The Creative Music Recording Magazine

Matt Wallace
Faith No More, The Replacements, Maroon 5

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Kevin Army
Operation Ivy, Green Day, Jawbreaker
Alex Perialas

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Anthrax, Testament, Overkill
SassyBlack il
Solo after THEEsatisfaction
Enrique Tena Padilla
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Oh Sees, Beach House, Sonic Ranch
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Gear Reviews
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Issue No. 128

Dec/Jan 2018/19
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Hello and
welcome to
Tape Op
#128!
12 Letters
14 SassyBlack
20 Enrique Tena Padilla
24 Alex Perialas
30 Matt Wallace
42 Kevin Army
50 Gear Reviews
p a g e

66 Larry’s End Rant

70 Eric Bachmann

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73 “Boogie” Bob Baldori Mr. Emerick backstage at Austin City Limits in 2007 for Tape Op
#57 interview photoshoot. Photo by John Baccigaluppi

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A songwriter recently asked me to advise him on
what type of recording equipment he should buy. He il
was looking for “a decent interface and a program…
that won’t make my demos sound like shit, as well
as give an engineer a good idea of what I want to
do.” My advice? Any engineer or producer worth a
a
damn can hear past any recording deficiencies. As a
I’m always happier to
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producer,
hear the most stripped-down
version of a song that is possible. The
further the song gets fleshed out, the more it
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becomes arranged and produced. While these can

sometimes be concrete ideas that help form the
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trajectory of a song, these decisions can also force

the song into a corner. (Too much pre-production
can sometimes be a bad thing, though not always!)
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But focusing on the recording equipment can also

be another distraction, when songwriters could be
working on their art instead. If you’re a writer, make
sure the balance is right for you, and make sure you
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are focusing on your creativity and expression.

Larry Crane, Editor
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PS: We’d like to note that legendary engineer/producer Geoff Emerick passed away in October this year.
I was lucky enough to meet and hang out with Geoff many times over the years, and it was a pleasure to
get to know him. He worked on records that broke boundaries and inspired millions. A true creative
recordist if there ever was one.
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PPS: Our interview with Tony Bongiovi last issue (Tape Op #127) stirred up some thoughts and questions.
Read more here: <tapeop.com/blog> -LC
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 The Creative Music Recording Magazine

Editor & Founder

Larry Crane
Publisher &Graphic Design
John Baccigaluppi
Online Publisher
Geoff Stanfield
CTO & Digital Director
Anthony Sarti
Production Manager & Gear Reviews Editor
Scott McChane
Gear Geek at Large
Andy Hong
Contributing Writers &Photographers
Cover photo by Emery Becker • April 24th, 1992 - March 18th 2018
<www.emerybeckerphotography.com>
Thanks to Kevin McGuire for sending the photo to us.
John Dwyer, Tony Rancich, Taylor Boylston, Scott Evans, Laurie Nelson,
Michael Franet, David Konjoyan, Roddy Bottum, Ian Brennan, David Ginochio,
Don Gunn, Gus Berry, Kevin Friedrichsen, Dave Hidek, Brandon Miller,
Garrett Haines, Billy Barnett, Justin Mantooth, Will Severin, Ryan Sommer,

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Jeremy Lange, and Jason Hatfield.
Editorial and Office Assistants
Jenna Crane (editorial copy editor), Jordan Holmes (reviews copy editor),
Thomas Danner (transcription),

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Maria Baker (admin, accounting), Jay Ribadeneyra (online)
Tape Op Book distribution
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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
a
(For submissions, letters, music for review. Music for review is also
reviewed in the San Rafael office, address below)
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P.O. Box 86409, Portland, OR 97286 voicemail 503-208-4033

All unsolicited submissions and letters sent to us become the property of Tape Op.
Advertising
John Baccigaluppi
@

916-444-5241, (john@tapeop.com)
Laura Thurmond/Thurmond Media
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512-529-1032, (laura@tapeop.com)
Marsha Vdovin
415-420-7273, (marsha@tapeop.com)
Kerry Rose
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415-601-1446, (kerry@tapeop.com)
Printing: Matt Saddler
@ Democrat Printing, Little Rock, AR
Subscribe online at tapeop.com
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(Notice: We sometimes rent our subscription list to our advertisers.)

Subscription and Address Changes
Can all be made online at <tapeop.com/subscriptions>.
Back issues can be purchased via <tapeop.com/issues>. If you have
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subscription issues that cannot be fixed online, email

<circulation@tapeop.com> or send snail mail to
PO Box 151079, San Rafael, CA 94915.
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Please do not email or call the rest of the staff about subscription issues.
Postmaster and all general inquiries to:
Tape Op Magazine, PO Box 151079, San Rafael, CA 94915
(916) 444-5241 | tapeop.com
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Tape Op is published by Single Fin, Inc. (publishing services)

and Jackpot! Recording Studio, Inc. (editorial services)
10/Tape Op#128/Masthead www.tapeop.com
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I just wanted to say thank you for such a great
magazine. In fact, I have all my students subscribe to
Tape Op, and I also use it as part of my beginning audio
recording and lab courses! Tape Op brings such a great
perspective to the world of audio and music production,
and I love that the students really connect with the
content of your magazine. Thanks again for such a great
publication and keep up the good work.
Cesar Mejia <cesar@theshelterstudios.com>
In regards to Aaron Mullan’s article on loudness [Tape
Op #126], I found it a to be good read and agreed with
most of it. However, when he says, “While the good news
is that the Loudness Wars are over...” I, unfortunately,
cannot agree with that. He made that statement in the
context of the “streaming and iTunes” paragraph, so we
are basically talking about Spotify and Apple music since
Sphere Recording Consoles,
as noted in the article, was
purchased from Don
McLaughlin by Duncan Rowe
and is currently building
new equipment under the
name. Larry Devivo wrote
“Electrodyne History: The
History of Electrodyne, Quad-
Eight and Sphere” for us in issue
#49. It explains the lineage of these circuit designs, and how
John Hall’s redesign of an op amp was part of that.
<tapeop.com/interviews/49/electrodyne-history> -LC
John Baccigaluppi’s “An Endangered Species” [#126]
harping about the deficits of lead-free solder was funnier
than I suspect it was intended to be. Solder defects have
always been a substantial part of electronic equipment
failures. In my MI equipment repair career, I would
estimate that at least 75% of all electronic
component failures were initiated by solder connection
failures. Even the often-praised point-to-point tube circuits
were known to rely on their unreliable mechanical
attachment to the terminal posts because the heat from
the tube circuits, as well as the lack of flux removal, caused
the lead to degrade into powdery lead-oxide. As many
I thoroughly enjoyed John Baccigaluppi’s End Rant in
#126. Yes, electronic parts stores are at best an endangered
species. My dad had such a shop, ostensibly a TV/radio
repair shop; but it was well-stocked with parts for audio
gear as well. While Dad had hundreds of TV tubes on hand,
I made sure he stocked ample quantities of 6L6, 6V6,
12AX7, 5AR4, EL34 [amplifier tubes] and the like. The
drawer marked “connectors” was always stocked with XLRs,
1/4-inch plugs and jacks, and RCA connectors. He carried
the full RCA “SK” line of transistors, along with cross-
reference books. We could almost always sub in a part to
get a piece of gear working. Dad was always amused when
my crazy musician friends came in dragging their amp or
axe. “Mr. D, somebody spilled a beer into my Fender Twin.”
It didn’t matter if you were a well-known jazz bass player
or the blues guy from the local bar. We had a volume pot
for your [Fender] P-Bass and the screw-on connector for
your [Shure 520] “green bullet.” After I amassed a fair
number of schematics, and Dad taught me the finer points
of amplifier circuits, I became the amp repair guy and he
let me work in the shop after hours. It was only recently,
after Dad passed away, that I liquidated the remains of the
shop, which was stored in the basement of his home. His
huge Hickok VTVM [Vacuum Tube Voltmeter] went to the
highest bidder on eBay, and an all-tube Tektronix
oscilloscope (weighing about 50 pounds) went to a guy in

they are the majority of the streaming market share. I
personally subscribe to the latter, and “Soundcheck,” as
Apple calls it, is not on by default; the user needs to go
into settings and turn it on. How many people do we
companies demonstrated over the last century, the beauty
of tin-lead solder was that any half-trained chimp could
make a mediocre but hard-to-inspect solder connection;
but the flaw in that technology was that the circuit designs
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PA who intends to restore it. I gave away bins of
resistors, caps, and semiconductors in the hope they could
be put to use. What did I keep? The Hickok tube tester, of

think do that? Currently, major releases are still mastered
very loud (-8 LUFS [Loudness Units relative to Full Scale]
or so)... so how can we say it’s over? I don’t feel
comfortable releasing projects at -16 when it’s going up
against these other albums; instead I tend to
compromise and make my masters around -11 (depending
on the material, of course). As much as I want the
loudness wars to be over, we need standards put in place
across the whole streaming industry before I’ll feel
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were rarely conducive to sufficient removal of the flux
residue, which led to deterioration of the connections with
heat, moisture, or simply oxygen exposure. Baccigaluppi’s
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rhapsody for the days past - when equipment failed often
but could sometimes be repaired with enough effort,
patience, and money - is nothing new. But I suspect at
least a few thousand “vintage” large format consoles have
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ended up polluting the nation’s water supply because their
performance and capabilities didn’t warrant the cost of
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course, as well as an all-tube Heathkit sine/square audio
generator, and a lifetime supply of lead-based solder.
Frank Dickinson <go90east@verizon.net>
One of the situations that was implied in John’s Rant
that many people missed was the time factor. When I first
opened Jackpot! Recording Studio in 1997 I had an old
MCI tape deck that required constant, last-minute repairs.
I couldn’t count the number of times I visited local
electronics shops (two out of three are now closed) right

