as it felt very old-school and limited, 

whereas the Audulus GUI feels wide-open and built for the future. 

Okay, with all that context behind us, let’s start with a small 

sampling of what Audulus includes for building blocks or nodes, 

as they’re called in the application. Under the Synthesis group, 

there are many “standard” nodes, like Osc (a virtual analog 

oscillator that generates sine, triangle, square, and sawtooth 

waves), Noise, Sample (currently Mac only), ADSR, Filter, and 

many others. MIDI control can come from Trigger or Keyboard 

nodes (and the latter can utilize both onscreen and external 

inputs). Add, Sub, Mult, Sin, Mod, Random, and other Math 

nodes implement mathematical functions. Seq16 is a 16-step 

sequencer. And many more nodes are grouped under Utilities, 

Effects, Level, DSP, Mixer, Metering, and Switch. All can be 

routed together and combined into new nodes. For instance, 

when you open up a vocoder node, it reveals itself to be a 

complex “super-node” using many of the above nodes. 

One of the most interesting aspects of Audulus is that it 

blurs the line between graphical software synthesis and 

traditional coding approaches. With the Expr node, you can 

type in textual mathmatic expressions, choosing from dozens 

of functions and operators, to create a truly custom node — 

not unlike the algorithmic sound generation and composition 

you can accomplish in Csound and SuperCollider. For instance, 

you can Google the formula for John Chowning’s FM synthesis 

algorithm, and copy-and-paste that into Audulus, and you’ve 

got a rudimentary FM synthesizer module ready to go. With a 

little more work, you can implement the Karplus-Strong 

plucked-string algorithm or digital waveguide synthesis. The 

possibilities are endless. 

It’s pretty amazing to me how powerful this app is and how 

good it sounds. Compare this to the mainframe computer I used 

at CCRMA in 1983, or the Synclavier or Fairlight systems of the 

time, and it’s pretty great to think that this $15 app rivals 

systems that used to cost more than a car or a down payment 

on a house. 

As I mentioned in my intro, Audulus is capable of some 

pretty amazing music — beautiful music in my opinion. Jody 

Golick is one of the more active members of the Audulus 

community, and some of his compositions (which you can 

interact with) are included as examples when you buy Audulus. 

I was pretty blown away by Golick’s music and was struck by not 

only how wide-open the possibilities are within Audulus, but 

also how visually beautiful it is to see an Audulus composition 

play on screen. The connecting “wires” change color as signals 

pass through them, and the visual corollary is all you ever 

wanted the future to be as you watched TRON or read a William 

Gibson novel. An analog modular synthesizer seems hopelessly 

clunky, slow, and overpriced in comparison, feeling like a mid- 

’80s Ford, while Audulus is the car of the future running on a 

hydrogen fuel cell. 

Lastly, the final impetus for me to choose Audulus over Max, 

Csound, and SuperCollider was the app’s developer as well as the 

user community surrounding the app. Taylor Holliday is the sole 

owner and programmer of Audulus, and as you check out the 

Audulus forum, you realize he’s completely immersed in further 

development of the app, while remaining very accessible. When 

people have questions, he’s quick to answer and address them. 

It feels good to support a micro-business like Audulus, and one 

of the great things about Taylor is that he has embraced and 

welcomed the Audulus users, some of whom are clearly more 

knowledgeable than he is with advanced DSP and synthesis. The 

help and feedback he receives from the Audulus community is 

reflected in the frequent software updates and patch 

contributions. In particular, afta8, Dcramer, JDRaoul (Jody 

Golick), Devilock76, AlfredR, and Plurgid have posted a ton of 

nodes and patches to the Audulus forum and have helped shape 

Audulus into what it is today. It’s this community involvement 

that ensures that Audulus will continue to grow and expand. 

Me? I’m a lurker and tinkerer at best. As much as I’m 

fascinated with the promise of this technology, I’m too busy 

working on this magazine and recording records to go back 

and relearn how to code an FFT algorithm or make a waveshaping 

module. Nonetheless, Audulus has become a unique 

tool for me to use in the studio, and I’ve learned just enough 

to modify patches and come up with some really uncommon 

sounds and processors using it. I highly recommend Audulus 

for anyone wanting to dig into sound design and go beyond 

punching presets. 