comfortable releasing more dynamic masters. The dialog repair, let alone the real estate necessary to house that before closing to grab a relay, diode, or transistor. Not only
needs to be about how we do that. Also, who do we turn equipment. Some products are worth salvaging, if just for was I getting the part in time to fix my deck for the next
to? AES? Lobbying the record industry? Pleading directly the historical value. Most electronic products are obsolete, day’s session, I wasn’t having to pay $20 to expedite a
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with Spotify, Apple, etc.? regardless of whether that was “planned” or not. I suspect FedEx shipment for a 1/2 ounce part. -LC
Sam Patlove <buds.studio> the best way to decide where you draw that line is by Great interviews with Ken Scott and Jack Douglas!
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determining what your time is worth. Really excellent. I’m sure they dug talking with you. Take
I wanted to send a note saying how excited I was to
Thomas Day <wirebenderaudio.blogspot.com> care and keep up the great work.
read Wally Wilson’s article detailing the history of Sphere
Electronics in #126. Having the pleasure of I agree with John Baccigaluppi’s sentiment of Matt Hurwitz <ByMattHurwitz@aol.com>
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making several records on the Sphere Eclipse
console at Earth Analog in Tolono, IL, it’s great to get the
full history of the company and the details on how these
amazing desks came to be in existence. Kudos for the
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supporting local businesses, but, as he mentions, not Thank you! And don’t forget that we have the Tape Op
everyone has a local parts store. What he doesn’t mention Podcast now! <tapeop.com/podcasts> I was lucky to meet
is the obvious alternative to directly ordering parts from up again with these wonderful producers and talk shop,
China: large online parts stores here in the USA like joined by my pals Geoff Stanfield (online publisher) and

coverage, and thanks to Wally for sharing his story!
Carl Byers <carlbyers@gmail.com>
I was reading the latest issue and really enjoyed the
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DigiKey, Mouser, and Jameco. As for “tossing your vintage Luther Russell (longtime contributor and musician). -LC
gear in a landfill” due to lack of spare parts, come on.
There is a rule of technology that the longer a technology I’ve always loved your willingness to cover bands and
studios that are not mainstream, products that are new and

has been around, the longer it will stick around. Simple

article about Wally Wilson from Sphere Electronics. I read innovative, as well as interviews with legendary (and
resistors and Zener diodes have been around for a long
it twice, and soaked it all up. Then later in the back of the sometimes rebel) artists, producers, and engineers that are
time, and will continue to be around. As for
magazine, I saw an advertisement for Sphere recording able to teach us new things. Tape Op is, without a doubt,
semiconductors, if your exact part isn’t available, there
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consoles. They say that the preamp was designed by a guy my favorite magazine. It’s also a way for me to relive old
are often close substitutes. In contrast, today’s “DAW and
named John Hall, but I didn’t see anything about a person days when I had a “state of the art” 4-track reel-to-reel
plug-ins” computers are pretty much guaranteed to be in
named John Hall in the Wally Wilson article. Are the two
a landfill a decade from now, hence the need for RoHS studio, as well as all the newer computers, DAWs, and plug-
Sphere companies related at all? ins. Keep up the great work. You are finally
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[Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive].

Marius Perron <mperron3@gmail.com> getting some hard-earned and well-deserved recognition!
Ayal Sharon <ayal.sharon@gmail.com>
Jim Francisco <g33zrj1m@gmx.com>
12/Tape Op#128/Letters/
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Her bio states, “SassyBlack is a space aged
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singer, songwriter & producer,” and that is
a great starting point in digging into her
career, one that also includes the titles of
freelance writer, entrepreneur, and actor.
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Catherine (“Cat”) Harris-White came to
many folk’s attention as a member of
THEESatisfaction, a Seattle-based hip-
to
hop/R&B duo signed to Sub Pop Records.
After that band, her solo career as
SassyBlack yielded the albums No More
Weak Dates and New Black Swing, as well
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as a plethora of online releases. SassyBlack
and I were on a panel together in Seattle for
the Upstream Music Fest and met up the
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next day to talk about making music and
staying creative.
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I gather that you went to school for voice? studio, and my dad wanted to introduce me to them. He
thought perhaps I could learn something from them. I
Yeah, jazz vocals.
When did you first start getting into was like, “Oh, my god; I’m in a studio. Look at this
recording? stuff!” The first time I went to record in the studio, I
The first time I actually went to a studio was when my dad think I was 16 or something, and it was with my choir
took me. I was 13 or 14. When I moved to Seattle from in high school. That was weird; I did my first solo, which
Hawaii, I wrote my first song within the first couple of got cut because they didn’t like it. They didn’t tell me;
weeks I was here. A complete song. Verse, chorus, I found out when I heard the CD. Really getting into
bridge; all complete to the end. I wrote it. Every time I studio was when I was in college. I first started
read the lines, I could remember how the melody went. tinkering around with GarageBand and trying to record
I’d been telling my family I wanted to do music. My dad ideas. Mostly I was vocalizing, because I wasn’t really
was trying to get me into acting, because I was doing comfortable with instrumentation or how to record it,
Shakespeare when I was younger. When I was around 13 but I knew I could just sing into my black MacBook.
or 14, he was doing something with KCTS [public The little built-in mic?
television]. He was one of the producers of this little Yeah. That was the first time I experimented. I tried all
show that only had a couple of episodes called Dig It. these programs until I got to Ableton Live, which was
They needed some kid extras, so he found a way for me really my comfort zone.
to be in it. The people who did the song for it had a
 [Propellerhead Software’s] Reason. I liked the drum You’d plug into the 1/8-inch jacks on a
sequencer, because it felt so simple. “Just tweak this computer?
here and here.” I loved the way it was formatted. That Yes. First we were running it through iTunes. We had
was really all that I liked though. The songs were no idea, so we didn’t even think to ask, “We’ve got
complicated, and how to use it was weird. I liked gigs. Let’s do it like this.” We’d bounce out the tracks
Ableton because I was able to play tracks forever. When and put it in iTunes. Then we realized that iTunes has
I first started using it, I made these weird 10-minute limiters built in that will disrupt your groove, and it
songs where I’d layer over it, and over and over again. won’t make the best quality for a live performance.
Because it’s built to loop, it’s like, “When You only find that out from talking to people.
does the song stop?” Luckily, I made a lot of friends along the way. I had
Exactly. Before I was using it in Arrangement View, not to put my ego aside and realize they aren’t trying to
Session View. Arrangement View is limitless, like Pro insult me; rather they are truly trying to help me be
Tools. You’re just running a track. It took me a couple a better artist. When King Britt recommended that
of years to learn the Session View. It’s challenging, but Komplete [setup], we were on tour in Europe and we
also exciting. Most people I was working with weren’t had a laptop. We kept hearing this “pop.” It’s
working with Ableton, and when I asked people to because the 1/8-inch cable was jumping out of the
teach me how to use programs, they didn’t. jack because the bass was too bangin’. A friend of our
They didn’t know? agent’s at the time was like, “You should use an
I think they didn’t know how to teach me, so they said, audio interface.” I had him break it down for me, and
“No.” My younger brother [Chocolate Chuck] made then I asked King Britt. I use it to record and
beats longer than I did. He helped me a lot in the perform. It’s got six inputs. It has everything I need.
beginning. He’s been producing since he was 14. I love the big knob volume control, because then I
When I was getting into singing a couple of years know what’s going on. Instead of all these tiny ones
later, he was focusing on DJing and producing. He where you might turn the wrong one.
was using FL Studio. Were you using that onstage last night?

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Formerly Fruity Loops. Yeah. I use it all the time. I love Native Instruments, and
Exactly. I’ve never tinkered with it. I love how Ableton and Native Instruments work
It’s like using an instrument, using one together; but it took a while to figure that out.

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of these DAWs or programs. If I try to Did you get your set more flexible where

SassyBlack
learn another one, it’s going to take you could hit pause and such?
all this time. I want to be creative. Well, THEESatisfaction didn’t really talk. We mostly
It’s stressful. I spent so much time learning Ableton. I know
il danced around or did choreography. We didn’t really
the people at Ableton, and they support me. Ableton has touch the laptop at all. It was about movement and
Cathartic and all the functionality. Eventually I want to be able to do
visuals triggered by my music. Even the idea of
no talking – just performing. Now, with me, I run
everything through Ableton Live. I trigger it, and I

Spiritual
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[Propellerhead Software’s] ReWire, where you can bring in have live arrangements that I do. I rarely play
another DAW; wow, cool. That’s why I love Ableton. anything directly live, because I’m still working on it.
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They’re pushing it. I got Pro Tools because it came with Last night I did. It was on my Roland.
my first M-Audio interface. I was like, “Oh, sweet. What’s Was that the little outboard controller
an audio interface? What is Pro Tools?” When I was doing you have going?
the early engineering for THEESatisfaction, we had a Yeah. I have a Roland keyboard on stage, a JD-Xi,
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interview and photo by

Larry Crane bootleg of Reason and this tiny, cute version of Pro Tools. and I’ve been recording songs into that. That was
Stasia [“Stas” Irons] was making all the beats in Reason.
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super fun.
Then I’d record it into Pro Tools and mix it down with What was the mix surface you were
whatever I knew, which wasn’t anything. using?
Is that the one that opened up for you, as Were you two doing all of your own I was doing some distortion on my Ableton Push 2; my
far as composing?
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recording, editing, and mixing in other controller. I was mostly checking the levels and
Before I tried to use Finale, because I was trying to chart
that band? making sure levels weren’t peaking. Some of those
songs. That’s what they taught me when I was studying
We did for Snow Motion and That’s Weird, our first mixtapes. songs were so new that I hadn’t really mixed them.
as a jazz vocalist. They want you to do charts. That was
I was mostly like, “Yo, we have to get it out.” It’s not They hadn’t really been “tracked,”
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the only audio workspace that I knew.

even about sounding great; it’s about trying it out, doing right?
Where it’s a mock-up of the charts? something new, and releasing it. I’m also like a control Yeah. The backup vocals were so raw. Typically, I sing
Yeah, totally. You play it and it charts everything for you.
freak. “Let’s just do it here. This sounds decent.” them one time, or however many times that day, and
It’s so hard.
to

You’ve grown along the way too, as far as get the right one. I put on some reverb and delay, and
It doesn’t sound musical, a lot of the time. equipment and understanding about that’s good enough. But they’re not always equal on
It plays samples where the notes are. different audio interfaces, as well as both sides, or both sections of the song.
Yeah. Especially if I’m uncomfortable with some of it.
the quality they bring, right? There’s the recording and the creation
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“How long is this note? Is it a quarter note? Eighth

Yeah. Right now I use a [Native Instruments] Komplete of the song, they appear live on stage.
note?” That was the first time I even did anything with
audio interface that was recommended to me by my The performing and tweaking of the
something similar to a DAW before I got into
friend King Britt. With THEESatisfaction, for a long time song is all a flow and a process. It’s not
GarageBand. Ableton was the most challenging, and the
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we didn’t realize that you should have an audio like this live show and the studio
most comforting at the same time. I tried working with
interface if you’re running something in a computer. session are totally separate.
SassyBlack/(continued on page 16)/Tape Op#128/15
Yeah. I get really excited about songs. I have so many What’s the process for you, once you’ve Yeah. It definitely does for me. I’m hoping I can get that
songs I’ve performed along the way where I just go, tracked at home and fine-tuned them? kind of setup going. It’d also be nice to have my gear
“Nah, I’m not feeling this anymore.” I take them out, Are you mixing yourself on the stay packed, because I travel so much.
and then they’re sitting there unfinished. I record a lot upcoming record, or are you sending Hey, we both travel a lot. I have a toiletry
of my sets; I’ll make up lyrics and get in the vibe. I see out tracks for players to put overdubs on? kit and a bag ready to go. It’s the same
how it changes, and then, “Oh cool, I finally have the For right now, I’m doing a project a month, which is with music gear. You gotta be ready to
right lyrics for that.” I need to remember how I sang crazy. It’s stress I placed on myself. Each project is hit the road. I can’t spend half a day
it, so I can do it in the studio. about four tracks, so it’s not crazy. They run about 15- packing anymore. I’ve got to turn
The common perception of someone minutes long, max. Most of them have been sample- around and go somewhere.
performing solo with a computer on based projects, which is fun. This year I came out with It will be useful to have that kind of setup going on. I’m
stage is that you hit a button and have a brand new one, a Destiny’s Child one. like many tech people or artists.
to sing along with it. You’re still in a You’re sampling Destiny’s Child and Have you done much work producing
flux of creativity. It’s awesome to rebuilding tracks out of it? others?
think of it that way. Yeah. It’s called Pop Treasury. I’m working on it. I’ve been asked by a couple of people.
Thanks. It’s really interesting. I’m definitely still growing as I saw that. The first one was NSYNC? I’m working with this one artist, Thalma de Freitas.
an artist. I learn so much. I go to so many panels. I Yeah, that’s how it started. I don’t want to hide the fact She’s from Brazil and lives in L.A. right now. We’ve been
watch so many videos. I need to watch more YouTube that I sampled them. [I want people] to be able to see working on something. She was like, “Let’s work and
tutorials. I have what I call my “Ableton gurus.” I have my inspiration from the artists I love. produce something.” I want to produce for people, and
people who work with all kinds of gear, and I can tell Where’s the legal ground on something songwrite for people. I like thinking about separate
them, “Hey, I’m trying to loop these vocals. What would like that? streams of income. I’m not going to be on tour forever.
you suggest, in terms of gear, with your experience or I don’t make enough money. With THEESatisfaction, we I’m tired right now!
your knowledge?” That’s been awesome. I used to play had something called THEESatisfaction Loves. So On your home setup, what vocal mic are
tracks, but I want something different. I want to be able THEESatisfaction Loves Stevie Wonder, THEESatisfaction you using?
to do something more interactive. I studied acting; I can Loves Erykah Badu. The Erykah Badu one led to us I just use a Shure SM58. I like how it sounds, like I’m
command the stage. It’s not a big deal. opening for her – she liked it. When I did the NSYNC having a live show. I’ve also recorded into my phone
You seem really comfortable on stage. and mixed it, and made it sound okay. I use reverb and

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delay to make the tone that I have shine and give me
“We were talking about what DIY means. the sci-fi effect.
Sometimes it means being in control of what Mic control too, like where you’re

you do, as well as being able to delegate that to
make your actual decisions, because you’re the
one who’s picking who works with you. It
doesn’t mean you’re losing your mind, and
running around, and doing too much.”
I’ve been on stages since I was a little girl. My parents
did that, so it’s not far from me. I wanted to do
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holding the mic relative to your
mouth.
I’m so comfortable with it. I’ll be honest. I’m not too
il comfortable with the studio mics. I’m always getting
too close. I’ll close my eyes and bump right into it.
When I’m recording my album, I’ll let an engineer mix
in the studio, but when I’m recording my EPs or beat
a
one, Chris [Kirkpatrick] from NSYNC retweeted it. If I tapes, I’ll mix and master them myself. I mix them all
was to get sued, I feel like I’d be pretty successful. I’m in Ableton and master through LANDR right now, which
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something more interactive, because I wanted to be
able to play. Last night was really cool, because it’s the
second or third time I’ve jammed on my Roland in front
of people. “Look at me. I’m pressing three keys!”
not going to lie. “Wow, you actually heard this? This is has been a wonderful discovery.
actually a threat to you? This is something I’ve made.” I’m curious about that.
There’s the Fair Use doctrine that says if I pay a monthly fee for it, but it’s nice. LANDR has been
you’re making social commentary on good, because I want to learn how to be the best to
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Eventually I’ll play chords and bring my sustain pedal something like that, you might be create my sound. Getting better at mixing is important.
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out. That might lead to a day where I have two okay. You’re reconfiguring it to look Having LANDR enables me to say, “Oh, this doesn’t sound
keyboards on stage. at it a different way. right. I missed this. Here’s why it’s popping like this.”
Do you ever do live collaborations with That’s interesting. I hope that works in my favor. It checks your mixes?
other musicians? Have you ever thought about building a Exactly. Every time, I’m like, “Oh, this sounds crazy. That
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I did the Capitol Hill Block Party a couple of years ago. I dedicated space for creating? snare is crazy loud.” My mixing engineer suggested it
had a DJ, a live drummer, and a guest rapper come up. I’m in the process. I have two Rolands, an ARP, and a because he started using it. It’s actually the cheapest
In Portland a couple of months ago, I had someone Yamaha. I try to figure out what I need. I like the “tear teacher that I can use all the time. The desktop app is
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come play upright bass, and I did a cover. It’s finding it down and pull it up” [process]. It trains my brain, interesting too. I want to be better at mixing, so that’s
the time to rehearse, at that point. because I’m on tour all the time. a good way.
With all your traveling, are you writing You’ve gotta be quick when you set up on Who’s the mix engineer you mentioned
a lot on the road? stage. that you’ve been working with?
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I try. Sometimes I go on binges. Right now I’m in the Yeah, especially for festivals. Then knowing all the cords I’ve been working with Sam [Arthur] Anderson at Mead
process of building a team so that I don’t have to do that you need and not forgetting anything. I do hope St. Studio. He worked on my last two records. I was
as much. I just got an assistant. I got an agent, and to have a permanent setup. I want to do that. I want doing my first album and looking for someone. What
I’m working on my next album right now. I have to set happened is we worked on one song together. He asked
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to get dual gear. I’ll be honest; I don’t even know what

everything up. Hopefully by the end of the year I’ll creating would be like if I had that now. me to do a song for him, and was like, “Oh, I do
have my home setup, versus my tour setup. I don’t You don’t want to impede creativity. engineering too.” It’s a trust process, as you know. I
always have lyrics for everything, so I freestyle, or scat, When we find ourselves updating need to be able to go through all my mood swings and
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or tell jokes in a sing-songy way. software or plugging cables together, be myself to the fullest in order to really get the point
it slows everything down. across for this record. I was still trying to piece
16/Tape Op#128/SassyBlack/(continued on page 18)
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 everything together for the first solo record [No More
Weak Dates]. I was still molding the songs, because I
gave myself a crazy timeline. The second record [New
Black Swing] was more chill, and this next record is
going to be way easier.
You don’t want to lose sight of the
emotions and the core of it. The process
can sometimes steal bits of that.
Yeah. I think I’m really lucky. With the process of those
other records, I learned a lot of what it takes to be
your own distribution, label, and all this. I use
Bandcamp and CD Baby. I had to do everything
though. I had to do album art for my last two records.
This is a lot of work. I appreciate learning it. But for
me to learn it now means I can give better insight to
someone else. I can have someone else do it, and I
can also respect their time in a different way once I’ve
had the experience of the hell that it is to do it
yourself. I interviewed Syd tha Kyd for Tom Tom
Magazine, because I’m also a journalist. We were
talking about what DIY means. Sometimes it means
being in control of what you do, as well as being able
to delegate that to make your actual decisions,
because you’re the one who’s picking who works with
you. It doesn’t mean you’re losing your mind, and
running around, and doing too much. I think because