($14.99 for iPad/iPhone, $29.99 for Mac OS, in-app purchases 

extra; www.audulus.com) –JB 

Meris 

440 mic preamp 

& pedal interface (500-series) 

My head is spinning these days with all of the available 

options for the 500-series format. As a kid, Baskin-Robbins 

and their 31 flavors seemed overwhelming. Generally, I 

stuck with what I knew was going to deliver. (Chocolate 

Peanut Butter, baby!) Why mess with a good thing? 500- 

series preamp modules are no different than all those 

flavors of ice cream, except that there are hundreds to 

choose from, and the price tag for trying a new flavor is 

sometimes enough to put the brakes on. Often in pro 

audio, there is a direct correlation between price and 

quality, but occasionally, a piece of gear comes along that 

breaks that paradigm. 

The Meris 440 is a 500-series mic preamp module made 

in Los Angeles that is marketed as “a best in class solution 

for recording electric and acoustic guitar.” It boasts 

CineMag input and output transformers for “classic 

American mic pre tone.” (You can read that as “sounds like 

an API.”) It also incorporates two hybrid-discrete op-amps, 

one at the input transformer section and one driving the 



output section. 60 dB of gain is available at the input 

stage, and the output trim goes from −27 dB to +12 dB.

Gear Geeking w/ John… 

A special installment featuring two guest editorials 

from JB! –AH 

I’m not much of a fan of software synths that work as DAW 

plug-ins. I’ve tried virtual instruments from Arturia, UVI, 

GForce, and others. They sound amazing, but in the end, I’ve 

ended up spending real money on real instruments. For 

instance, my GForce M-Tron [Tape Op #70] was replaced with 

a Mellotron M4000D. Sonically, there’s really no big 

difference — they’re both digital — but the M4000D gets 

much more use because people enjoy playing it, even if it is 

just a keyboard and circuit board in a big, white, wood box. 

Since I’m in the business of engaging musicians and making 

them feel creative, the M4000D wins hands-down over any 

Mellotron plug-in. Similarly, iPad apps feel much different to 

me than DAW plug-ins, for many reasons. First, I can plug in 

a 1/8’’ cable and pass the iPad around the studio for the 

musicians to play — a much different vibe from everyone 

crowding around the computer to tweak a soft synth’s filter. 

Second, it rarely crashes. Third, the touchscreen is much more 

expressive than a keyboard, mouse, and MIDI controller. Apps 

like Moog’s Animoog not only sound great but are extremely 

expressive because they offer multi-gestural control. And, 

they’re intuitive enough that novice users can quickly make 

compelling sounds. Fourth, can you imagine having classic 

instruments like the Minimoog, Oberheim SEM, Fairlight CMI, 

Korg Polysix, Roland Juno-106, EMS VCS 3, PPG Wave, 

Yamaha DX7, and Akai MPC; great polysynths like Magellan 

and Sunrizer; countless sample libraries inside IK Multimedia 

SampleTank; drum machines like DM1, Funkbox, and Boom 

808, with just about every classic drum-machine sample 

made; and a modular programming environment like 

Audulus — all for less than $1000, including the iPad? The 

fact that you can hold all this in your hand is pretty amazing 

to me, but the bottom line is — unlike soft synths running 

on a computer, the iPad feels like a musical instrument. 

As the publisher of a free magazine, I make sure we have 

enough advertising revenue to write the sizable checks for 

printing and postage. But I also deal with quite a bit of 

editorial in the reviews. Most companies who advertise in 

Tape Op are so small (like us), that the same person who is 

handling ads is also in charge of pitching products for review, 

and in many cases, that same person will pick up a soldering 

iron to build their products after we’re done talking on the 

phone. These people are passionate and hardworking. At 

trade shows, I dread the meetings with large companies 

asking us to review some inexpensive new DAW interface that 

is mostly identical to last year’s, except that now it has 

USB 3.0. Luckily, most of those big companies don’t advertise 

with us, so I don’t feel obligated to review their ROHScompliant 

future landfill. But in the case of the smaller 

companies, I definitely do feel an obligation to review and 

support their products, especially if they are supporting us 

and allowing us to get the magazine to you, the reader. That 

said — we review a lot of products from companies that do 

not advertise. If one of our contributing writers wants to 

review a product, it will get printed. We may be a bit biased 

towards supporting our advertisers (and we hope you are 

too), but never at the expense of honestly reviewing the best 

gear that crosses our desk, at all price points — and that our 

reviewers are genuinely interested in using. For more on this 

subject, please see the FAQ and Blog at tapeop.com. –JB 


Gear Geeking/Tape Op#103/71


Small toggle switches provide standard preamp features for −20 dB pad, phantom power, 