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I’m a woman, people are like, “You should go work
with other people.” I can make all the beats, all the
vibes, and all the sounds. Prince went back and re-

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recorded all of his players’ parts all the time. He’d still
pay them and let them have the credit. Nobody said,
“Oh, Prince! Why didn’t you collaborate more?” He’s
il like, “I did, but I want to do what I do.”
You said yesterday that people didn’t
believe you, as a woman, had made
your own beats.
a
All the time. It’s insane. It’s really crazy.
That put me in shock. Really? What
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would your inspiration be to tell

anyone to record as an artist, a
singer, or a writer?
I always tell people that I’m a hippy-dippy chick. Born
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in San Francisco, raised in Hawaii, and living in the

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Pacific Northwest. Music and creating anything is

important, whether you’re knitting a hat, or you’re
drawing, or writing. It’s worth a try to feel the
process, and to learn about your frustrations. It gives
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perspective on the people in your life: how real you’re

being with them, how real they’re being with you, and
if they should stick around. I say it’s cathartic and
spiritual. It’s beyond us. r
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<sassyblack.com>
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18/Tape Op#128/SassyBlack/(Fin.)
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 making an actual record, was really different. Tony
[Rancich, Sonic Ranch’s owner] explained to me the
importance of being an intern, and how little things
– like changing the perception of the room by
turning on a light – can change the whole vibe of
the recording.
Were you going between Sonic Ranch
and school in Mexico?
Yeah, I was getting into a lot of trouble in school.
Any time there was a cool recording session, I’d
call in “sick” and fly to the Ranch. I was learning
things at the studio that I wasn t learning in
school. The moment finally came when I was
asked to fly in for a Beach House mixing session,
for Thank Your Lucky Stars. That was huge; it
brought me full circle to what lead me to the
Ranch in the first place! These adventures away
from school let me sit in on recording sessions
with TV On The Radio, Davíd Garza, and [the
Tejano/Norteño band] Intocable.
Was it worth it to skip school?
Yeah. I took the couple dollars I had and went to the
recording sessions. I met David Sitek [TV On The
Radio’s co-founder, producer] and we really bonded.
He was giving me some shit about going back to

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school. I remember him being like, “Hey, you do
realize you can come with me to the Austin City
Limits Music Festival and meet all these bands if you

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want? But keep going back to school, nerd.” There
was this pressure of, “Why keep going to something
that I’m already learning exponentially, and in a
il place where records are made?” But now that I think
about it, the fact I actually finished school feels
really comforting. If you can finish school, you can
definitely finish a record.
How did you get my email? That’s how
a
we met.
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I was going to Sonic Ranch more often, and I began to

help Tony with some general management aspects of
I met Enrique Tena Padilla when he, along with Eric Bauer, engineered, produced, and mixed the last the studio, but I was trying to get back to the
two Oh Sees records (Orc and Smote Reverser) at Sonic Ranch [Tape Op #94], outside of El Paso, Texas. recording side. I figured the best thing I could do is
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Over the years I’ve worked with a lot of different engineers, but I really like working with Enrique – what I’ve always done: Send emails. I remember
he’s coming from a different perspective than me, in both life and art. We definitely disagree on certain Sitek was always talking about all his friends, and
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things but it’s the compromise and the path that makes the results interesting and fruitful. how he was telling them stories about the Ranch. I
How did you end up in Texas engineering? “Stop emailing me!” was trying to get Sitek’s friends to go to there. He
I was curious about making records when I was 17 and was Yeah! [laughs] We did a quick interview over the phone, used to talk about you all the time, which really
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choosing what career to study. My parents really wanted
me to go to college. I ended up going to Mexico City
for recording school in 2011. I learned a couple of
things, but it wasn’t until I heard Bloom by Beach
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and I was throwing out all my certifications from fascinated me. Our mutual friend Kat [Kittie Harloe]
school. Marco [A. Ramirez, engineer at Sonic Ranch] was hanging in the studio, and I was, “Could you
answered, “I don’t even know what that means!” I give me John’s email?” It ended up being the perfect
realized that school didn’t really matter. Marco said,time to send you an email.

House, in 2012, that I became obsessed with the finer “If we like you, you can stay as long as you want.” I was looking for a place to record.
details of how that particular record was made. It didn’t really matter what I did, or didn’t know, Having us spend the night there
Did they make that record at Sonic technically; it was more about my vibe. after we played in El Paso was genius.
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Ranch? Yeah, the golden rule; “Don’t be a Yeah, that was a good move. Tony has done that for
Yes! I remember discovering that by reading the booklet; dick.” years – bands can always stay at the Ranch.
“Oh, Sonic Ranch?” It was summer break, and when Yeah. So, for my next summer break I went to Sonic Ranch. My band always does a lot of our
we came back to school, I was talking to one of my What was the first record you worked on recording live. How do you feel about
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friends about what he did in the summer. He said, “I there? working live like that in the studio?
just went to this crazy place called Sonic Ranch.” I It was awesome. We worked with this band, It’s my favorite. I don’t want to do records anymore that
was like, “Please give me an email of whoever you Communión, from Mexico City and producers Milo don’t have a live band. I was really lucky, in that
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know there.” I emailed them for half a year until they Froideval and Manuel Calderón, are both really big before you I worked on two records with Rob
were finally like, “Okay, come on over.” influences on me. The fact of being there, and [Fraboni]. He’s a recording legend, and he showed
20/Tape Op#128/Mr. Padilla/(continued on page 22)
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 “If we like you, you can stay
as long as you want.” It didn’t
really matter what I did, or
didn’t know, technically; it
was more about my vibe.

John & Enrique at Sonic Ranch. c Tony Rancich

me the ropes of live recording. He was the master of Yeah, running the whole session. I tape-opped a little Last question. Describe in ten words or
it. He walks around the live room and he marks – on a couple of previous records. A lot of things I less, Sonic Ranch and Tony Rancich.
with Xs on the floor – the sweet spots in the room. never thought about came into play. How crazy the It’s a different reality that takes things to the next level.
As the band is playing? tape smells, or when I discovered that as a tape op, Eleven words. Good job! Anything you
No, he’s just talking. He listens to his own voice and I should wear a ponytail. A bunch of times I was want to add before we close up?
marks the sweet spots in the room. The best sweet really close to getting my head smashed into the Keep the importance of having your buddies coming

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spots are where he puts the room mics. tape machine from getting my hair caught. It is such over to your bedroom and doing recordings, and to
How many room mics does he place? a mechanical approach to what we always see done keep pursuing that same feeling. How important it
It depends. Nothing is ever close mic’d. He opens all the so fast on Pro Tools. is to send an email to everybody! That’s the best

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channels and there’s this depth of field and Both have their benefits, but what do
dimension that’s mind-blowing. you prefer?
Is it a really roomy sounding recording? I love not looking at a computer screen. I feel like what
Those rooms aren’t super reverby. we do is a really ambiguous art. The fact that we
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He did those sessions in the same room where we did can’t see it makes it so we really focus on what we’re
Orc and Smote Reverser. In my opinion the Adobe actually shaping. Whenever I can focus on what I’m
Studio is the best room in Sonic Ranch. It’s a cool listening to, troubleshooting becomes easier. The
a
room also, because there are no iso booths. It’s a decisions made are more focused on the music.
rectangle and people see each other. Working with Are there any microphones that Sonic
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recording and production technique that you can
ever have. Ask as many questions as you can, and
knock on as many doors as you can. Some of them
will open. And Mexico City rules! r
John Dwyer [#117], is the lead singer, guitarist, and
driving creative force behind Oh Sees, aka Thee Oh Sees,
The Oh Sees, OCS, Orinka Crash Suite, as well as founder
and co-owner of Castle Face Records in Los Angeles.

Fraboni was great preparation for working with you. Ranch has or that you own that you love? <www.castlefacerecords.com>
There have been two times now where I’m I got really spoiled there. They have every single mic.
really glad you put up the room mics. What would you automatically grab for Polaroid photos by Taylor Boylston.
Initially I didn’t want a room mic. drum recording?
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Yeah. A bunch of your cymbals came from the room Those vintage AKG C12s are the greatest in the world.
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mics. Especially on your records – that you have two drum

I’d never recorded a whole record with sets – me and Bauer were able to play with different
Eric [Bauer]. I forced the two of you to colorations of what the different mics do.
work together. What are some of the recordings you’re
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I think me and Bauer clicked instantly. We had this yin doing here in L.A.?
and yang in every aspect –complementary abilities. I’m working with this band Wand. Those guys are great
Bauer pays really amazing attention to detail; he’s – you actually introduced me to them. My latest
always in an adaptive and corrective mentality. Every obsession is converting this giant mirror cube art
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time I lay down a sound I feel comfortable with, he piece my friends found for free on Craigslist into a
asks for more. As the recording keeps going, he’s recording studio.
changing the sound. Sometimes it’s good, and Where is the cube?
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sometimes not. But when it’s good, it’s great! I come The cube is now in Pasadena. I called up your [Castle
up with the first approach, and then Bauer comes in Face Records] partner, Matt Jones, “I have this crazy
to finesse it. mirror cube [by Los Jaichackers; artists Eamon Ore-
How was it working with tape for the Giron and Julio Cesar Morales].” It was displayed in
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first time? Was that on our record? LACMA [Los Angeles County Museum of Art] and the
No, I’d worked on tape before.
But this was the first one you produced
SFMOMA [San Francisco Museum of Modern Art]. I
wanted to make it a recording studio. “Can I put it
“Ask as Many
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and engineered by yourself? in your backyard?” Matt was like, “Oh man, my
girlfriend’s going to kill me. But let’s do it!”
Questions as You Can”
22/Tape Op#128/Mr. Padilla/(Fin.)
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 Caught in a

Mosh with
Alex Perialas

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a
interview & photo
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by Scott Evans
@
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Anthrax, Testament, Overkill, This building has been in your family Yes. The [current] footprint is identical. This was the
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Stormtroopers of Death, Nuclear Assault, for a long time. control room, and that was the studio. The machine
Vio-lence… Alex Perialas is responsible for My father was in the [music] business. I went to my first room wasn’t there, and it was a little different in the
dozens of classic metal records from the ‘80s and recording studio with him when I was eight or nine hallway. They were in this building for around eight
‘90s, mostly made in his studio, Pyramid Sound, years old. When I was about 16, he was trying to months, and the two other partners couldn’t see eye
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in his hometown of Ithaca, New York. These slow down the traveling to New York City, and he to eye. They came to my dad and said, “John, that’s
records are near and dear to my heart, so I came started doing more demos at a local place here in it. We can’t get along. We want you to buy us out.”
in with pages of questions when I visited Alex. His town called Sleepy Hollow Studios. The engineer’s My father was like, “I don’t want to own a recording
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40-year career includes a lot more than ‘80s
thrash metal, and we covered probably five
interviews worth of material – engineering for
Missy Elliott, Timbaland, Aaliyah, Ginuwine;
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name was Bill Storm and the other owner’s name was studio! I was only doing this because I wanted my
Doug MacLean. That building still stands – it’s a space up front, and I wanted access to a studio. I’m
community arts building now. They decided not to not an engineer. I don’t want to know about that.”
renew that lease, and to build this facility [instead]. But my father bought them out. So here he is with a

recording the St. Petersburg Philharmonic in My father had his booking agency and management recording studio and no engineer. Friends of friends
Russia; microphone-based ear training; making company that he did real estate out of as well – put him on to a fellow named Les Tyler. I don’t know
records with Overkill and Bad Religion; because in the music business, you need to be if you know who Les is – he owns THAT Corporation
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designing symphony halls; racing motorcycles – diverse. The doors opened in May of 1974. [who design and manufacture high-quality audio
and those are the conversations I had to edit out! And they built a studio here? integrated circuits].

24/Tape Op#128/Mr. Perialas/


Oh, okay. Wow!
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Les was an electrical engineering student at Cornell
[University]. So my dad hired Les in 1975. Les was
here for maybe a year and a half; then he got an offer
from dbx to be a design engineer, which was really his
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calling. I was sad, because we were really close; he
taught me an awful lot, and he still does. I’ve been
lucky to be surrounded by really smart people. So, my
to
father was looking for another engineer. He went back
to Cornell and found a guy who I instantly disliked.
My father gave him the keys, and said, “By the way,
Alex knows the room very well. He knows where
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things are, as well as how the console works.” This
was a custom-built, homemade console with Opamp
Labs components; a very odd desk. This guy looked at
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me and said, “Yeah, yeah. I’ll give him a broom to
sweep up.” That weekend I walked by the studio and
there were a lot of cars outside – I knew there was no Two tracks. You lost track 1 and 24. What happened was
session booked. I walked in, and he’s in here with his the automation – it scanned the VCAs [Voltage
friends, hanging out, pretty wasted, and cranking the Controlled Amplifiers], and all it was looking for was
monitors. He looked at me and said, “You, get out of offset. When the fader moved to a new position, it’d
here!” I said, “Me, get out? Guess what, you’re fucking scan a change.
fired. Get out of here.” I shooed them all out and took Did you have to start from the start of
his keys. I was a college kid. [laughs] My father found the song? Or could you back up to the
out the next morning and he was so pissed off. He middle and make it work?
said, “Who’s going to run the studio?” I said, “I am.” I could. It was a ping-pong situation. It would record
He said, “You can’t; you’re in school!” But I started onto track one, and then, when it went to 24, it took
working 50-hours a week here, and I made it work. that, plus the updated information, and recorded it
You went to Ithaca College, right? Did on 24. There was no computer. When we started
you graduate? using SSL-like automation, it was timecode based. It
Yeah. My degree was in Radio Television. There were no was locked to something. But this [Valley People
audio schools in those days. 65K] would drift. If I did really tight mutes on the
Okay, so it was 1976. front of a song, eventually it would start clipping the
I was in here with that original console and a Scully 2- beginning. So, when I did my opening mutes, I got
inch, 16-track. There were a couple of local rock to a point where I would make those mutes a little
bands that I was friends with, and we started loose; 20 passes later, it would get closer.
learning how to record. I got really close to getting It seems like 1981 was when things
a band signed to a major deal. We had some took off.
development money for a regional band called Tokyo The next layer is the Megaforce [Records] story. I had
and another band from the Binghamton area called done a bunch of projects with Carl Canedy, who was
Lord West, which was sort of a cross between the drummer of The Rods. He was a very influential
Mercyful Fate and Rush. There was another engineer producer, in the early days. Initially I did a bunch of
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involved, Tony Volante; we were both young and we The Rods’ records with him. I also did early Joey
learned a lot together after Les left. He is still a DeMaio projects, before they were Manowar. The studio
mentor to my students in New York, and he’s a long- was busy, and we were doing a lot of regional work.
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form film mixer. Tony was offered a job and went to Things started to really crank when Carl was working
a studio in Boston called Soundtrack – primarily a on The Rods – they were signed to a major deal.
jingle house. Here I was with this 16-track and a Did The Rods record here?
homemade console – I wanted to mix something in They did, but they also worked in Rochester at Music
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a real room. So, I went to Soundtrack, and that was America Studios. That’s where the first Metallica
my first experience with a Neve console, as well as record, Kill ’Em All, was recorded. This is where the
with my first Studer. I came back and said to my story gets crazy. That record was done by Paul Curcio,
a
father, “We need to buy new gear.” This was 1977- who owned the studio, and a young engineer named
ish. He said, “We’re in upstate New York, and you Chris Bubacz. Chris was a good friend of Carl’s, so Carl
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want to spend how much money on gear? I’ll have no started doing some work up there and this
part of that.” So, I reached out to one of his old connection happened between Carl, Chris, and Jon
friends who got me an interview at a studio called Zazula [Megaforce’s co-owner]. After Kill ‘Em All was
Park South. I told my dad, “I think I have a job. I’m done, Music America was supposed to get new gear.
@
going to move to New York City.” He said, “Alright, Anthrax was the next band that was slated to go into
alright. I’ll cosign on a loan!” I bought a 36-channel Music America. They loaded up all their gear and
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Harrison MR3 – that was the console that made all went to Rochester, and there was no gear. The band
the guitar tones that you like so much – and a Studer is freaking out, sleeping in cars, and looking for a
A80 24-track, which is over in the corner here, and studio. Of course, there were not many choices.
also a 1/4-inch Studer B67. Was this for Fistful of Metal?
Do you remember how much that Yes. Carl was going to produce the record, and Chris
console cost? Bubacz was going to engineer. So, Scott Ian [guitar,
I borrowed $250,000 from the bank. That was a lot of vocals] and Charlie Benante [drums] called me. They
money in 1981. To get a 2-inch machine in those came to Ithaca and said, “Can you play something
days, you had to go to New York City or some major with guitars?” Because I’d been working with those
market. When we got [our 2-inch deck] it was a big guitar-driven bands – especially Lord West. I put that
deal, because now we were saying that this room was up, and instantly they got on the phone with Jonny
upgraded to be like a New York room. We bought a and said, “We found the place. These guitar tones are
bunch of microphones, compressors, and limiters – insane.” That’s the beginning of the Megaforce era.
but we still had minimal gear. But it was a real Jon Zazula started Megaforce to release
console, with a real Studer 24-track tape machine. Kill ’Em All, right?
That early console had automation too – the Valley Yeah. He owned a record store in New Jersey called Rockn’
People 65K. It didn’t use time code; it had a data Roll Heaven. He brought Metallica to the East Coast to
track that was pulse-based. make Kill ‘Em All. That was the studio where it all
So, you had to stripe the tape? started. You make your own luck, but it was one of
Mr. Perialas/(continued on page 26)/Tape Op#128/25
 those things where if there was gear at Music America, When I heard that guitar tone, it was like, “Damn, that’s You couldn’t grid up drums back then!
Anthrax never would have come looking here. Here’s pretty severe!” It was two 100-watt heads. His trick No, he played it. There was no triggering. There was no
the cool part. Jonny Zazula – who’s still a dear friend – was to use a TC [Electronic Booster+] Line Driver & bullshit. You played the shit. That was one of the
would not get money until he delivered a record to Distortion. Then, to split the signal – because there cool things about that era.
Music for Nations. Jonny and my father met and made were really no boxes in those days – he used a [TC We have to talk about the S.O.D.
a deal. They shook hands, with no paperwork signed, Electronic] Stereo Chorus+ Flanger; he just never [Stormtroopers of Death] record
that we would carry Jonny financially until we delivered turned it on. That was it. It was mic’d with [Shure [Speak English or Die]. The story I
a record, then we’d all get paid. That happened for a SM]57s and [Sennheiser MD]421s. Simple close heard is that while you were working
bunch of years, and he never broke his word. So, kudos mic’ing, but 99% of getting those guitar tones was on Spreading the Disease, someone
to Jon Zazula and his wife, Marsha. From there, we did about pickups and pickup height. It’s crucial to was fucking around playing all these
the second Anthrax record [Spreading the Disease], change the pickup height to get the sounds right. crazy riffs, and you said, “You guys
then Feel the Fire – the first Overkill record. We became Also, the type of pickups matters. EMG pickups had a should do something with that!”
the place where all the Megaforce recordings were certain thing. Most of the guitar tones that I Towards the end of the Anthrax record, things were
happening. There’s a back door here; gear was coming gravitated towards, more than the EMG world, was getting a little bit laborious. Those guys had a lot of
through the front door as gear was going into a truck the Seymour Duncan JB model. free time because we were doing a lot of vocal work.
out the back door. It was insanity. That back wall was There’s a tightness. I assume those guys Scott was still friends with [ex-Anthrax bassist] Dan
cool, because every band would leave a note for the didn’t run their amps very loud. Lilker. I’m a sucker for a guitar riff. I heard the riffs
band that was coming in next. No, they were loud as fuck. Preamps were dialed up pretty and went, “Shit, what is that?” I think I called Jonny
Spreading the Disease was Anthrax’s big well. Master output might have been in the 2 to 3 range. Z and said, “This shit is ridiculous. Can I do this with
upswing. There had to be some With the master at 7, you get a different these guys?” He was like, “Just do it!” We did the
pressure. tone. whole thing in three days; recorded and mixed. A lot
There was definitely pressure, but nobody works harder It’s a different effect with the output transformer. It of coffee. They were all passed out in the control
than those guys. They were all business. They weren’t changes quite a bit when you turn up the master. room while I was mixing.
drinkers; they weren’t partiers. That’s why I With all that palm muting, it seems like Did you track everything live?
gravitated towards being around them. They really most people go for tightness. It’s not We tracked the rhythm section live. It’s only two guitar
wanted to do good work, and they were all really about squishing the power amp so much. tracks. Everyone’s like, “That’s the guitar tone from