and polarity reverse. The 440 also has a basic but useful EQ section: a 12 dB per octave 

high-pass filter that is selectable between 80 or 200 Hz; and a subtle +3 dB shelf boost 

at 4 or 7 kHz. These filters are not only useful for tonal shaping prior to “going to tape,” 

but they can also be used when mixing by setting the 440’s input, output, and pad for 

unity gain. 

But what really sets the Meris 440 apart from countless other 500-series mic preamps 

is a send/return pair of 1/4’’ jacks on its front panel for use as an effects-pedal loop, post 

amplifier and mic. This feature is also useful for those wishing to integrate guitar pedals 

into mixing. I purchased the Radial Engineering EXTC guitar effects interface [Tape Op #100] 

for this exact purpose, and it is an awesome tool to add some creative spark to your mixing 

process. The effects return of the 440 also doubles as an instrument-level DI. 

Since the 440 is touted as being a great preamp for recording guitar, that is where I 

started. I needed to create some droney loops (think Third Eye Foundation meets Boards 

of Canada) for a track I was working on. Typically, I would use the traditional routing of 

guitar to Boomerang pedal to amp and mic — and record the effected signal from the amp. 

Instead, I placed an Ashman Acoustics SOM50 omni mic [Tape Op #101] about a foot in 

front of my Vox AC30, and plugged a Telecaster straight into the amp. I connected the 

Boomerang to the 440’s send/return jacks. What I liked in this application was the ability 

to use the EQ features on the 440 to sculpt the sound of the amplified performance before 

it was captured and looped in the Boomerang. I also liked the clarity of the tone, having 

the effects after the amp in the signal chain; the difference is fairly subtle, but it is 

absolutely appreciable. 

Using an SM57 with the Meris 440 to record a Telecaster through AC30 was a great 

sonic treat. This mic took a bit of gain in a beautiful way, providing a nice, tight, punchy 

sound that reminded me of tones on an early AC/DC record — tough, but not overly 

distorted. As the literature suggests, the tone was classic, and in this instance, totally in 

your face. Cranking the input gain all the way on the module provided some pretty 

undesirable harsh distortion, but dialing it back a touch provided excellent results and 

lovely tone. For the sake of using the effects loop with another stompbox, I plugged in 

an MXR Carbon Copy, and it worked as advertised. The effect presented itself with slightly 

more clarity. It isn’t necessarily “better” having effects post amp and mic, but the 

difference is discernible, and I can see the option being useful. Since I had two 440 

modules at my disposal, I recorded a guitar track with two SM57s on the same amp into 

the pair of preamps. One channel was clean, and the other had an old MXR Phase 100 

through the effects loop. When I panned these hard left and right, I got a really 

beautiful, lush spread, and the tone was right on the money. 

In order to record a vintage Fender P-Bass using the Meris 440’s effects return as a DI, 

I had to fully crank the 440’s output to get an acceptable recording level, but the tone was 

punchy and full spectrum, with a nicely-defined low end and clear top. The 440 paired well 

with the Fender, and it brought home that classic midrange “nose” of the P-Bass. There was 

no level issue when I recorded a bass that had active electronics and higher output. In 

general, what worked better for me when recording bass was to use a separate DI feeding 

the standard XLR input on the back of the enclosing rack. This method allowed me to take 

advantage of the 440’s input transformer and EQ section, and I was also able to get more 

level out of the unit. 

To work the shelving features on the 440, I recorded what I knew was going to be a 

mud swamp: Gibson hollow-body into an old Traynor amp powering the 2×12 speakers in a 

Marshall JMP “Countryman.” It’s a beautiful sounding setup, but it can be “dark brown” 

sounding — a good challenge for the 440. With the 80 Hz rolloff and 4 kHz boost engaged, 

the sound was way closer to “done” and had a nice midrange quality that was well balanced. 

I also used the 440 paired with a Mojave Audio MA-200 condenser mic [Tape Op #55] 

to record both baritone and standard acoustic guitars, and I found the tone to be 

appropriately forward in the mids, with nice clarity and solid body. Meris notes that the 

200 Hz HPF would be useful for recording an overly boomy acoustic guitar, and if the filter 

on the 440 was the only EQ you had available, it would certainly do the trick. The 80 Hz 

setting was good for cutting low mud, and I used it more frequently than 200 Hz. The 4 

and 7 kHz boosts were in my opinion subtle (you can read that as “hard to F&%$ up”), but 

they can add nice top presence, helping a guitar track be heard in a mix without increasing 

the track’s level. 

For a live stereo recording of two acoustic guitars and percussion using a pair of Schoeps 

CMC 6 mics with cardioid capsules, the Meris 440 also sounded solid. Using the 80 Hz HPF 

and 4 kHz shelf, I found the sound to be very natural and the stereo image strong. The 

combination of these mics and the Meris preamps provided a lovely tone that was spectrally 

balanced with nice dimension. The tracks came out clear without being sterile, and had 

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The EQ on the 440 is far from surgical, and it doesn’t 

claim to be, but it may save you from using additional EQ 

in the form of a plug-in or hardware, by applying a touch 

of top and helping clean up the bottom where appropriate. 

Keep in mind that the EQ section is located before the 

effects loop in the 440’s signal flow, so it’s not available 

when using the module as a DI. 

As I mentioned earlier, another fun job for the Meris 

440 is incorporating effects pedals during mixing. The 

module’s usefulness is essentially doubled in this way, and 

turning knobs on analog devices in real-time opens up 

great creative opportunities for glorious sonic freak 

“accidents.” For example, send your drum subgroup to a 

stereo aux fader in your DAW, and feed a pair of 440s. Plug 

in different fuzz pedals on each side, add a little 

compression, and you’ve got yourself dinner! I love this 

stuff, and the fun is endless. 

The Meris 440 is marketed as a go-to guitar preamp, 

but I found that it also sounded great on everything else 

I threw at it, including vocals, drums, and keys. Its 

preamp is not a “new flavor,” but it is its own version of 

API’s classic rock flavor. Even at a higher asking price, the 

440 would be a great addition to any 500-series rack, and 

it’s a downright bargain considering you get an effects 

loop and built-in filters on top of the solid mic preamp. I 

would recommend ordering a double scoop — a pair of 

440s — for your rack. 

($549 street; www.meris.us) 

–Geoff Stanfield 

Equator Audio 

Q10 active coaxial monitor 

When I moved my mix setup out of my living room and 

into a large shared studio space, I sensed that it would be 

helpful to have a larger pair of midfields for monitoring. 

Unfortunately, most of the speakers that I admired were 

prohibitively expensive, until I discovered the Equator 

Audio Q10. Modern engineering techniques, likely in 

conjunction with outsourced construction, have combined 

to create an affordable midfield speaker, available directly 

from Equator for $1,500 a pair. I’ve long been a fan of 

coaxial speakers like the Q10; I once used a vintage pair of 

Electro-Voice speakers for my home stereo. Coaxial drivers 

mount the tweeter at the center of the woofer cone, 

allowing all frequencies to originate from the same point. 

This consistency affords a very accurate image in both 

width and depth. 

The biggest improvement that I expected from 

midfields was help in the low frequencies, and the Q10 

proved impressively accurate. It provides accuracy at low 

enough frequencies to make it easy to combine bass guitar 

and kick drum in a rock mix, and the low mids seem to sit 

especially well as a result. I previously had to switch 

between two different nearfields and then stare at my 

spectrum analyzer, but now I can feel confident that if the 

bass frequencies sit correctly, then the mix will be 

appropriate — and will translate well. Highs and mids 

sound great too, with generally even frequency balance 

that stretches into the top octaves. The stereo imaging 

proved reliable too, as I have an easier time identifying 

pan location with the Q10 pair than with my ADAM A7 

monitors [Tape Op #57]. 