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good at what they did. Yeah. That’s about controlling the low end. I was making heaven!” It’s really about how tight Danny Lilker can
Everything was on tape back then? sure it was the right cabinets, that they were all tight play with Scott Ian. And he downpicked everything
Yes. They had to get it right, and I had to be really good and right. on bass, with that distorted bass tone. If I pulled the

at punching in and out, as well as editing tape.
Was there a lot of tape editing?
Some. Not as much as you might think; mostly comping.
If we’re going to quickly dive into the notion of today
versus yesterday, this thing [holds up iPhone] is the
evilest thing in the world for somebody’s creativity and
attention span. I shut mine off. I know that if a text
came in and this thing buzzed, I’d look at it. It’s the And how about double-tracking guitars? I was never good at the whole “get on the phone after
way we’re programmed. We’re a little older – think Four.
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Was that all Marshall cabs back then? tape out and put up the rhythm guitar tone, it’s much
A lot of them. Mostly 30- and 35-watt speakers. They thinner than you think it is. But with the bass, it
weren’t 75s, because they broke up differently. Some becomes this thing.
of the cabinets were stuffed with insulation for You produced Carnivore’s Retaliation; a
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tightness so they wouldn’t rattle. Nine times out of great record, but you didn’t do any of
ten, the heads weren’t on top of the cabinet because Peter Steele’s later Type O Negative
the low end vibration makes the tubes act differently. records.
a
the record is done” and do the, “Hey man, how you
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about a kid who’s only known this. They are so glued Two on each side? doing? Let’s hang out,” thing. I was always on to the
to this thing that it’s an obsession. They can’t put it Depending on how it’d be broken up. But it was always next project. Not that I didn’t stay friendly – it’s just
down. Working on tape forces you to be engaged on a going to be four performances. We tried to get takes that I was never working the angle. If my services were
different level. Not with your eyes on Pro Tools, or your super tight. I was really a prick about this. The key is needed, I would be there. A lot of times, as the bands’
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device in your hand, worried about what’s going on that I’d get a performance that was punched careers developed with their record companies, the
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with Facebook. The control room phone was basically
on mute. I wanted the band to be that engaged in
what we were doing. You didn’t have to talk to about
that with some bands. Anthrax, Testament, and others
us
together, then I’d do the second take. I’d sit in the management and the band had different ideas about
center, and the original would be panned left, and who they should work with. You want to try something
the second one we were tracking would be panned different? That’s fine. There was never animosity. There
right. The second that I heard anything that was was never a project where I left on bad terms with a

we worked with – they were laser-focused on the remotely out, it’d be, “Stop! Go back, punch in, and band. Ever. I’m okay with that.
chore, which was making great music. get that one tight.” Then I’d shut off that second I drove up here from New York City, and
People like you had to figure out how to guitar, do track three, and then track four. for the drive I made a playlist of your
capture those fairly new sounds, With different tones, or the same tones?
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records from ’83 to ’90.

such as a super-fast double-kick or It depended. Later on, I’d do two of one guitar and two I’ve never done that. It might be scary. [laughs]
scooped, very distorted guitar tones. of another guitar. The [Gibson] Explorer was my It was great. I wish you were in the car
Was that challenging, at first? center guitar, and then I’d put whatever else on the with me! It was really interesting.
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Absolutely. The key was huge drum kits. I thank my edges. I’d just pan those things out. There’s a decrease in reverb over
lucky stars that Carl Canedy schooled me about Anthrax’s Spreading the Disease took a time, the drums slowly get more
drums. He’s a fantastic drummer, and I learned a lot while. How long do you think you defined, and so on.
from him about tuning drums. I’ve always had a thing spent on drums?
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Realize that bands like Anthrax, Testament, and Overkill

for guitars. But no drums, no record. Carl was good at We didn’t really spend much time on drums. Most of the – they were involved in every part of the process.
what head combinations work on what drums, what time, Charlie was done in two or three days. The only There’s not any one decision that was made where it’s
style of drums, and how drums want to be tuned. song that gave him trouble on that record was like, “Oh, I wish Alex hadn’t done that.” There’d be
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So, Scott Ian [Anthrax] walks in and “A.I.R.”, the double bass part. He’d try it, and if it times where I’d go, “Are you guys sure you want it to
plugs in his guitar… wouldn’t work he’d try to do it the next day. be like this?” There was always a collaboration.
26/Tape Op#128/Mr. Perialas/(continued on page 28)
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Testament’s sonic arc is pretty dramatic. There was lots of preproduction. I tended to demo a lot Were you supervising digital masters in
Practice What You Preach sounds very before we tracked for real. We went to a small 16- the ‘80s?
different from the previous track studio near Baltimore. There was one track No, not yet. In the late ‘80s, we were approving things
Testament records. from the demo where the drums [ended up] on the on CD. That would be different. Also, remember when
We made Practice at Fantasy Studios [in Berkeley, CA]. record. “Desert Grins” might be the one. The feel we were doing vinyl, there were multiple versions.
They wanted to make that record live. I said, “If we’re was just so good. There’d be a 12-inch that went to radio stations,
going to say in the press that it was made live, then That was 1991. Records didn’t sound like maybe two songs. When CDs came out, there were
we’re going to make it live.” I wasn’t going to put my that, at the time. promotional CDs with three songs. That would be a
name on something and say one thing about it, and It was the beginning of the grunge era. different EQ than the one the record was made from.
then have it be something else. So that record is It was also the beginning of triggered Through the ‘90s, you kept making
recorded live – every guitar solo was live. Every day drums in metal. records and helped run a record
we’d run through the set twice. We’d do it during the Yeah. I don’t think you’ll ever see anything from my early label, but let’s jump ahead to your
day, and we’d do it at night. Every night I’d pull discography that’s triggered. teaching career at Ithaca College.
master takes off the 2-inch reels. We had a shitload How significant was mastering in the When did you start?
of tape. We kept tracking, and every time we got one ‘80s? In 2003. The teaching thing is huge. It’s a fantastic way
that felt like a killer take, we’d pull it. That was the I used [the late] Tom Coyne as my mastering guy, pretty to leave the earth. I oversee one of the most
choice tape. Then we’d do the set again the next day much my entire career. He was one of my closest prestigious, up-and-coming recording programs in the
and pull a take. I might have five or six versions of a friends in the whole world. It was always significant country. It’s a four-year Bachelor of Music degree. You
song that were good. Every time I got one that was to have someone you could trust in the mastering have to be accepted into the school of music, playing
better, I kept that and threw the other one away. room, especially when you were making vinyl. A lot of at a very high level. If you’re at the top of your game
You had the best record, at that times when you hear these versions that are on the in NYSSMA [New York State School Music
moment, at all times, and that was internet, or versions that were turned into CDs – they Association], those are the kinds of people I teach.
about it? were never transferred [properly]. If you’ve done any How many people in a class?
Yep. If one got better, I’d throw [the previous version of studying about making vinyl, the process is My first full-time year as director of the program was in
the song] away. I’d just erase it, so I didn’t have to complicated. The master tape would sound a certain 2007, and we took five incoming freshmen a year. I