I did feel that the self-powered Q10 has a somewhat 

exaggerated sound, which makes everything sound a bit 

like it’s running through an API. Transients always receive 

a slightly unnatural emphasis, and heavily distorted 

electric guitars become even more distorted. Working with 

such distorted signals was the only time I found the Q10 

at all fatiguing. Ted Keffalo, President of Equator Audio, 

explained, “It may be that what you’re hearing as 

unnatural is the result of the Q10 using a real, highfrequency 

compression driver horn. A horn can tend to be 

aggressive-sounding, especially at a higher SPL. It is true 

that a silk tweeter is much easier for your ear to 

accommodate. That’s one of the reasons we use silk 

tweeters on the D Series [Tape Op #88]. Of course, you 

can’t hit the same SPL with a silk tweeter.” 

The Q10 reminded me that midfields can be impractical 

for some applications. First, a pair of Q10s is a lot harder 

to set up than nearfields. Positioning them on stands 

behind a desk became a lot easier with two people 

involved, where I’m used to comfortably moving nearfields 

myself. The Q10 is deep with a relatively small frontal 

surface — their coaxial design enables the front 

dimensions to be only slightly larger than the 10’’ woofer. 

Also, in our studio’s smaller control space, the Q10 pair 

produced too much low end due to placement in the 

corners of the room. Even with the exaggerated lows, my 

studio partners (Jay Sherman-Godfrey and Joe McGinty), 

who primarily use the smaller area, found the Q10s helpful 

in that space. 

A nice feature of the Q10 is the room compensation 

software for Mac and PC, which comes for free with the 

speakers; it’s a bit like the algorithms in a dbx DriveRack. 

The software was slightly tricky to install, because it needs 

several drivers in place first, even in Mac OS, and USB and 

network cables are needed to connect the speakers to the 

computer and each other. Once the drivers were installed, 

it was quick and easy to run the software and tune our 

room. In the small space, with the speakers close to the 

walls, it shaved out a lot of low end, effectively correcting 

for the corner-loading. It also accurately detected 

reflections and compensated for them, to bring down a bit 

of cymbal pinging in the process, and it precisely matched 

the volumes of the two speakers. The software allows realtime 

control of the DSP that operates between the analog 

input and the built-in amplifiers. Once you’re satisfied, you 

can save the room compensation, tone contour, and 

volume trim adjustments to each speaker. 

For the price, we all found the Q10 especially impressive. 

Quality midfield monitors are now available to a studio where 

the budget had previously made the option impractical. 

($1499.98 direct; www.equatoraudio.com) 

–Steve Silverstein 

Sonodyne 

SRP 600 2-way active monitor 

The Sonodyne SRP series is a no-nonsense entry into the 

sub-$1000 monitor scene, with five different models ranging 

from 3’’ to 8’’ in woofer size. Touting an ultra-wide sweet spot 

with custom waveguides for the tweeters on each model, SRP 

monitors are enclosed in die-cast aluminum enclosures that 

eliminate vibration-induced coloration. They feature woven 

Kevlar cones, and Sonodyne claims they exhibit accurate 

transient and low-end response, despite their compact size. 

Having no prior experience with Sonodyne monitors, I was 

excited to take a listen. 

I spent a few weeks with an SRP 600 pair mainly using 

them as a complementary set of monitors, as I’d loaned 

my NS-10Ms to another engineer and needed another set 

of monitors for referencing during some mix projects. 



Right off the bat, it was apparent that they are indeed



articulate, and loud. I had to turn them down a bit to make 

them evenly matched with my Focal and my Auratone 

speakers. But aside from shear volume, the detail in the 

midrange was very pleasing. 

After digging in a bit more and experimenting with both 

my own mixes and some of my favorite albums, from 300 Hz – 

12 kHz, I felt like I was hearing a pretty darn accurate 

representation of the audio — particularly within the crucial 

800 Hz – 2 kHz midrange. The manual specifies a usable 

frequency range of 42 Hz – 25 kHz, and I feel like for the most 

part that’s true, which I didn’t expect would be the case, given 

the size and cost. 

When it came to actually making decisions with the 

Sonodynes, I first played a mix that I’d been working on for 

a few days, and a few things jumped out at me right away. I 

could hear that my vocal effects were clouding up the center 

of the image in both their positioning and their equalization 

— a welcome revelation. After switching back to my Focals, 

I found that it was the right call. There was also a guitar that 

was covering up the vocals with some overzealous 400 Hz. 

However, the biggest shock was I could hear the punchy ultralows 

(which I’ll classify as 40–80 Hz for the purposes of this 

review), coming from these little monitors quite clearly. I 

went to work on those frequencies, as I’d noticed that they 

were an issue in my car earlier that day. 

For all of the good things that the SRP 600 did to the 

midrange, I felt like 100–250 Hz was less impressive, but still 

very useful for ensuring that my mixes were translating with 

lesser systems. It should also be noted that this review was 

conducted entirely in one room, so your results may vary 

(especially in regards to frequency ranges that are affected 

most by nearby surface reflections). While the back of the 

speakers have equalizers that allow you to increase 50–250 Hz 

by up to 3 dB either way (and a separate EQ for the highs), I 

was happy with the representation up to 100 Hz, so I figured 

it’d be best to do any critical low-end adjustments on my 

usual rig that I know inside and out. After all, I was mainly 

evaluating these monitors by utilizing them as a 

complementary pair to my current setup, so revealing any 

flaws in my midrange was much more appealing to me than a 

fancy low register. It should be noted, however, that an 

unclouded low end allows you to really concentrate on your 

midrange, which was exactly what I’d been looking for. 

Last but not least, I found the high end to be very 

serviceable — perhaps not as revealing as the midrange, but 

coming in a close second. You’ll definitely know if you’ve got 

too much going on from 5 kHz up. I’d describe the response 

as being crispy — somewhere between the Genelec 8000 

series and the Mackie HR824 [Tape Op #67]. In my time with 

the monitors, I didn’t feel like I had to dial back the high end, 

but I wasn’t really using them exclusively. Were they the only 

monitors I had to use, listening at extremely high levels would 

probably call for a slight adjustment. 

The SRP 600 retails for $775 each, which is interesting, 

because I feel like overall, they sound a little more expensive 

than that. For me, the big thing is that they sound very 

different than what I’m used to, but in an entirely useful way, 

so I may have to buy myself (yet) another pair of speaker 

stands for my room. Monitors are a very subjective and finicky 

thing to nail down, so I fully suggest trying out several 

different pairs if you’re in the market; just be sure to include 

the SRP series while you’re at it. 

($775 street; www.sonodyne.com) 


Mark Vail 

The Synthesizer 

(Oxford University Press) 

In 2005, Matt Warshaw, a well-known surf journalist who had 

written for just about every surfing publication that exists, 

published The Encyclopedia of Surfing, which became the 

definitive reference on the subject of wavesliding. With his new 

book, The Synthesizer, Mark Vail, who has written for just about 

every electronic music publication that exists, has published a 

similar book on synthesizers, even if it’s not called “The 

Encyclopedia of Synthesizers.” As a staff writer for Keyboard 

magazine from 1988 to 2001, Mark had a ringside seat to the 

evolution of many of the classic synths, but his roots go all the 

way back to earning an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording 

Media from Mills College, which has a long history in the ‘West 

Coast School’ of electronic music. Mark’s decades-long 

involvement with synthesizers during their formative years is 

apparent here, as no stone is left unturned. Packed with tons of 

photos, footnotes, and anecdotes, he covers it all — from analog 

to digital, Theremins to Ondiolines, modulars to MIDI, TR-808s 

to Linns, plug-ins to iPads, Space Echoes to echo chambers, 

string synths to noise boxes. If it has anything to do with 

synthesis or processing synthesized sounds, it’s in here! At 

400+ pages, this is a significant book; the appendix and index 

alone clock in at over 40 pages! Long-time synth nerd or just 

getting into synths — this book has something for everyone. 

($13.49 Kindle, $35 paperback, $99 hardcover; 

www.markvail.com)–JB 

SBS Designs 

SP1 2UBE tube processor 

With the resurgent interest in analog gear, there are tons 

of new boxes on the market. Most have a straightforward 

purpose, but there are still some that don’t fall into the 

“normal” categories of preamp, EQ, compressor, etc. The 

SP1 2UBE processor is a prime example. It’s a boutique type 

of piece that’s solely built for enhancing sound, rather than for 

surgical precision in adjusting sound. It’s got loads of 

character and makes an incredibly unique impression. 