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think about it. I didn’t want to know. It was gone. way, so that you’d know you’d get a good cut onto took 18 this year.
How many days did you do that? Do you the vinyl. If you took the master tape, transferred it That’s a small department. It’s cool that
remember? to digital, and made a CD without the notes – without the school supports that.
Two weeks. the proper settings [EQ, limiting, etc.], it would just The facility has an SSL Duality console. We have a great

That’s a lot of passes of each song to
choose from.
Yeah, but they got better. We’d talk, and they’d get better.
Did you comp takes?
Nope! Absolutely not. The vocals were the only overdubs. I’ve long wondered – when people say
They were done with a handheld [Sennheiser MD] 421.
He was holding a piece of a mic stand. We wrapped
foam around it and taped it up. That guy [Testament
singer, Chuck Billy] is a monster.
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be ass. Horrible. That’s a lot of what I hear people microphone selection, great outboard, and great mic
commenting on today, like, “Wow, listen to that pres. I’ve wrangled all my friends in the industry to help
record. What the hell was going on?” They’re just me. “You want to make lifelong users of your product?
transfers of the master tape.
il Hook me up.” They do. One of my former students,
Shani Gandhi, was nominated for a Best Engineered
vinyl sounds better than digital or Record Grammy for Sarah Jarosz’s Undercurrent. David
CD, who knows how the digital Bowie’s Blackstar beat her, but that record did win two
a
transfer was done? There’s nothing Grammys. Shani also mixed [Grammy Best New Artist
wrong with the way CDs sound. nominee] Kelsea Ballerini’s single “Peter Pan.” That’s
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One of my favorite records that you’ve No. Cutting a vinyl representation of the master tape is just one of my former students. Another one, Kevin
done – and probably my favorite- a process. That took someone highly skilled. We got Harper, works at Warner Bros. A student who graduated
sounding – is Wrathchild America’s 3- pretty good at making a master tape that would last year is over at Georgetown Masters.
@

D. I lived in DC for years and saw those transfer to a piece of vinyl. That wasn’t designed to You’re bringing in very qualified
guys a lot. They were an extremely go to digital without the notes, because there’s a lot students to start with, putting them
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good band. that was involved with the mastering console. through a legitimate audio program,
Oh, what a good record. Great musicians. Fantastic Someone was tweaking a tenth of a dB here, a quarter and helping them find real,
guitar players. And Shannon Larkin was a monster there, volume changes between tracks, different professional gigs.
drummer. You’ve kept track of [singer/bassist] Brad compressors for different songs, and so on. When you When a mother or father comes up and hugs me at
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Divens – he’s a front-of-house guru. He also did a cut the mother – the first acetate that got plated – graduation and thanks me for looking after their son
stint as an engineer, making records, and as a that was a performance. You couldn’t stop! You had or daughter, saying that I was like a parent to their
producer, too. to run the whole side; and you either got it right, or children... What else do you need? That’s better than
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Sonically, that record is totally different
from all those others. It’s really dry.
I tracked that record here, and I mixed at Hit Factory in
New York on a Neve. That was my first experience
to
you didn’t. There were tweaks in the choruses, and any snare tone. r
tweaks in the verses. People don’t realize. A lot of my
<www.pyramidsoundstudios.com>
old work is off the master tapes, and it’s horrible. It
doesn’t sound anything like what we made. Nothing. Scott Evans records loud bands in Oakland, CA.

with a Neve VR. I came back and bought one. I was So, would you say the ground truth of <antisleep.com>
never a huge SSL fan. those records is the vinyl?
Did you like it for the workflow, or for Yep.
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the way it sounded? Not the audio on your 1/2-inch master.

The way it sounded, and the automation was to die for. It was close! I’d rather have people take a copy of
Can you tell me anything interesting that than take a copy off of, god knows, a third-
Tape Op is made
about that record? generation copy, or something. You don’t even possible by our
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know where it came from. advertisers.

Please support them and tell them
you saw their ad in Tape Op.
28/Tape Op#128/Mr. Perialas/(Fin.)
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 Roll up your sleeves, make a mess, get dirty, get fired, get re-hired, tear it down, and build it
all back up again. Then make it better than it was before. That could be a synopsis of a typical day
in the life of Matt Wallace. He turned his nerdy love of electronics and music into a long and
storied career that includes being a studio owner, songwriter, and producer/engineer, as well as
working with iconic bands like The Replacements to helping groups like Faith No More and
Maroon 5 craft their multi-platinum breakthrough hits. I caught up with Matt at his Studio Deluxe
in the Sound City complex in Van Nuys, California.
How did you start the studio, Dangerous Rhythm in
Oakland, with Kevin Army in the ‘80s?
I’ll go back a little further. When I was 13, living overseas, I was the
nerdy dude. Later I was in bands. We were playing a lot of Deep
Purple, early Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Black Sabbath. I was really into
that, but I was also into pop radio. I was always the nerdy guy who
decided, “We should record our music.” We moved to the States and
I had a 4-track, so I conned my parents into allowing me space in
the garage for a couple of years. Later, I sold all my instruments, and
I got into debt with Mastercard. I had an 8-track studio; a Tascam 80-
8, 1/2-inch deck, and a [Tascam] M-35 [mixer], which had eight
channels. I ended up building a flanger, a spring reverb, and a couple
of plate reverbs.
What sparked that interest in electronics?
When I was seven or eight, I was in Cub Scouts. One of those merit
badges was that you had to learn how to wire a lamp. My dad, who
was always a handy dude, was like, “Here’s how you do it!” In
MATT

om
retrospect, that was the moment that opened my mind to, “Well, if I
can do that with electricity, then I can do that with electronics.” I
ended up developing a “noise reduction” for my cassette deck; a
couple of capacitors that knocked down the high end. I built a
WALLACE
JOURNEY TO PRODUCER ISLAND

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remedial synthesizer that sounded terrible. When I got to the States,
BY GEOFF STANFIELD
I ended up with a couple of cassette decks and a Peavey mono mixer.
I recorded my band playing on cassette, then we’d play it through PORTRAIT BY LAURIE NELSON
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this mono mixer and sing onto another cassette deck. I walked this
fine line between the technical aspects of making music and also being a player and a performer.
I was always living in this weird sphere of influences and interests.
How did you come together with Kevin Army?
a
I was recording bands out of my parent’s garage in Moraga, in the [San Francisco] Bay Area. He came
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by because he was looking for a place to record. I never ended up recording him, but we stayed in
touch. When I moved and built my own studio in Oakland, he wanted to learn how to record, so I
ended up teaching him what I knew and we started working together. It got to a point where he
was so comfortable that I could have him engineer things, and/or I would go work somewhere else.
@

When I was starting to get into 16- and 24-track – and he would run the studio. He started
recording bands that I didn’t have time for, became the second-in-command, and ultimately ended
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up buying the studio from me and running it for a number of years after I’d moved on.
What was the set up over there?
It was the same damn Tascam 80-8. I ended up buying a 16-channel Carvin board, but the EQ was
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really focused. You couldn’t really mess with it, whereas my Tascam had parametric EQ. I could do
a lot more with it. I didn’t have any money to buy the new digital reverbs, so I ended up setting
up a very acoustically dead room with all this padding to the right of the control room. I knew I
was going to do vocals in there. I built this weird device where I could stick a Marshall cabinet in
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it and close it, but it went for another eight feet of fiberglass batt, so the guitar had a place to
push the sound. I built a drum room that had some plywood in it. My entryway was very open and
ambient, so I put mics out there. I also had a bathroom under the stairwell, and I painted it with
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all this enamel to make it really live. I used to send sound there while mixing. One day I had this
idea, “I’ll put a snare drum in there!” I put a speaker there, flipped a snare drum upside down, and
duct taped it on there with a microphone. I had this bathroom in lieu of gated snare reverb. While
mixing, and sometimes during tracking, I’d send the snare out there, bring it back, and compress
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and gate it. I became good at using my acoustic spaces to achieve what it was I wanted, because
I didn’t have digital reverb. I had a spring reverb, which didn’t work for drums. I was on 8-track, so
I had to record the drums to one or two tracks. I was mixing, EQing, compressing, and printing
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reverb while we were tracking. I learned to pre-mix a lot because I was working on an 8-track.