To start with, it takes a bit of poetic license just to 

describe what it is — like explaining to someone what 

musical “warmth” is, you have to use sentences, not just a few 

words. Only two knobs — Low Thresh and High Thresh — 

control what it’s doing to the source. My first thought was 

tape saturation, but that’s not exactly what’s happening. It’s 

definitely doing some saturation-ish things like smoothing 

and widening lows. But SBS also describes it as an expander, 

and it’s certainly doing some of that as well. It’s really 

interesting the way that it manipulates presence. It’s as if 

some low-mids and highs are scooped slightly, while highmids 

are made more expansive. This can have an incredibly 

pleasing effect depending on how you use it. 

As a home hi-fi piece, the SP1 2UBE can make many 

music genres sound much smoother, much more open, 

much wider, and generally more pleasing. It seems to take 

the sizzle off of many sounds that can often get too bright 

(e.g., the high-frequency resonance from guitar strings or 

slides, overcooked female vocals, claps, and snares that are 

pushed close to distortion). The box requires some care 

when processing music with heavily compressed kick drums. 

For some techno (the sub-genre techno, not everything that 

goes bmp-ch-bmp-ch) and some hip-hop tracks, you may 

find that the low end can get quite pronounced, even at the 



processor’s lowest settings (despite SBS’s explanation that 

there should be no effect at the lowest setting). 

Continues on Page 81>>>

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The Delines Colfax Songwriter and novelist Willy Vlautin has led 

Portland’s Richmond Fontaine for 20 years. With this new group, The 

Delines, he’s written songs for Amy Boone (The Damnations TX) to 

sing, and grabbed his bandmate/drummer Sean Oldham, bassist 

extraordinaire Freddy Trujillo, The Decemberists’ keyboardist Jenny 

Conlee-Drizos, and Tucker Jackson on pedal steel to lay down some 

excellent tracks. The songs are haunting, sad, and beautiful stories, 

sharing much of the view of ‘burned out America’ from Willy’s last novel, 

The Free. The album was recorded and produced by my friend John Askew, 

in Portland, at Tucker Martine’s [Tape Op #29] Flora Recording & Playback. I 

dropped John a line to uncover this fine albums origins. 

Why Flora? You seem to work there a bit, though it is Tucker’s personal studio. 

I got to know Flora early on: back when his studio was at his house, he’d let me mix while he was out of 

town. When he moved to this space, and he was finalizing the build-out, he let me run a few of my sessions 

in there to troubleshoot, as well as make a list of to-dos and whatnot. It’s always been very comfortable, 

as well as great place to work. I try to do projects there if it can work out. 

How many days did this album take? 

We did all the basics in four days, including vocals. Amy Boone was only in town from Texas for the days 

we recorded, so we needed to make this session very productive. Everyone was very prepared and we made 

great use of our limited time. Once we had the recordings, we brought the tracks back to my studio [Scenic 

Burrows] for a few remaining overdubs, and then about ten days of mixing. 

Was this recorded to digital or tape? 

I love recording to tape, but I can’t wait to get it into the computer. So, yes, we recorded the basics to 

tape (Tucker’s Studer A820 24-track, 2-inch machine) and then dumped to Pro Tools. Using tape really 

helped the band feel focused on getting good performances. It was that kind of record. 

Did you use Tucker’s plate reverb on the vocals? 

It was the EMT 140 plug-in from Altiverb. I did try hard to figure out how to get a good “real” plate sound 

without having one – it wasn’t practical for me to use Flora’s plate at the time, and I don’t own one myself. 

I placed the [SoundToys] Decapitator in front of the EMT, rolled off some highs, and added a bit of gain. 

It did seem to help the quality of the plate, in terms of richness and warmth, on Amy’s vocals. On some 

songs I used the UAD Studer A800 plug-in, in front, instead. 

Any special insights to the recording and production? 

The record was all about trying for a “vibe,” and finding that was not always easy. We had various extras 

and instruments as overdubs; i.e., we tried string parts and horns on certain numbers to see if a more 

“Bobbie Gentry” sound would be fitting. But in the end the songs came across best with a simple backdrop: 

having Amy’s voice out in front, and the band as a backdrop for her vocals and Willy’s stories. It was often 

tempting to want to add things to a song, in hopes that it would push it to that special place; but for 

Colfax keeping the recordings spare seemed to be the best fit. 

< decorrecords.com> -LC 

80/Tape Op#103/Music Reviews/(continued on page 81) 

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Jenny Lewis The Voyager When I am asked to describe my 

personal goals when making records, I frequently say that I’m 

looking to make classic, timeless works of art. I want to make 

albums that can be listened to for many years to come, without 

sounding tied to an era in any way. When I think of a scene where 

the recording process melded well with the art being created, 

surprisingly L.A. in the mid- to late ‘70s comes to mind. Stick with 

me on this. Recall the sound of productions like Fleetwood Mac’s 

self-titled breakthrough LP (1975) and the top-selling Rumours 

(1977), as well as the lesser-known LPs like Warren Zevon’s 

Excitable Boy (1978). Even Jackson Browne’s semi-live Running on 

Empty is a solid sounding release. Studio equipment had hit a 

certain level of quality, and L.A. was full of engineers and 

producers pushing that level through the roof. It might not be 

your cup of tea stylistically, but you’d be hard-pressed to slight 

the straightforward quality of these recordings. 

Jenny Lewis, formerly of indie darlings Rilo Kiley, returns on her 

third solo album with a batch of songs that feel very personal, 

yet draw the listener in. But what struck me about The Voyager 

was the similarity in presentation to these classic albums from 

the L.A. era described above. Solid players, distinct parts, and 

a real sense of timeless purpose inform this album, and my 

guess is that it will easily withstand any test of time. A big part 

of the puzzle is the production input of respected songwriter 

Ryan Adams. 

Jenny says, “Ryan and I didn’t know each other very well before 

this album – we had hardly even listened to one another’s music, 

to be honest. But I’d heard he built Pax Am Studio at Sunset 

Sound, so I hit him up and asked if I could come in and record 

something. We put together a band – Ryan on guitar, Griffin 

Goldsmith from Dawes on drums, Gus Seyffert on bass, and [coproducer] 

Mike Viola on guitar and piano.” These sessions were 

recorded by Charlie Stavish and David LaBrel. Jenny continues, 

“Every time I wanted to put a harmony on a song, Ryan would 

ask me, ‘Do you come from a musical theater background?’ His 

argument was that great songs, with great stories, don’t need 

background vocals. I trusted the vision, and Ryan ended up being 

the person to get me over the fear of finishing something I’d 

been working on for so long.” 

The multi-talented Beck Hansen produced the single “Just One of 

the Guys,” which has a starlet-studded video to accompany it. 

Engineered by Cole Marsden, Greif Neill, and David “Elevator” 

Greenbaum, Jenny says it was, “One of the tunes I’d tried a few 

different ways before I finally recorded it with Beck, at his home 

studio in Malibu [The Library]. He ended up producing the song, 

as well as contributing backing vocals.” 

Jenny’s longtime foil and partner, Johnathan Rice, helps out coproducing 

and playing on several songs. Former Rilo Kiley bassist 

Pierre de Reeder performed various overdubs (see an interview I 

recently did in an upcoming Tape Op) at Kingsize North. Guest 

musicians include Benmont Tench (of The Heartbreakers), Lou 

Barlow (Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh), The Watson Twins, First Aid Kit, 

Lili Haydn, and many others. 

The final touches for this great album include mixing by Rich 

Costey at Eldorado Studios, Burbank, CA, and mastered by 

Howie Weinberg [Tape Op #30] at Howie Weinberg Mastering, 

Los Angeles, CA. 

Jenny says, “This record was the hardest one I’ve ever made. I 

truly thought I was never going to finish it, but I did. The Voyager 

tells that story: the longest night of my life, and the journey to 

finally getting some rest.” 

As a listener and a fan, I’m so glad it’s completed and is part of 

my listening rotation. 

-LC 

The Recording Game by Larry Crane 

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