30/Tape Op#128/Mr. Wallace/

 Well before Tiny Telephone Recording was a gleam in John Vanderslice’s [Tape Op #10] eye, there
was a studio in the San Francisco Bay Area named Dangerous Rhythm. It was one of the first studios
on the West Coast that was affordable and sympathetic to the emerging punk scene. I was living in
Sacramento at the time, and starting my own “punk rock” DIY studio (where I met editor Larry Crane,
when we recorded his band Vomit Launch together) and even though I was 90 miles away, I was
hearing things about this new studio that these guys Matt Wallace and Kevin Army had opened. I was
losing clients to them, and I was understandably a bit upset, but I couldn’t deny that the recordings
they did sounded really, really good, forcing me to step up my own game a bit. We’re pretty excited to
have both Matt and Kevin in this issue of Tape Op. -JB

Matt in Dangerous Rhythm control room in 1982.

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Mr. Wallace/(continued on page 32)/Tape Op#128/31

How did you make that transition
from working on these projects
that were 8-track to bigger bands
and bigger projects?
That’s a good question. If I were king of the universe
everyone would make records on 8-track to start. It
made me focus my idea of what I wanted [the track] to
sound like in the future. With the advent of 16- then
24- and 48-track, and then digital, I think what’s
happened is that people ultimately postpone decisions.
I’m mixing, and people send me this song with 150
tracks. It’s got four tracks for the guitar mics. It makes
mixing go a lot longer. Whereas when I mix off 8-track,
it’s like, “Okay, there’s the drums. I can EQ it. Here’s the
guitar and voice; I can add reverb.” Going to those
bigger studios gave me the ability to spread things out
a little more. But I still believe – and I’ve said this in
other interviews – the zenith of making rock records
was 24-track. I think if you can’t make it on 24-track,
then you don’t have a song, or you don’t have a band,
or you don’t have a performance. I got to the point
where we’d record a song and it’s like, “Okay, we’re
done!” Somebody’s like, “I’ve got this guitar part.” We’d
either fit it in between the background vocal tracks, or,
“What is it we can erase to put that guitar track on?”
It made us start thinking about, “Should we add reverb
to that tambourine so we can put this guitar on?
Should we bounce something down and make some
more tracks?” We had to be more focused and astute,
as well as have a bit of experience and knowledge to
make records. You go back to The Beatles, and they did
it on 4-track. They had to know when they did that
bounce, they were going to lose some high end or
dynamics. It was such an education, and it was so
important for me to get to a place where I could really
serve bands best. Even with my 8-track at my parent’s
garage, I got to a point where I was engineering and
helping bands. They’d ask, “Hey, what do you think of
this song? What should we do?” I’d say, “Try this.”
Eventually I said, “This doesn’t really benefit me, but if
you want me to come to your rehearsal I can help you
guys out before you come to my studio. We’ll talk about
your arrangements and everything. Then, when you
come to the studio, you’ll be better prepared, and you’ll
ultimately get more bang for your buck.” I was
charging $12 or $14 an hour, and for a lot of bands,
that was a lot of money. It didn’t help me make any
us
more money, but it helped us have a better end result.
That was a big shift to becoming a producer. Honestly,
I didn’t even know what a producer was. I knew I was
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an engineer. There was a book called Producing Hit
Records by Dennis Lambert. It had a little flexi disc you
could play. “Here’s the bass guitar. Here’s the guitar by
itself.” It was like, “Oh, okay. The producer is like a
to
director in a movie.” From engineer to producer was a
much bigger leap than from 8- to 16- to 24-track. It
was about how to serve the band as best as I possibly
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could. I never got into it for the money – I never
thought I could earn a living doing this. But then I got
to that place, and it was like, “How can I make this
really good?” I started to get into the mindset of the
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bands. Instead of being a technical capturer, I became
more of a painter of what they were trying to do. I tried
32/Tape Op#128/Mr. Wallace/(continued on page 34)
to get into the nuances and the reasons [behind] why
they were doing what they were doing. It wasn’t about
“how to get a guitar sound.” It was like, “Maybe you
want a really weird guitar sound.” I learned to be a
cheerleader, and to actively go to places that bands
wanted to go. That was a big moment for me to realize,
“I’m not here to win awards or be liked. I’m here to get
in the guts of what they’re doing.” Then I’d go with
them 100 percent of the way. I might argue at first.
“Dude, that’s weird. You want to sing your vocal
through a guitar amp? We’re going to commit to it.”
But once they’d go for it, I was all in, even if it wasn’t When there are 100 tracks, where do you
the aesthetic I like. I had to get to the place where I
was like, “I’m not here for me. I’m here 100 percent for
the band. My name’s going to be on it, but what is it
that’s going to make you guys go, ‘Fuck yeah’ when you
walk out?” I’m sure you’ve experienced it, where guys One thing I try to tell people is the fewer tracks that you
are like, “We need more green, like the sound of an
ocean through a tambourine.” Being open to that
dialogue, instead of being the lab coat technician guy;
being more of the complicit partner in crime. Those are
big moments for me, as a producer. Serving the band;
their name is big on the cover. Wherever they want to
go, we have to be open to going there.
What do you think qualified you to be
able to have a valid opinion about
the music?
Well, first of all I was playing in all different kinds of
bands. I was playing drums in one band, bass in
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another, and guitar in another. I’m a remedial Let’s talk a little bit about some of the
musician, at best, but I played enough and created.
The original studio I built in my parent’s garage was
for my own record. Then I had all these friends who
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were saying, “Oh, I’ve got this band. Can we record?”
I got sidetracked and started helping other people I moved to L.A. in ‘88, and I was working at Slash
realize their vision. I was going to school to be an
a
English teacher, and I finally graduated. But,
meanwhile, I was also becoming more involved in
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music. Because I could play chords, I’d be able to say,
“What if you did this chord here, or played this part
like that?” I learned to offer up suggestions without
ego that they could use or not. I’d use this phrase,
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“Hey, I could totally be high on crack, but I think if
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you tried this part here, it’d be cool.” I’d plant the
seed of something quietly. “It might be cool if we try
a weird Nashville strum here through a Leslie
cabinet.” I’d let it sit. Two or three days later the
guitar player would say, “Dude, what if we do this
Leslie guitar thing?”
“Great idea!”
I learned to not say, “Well, that was my idea a couple days
ago!” Then you’re an asshole if you want credit for it.
That’s really the trick, if you’re an involved producer.
The way a sound was committed
influences the next step.
We do build on what’s come before us. If you have a
weird guitar sound, it’s going to make you think
differently about what you’re going to add. This is
really, really essential. It’s important to commit to
sounds. I do that often times with doubling guitars.
People will have this really good guitar sound, and
they’ll want to double it. Do it with a different guitar,
or a different amp. Invariably, one’s going to sound a
little brighter, and one’s going to sound a little duller.
They’ll want to make the duller one brighter, and I’ll
have to say, “No! Just trust me.” Then someone
comes up with a new guitar part. Where are we going
to put it? We’re going to put it on top of the dull
guitar part. The dull guitar part is reinforcing the
other side, so that it gives it a bigger stereo feel. Now
we can put that melodic part on top. This is so
important about making records. When you hear a
cool, fucked-up drum or guitar sound that informs the
rest of the record.
put sounds in a limited amount of
space? The tracks can go on forever,
but where are they going to fit? The
sonic spectrum is limited.
have, the bigger everything can sound. If you have
drums, bass, and two guitars, it’s huge. I’m a huge fan
of wide-panned guitars. I like them to sound
different, and I like to hear the personality. I’m a big,
big fan of tracking live, and I’ve done a lot of records
live with monitor wedges. I want to rewind a bit to
The Beatles. Why does Paul McCartney’s bass sound so
big? Listen to a track. Ringo’s drums have a ton of low
end bass all over the drum kit. When you listen to the
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bass mic, it’s pretty tight; but there’s this wide, roomy
bleed that makes the bass sound huge. It’s hard to do
in modern music, because people don’t abide by it.
records you’ve done. I know you
produced The Replacements’ Don’t Tell a
Soul after your neighbor across the way,
Tony Berg [Tape Op #121], was let go.
Records as a staff producer and A&R guy. I was a fan
of The Replacements. Slash was connected to Warner
Bros. so I was in touch with them. They’d heard some
of the Faith No More [records I did], but Faith No
More hadn’t broken through yet. I knew The
Replacements were making a record, so I kept
bugging people there. I learned an important lesson.
I stayed in touch with Steven Baker, one of the main
people, and Roberta Petersen who was the main A&R
person. I said, “Hey, I want to produce The
Replacements.” They replied, “Oh, Tony Berg is going
to do it.” Later on, I said, “Oh, hey; I heard Tony’s not
doing it.” Then they told me, “Oh, now Scott Litt
[#81] is doing it.” I kept saying, “I really want to
work with this band.” I had no track record, really.
Someone in A&R called me up, and said, “Scott’s not
doing it.” I had an in! I spoke with Steven Baker, and
told him I was interested. He said, “Okay, let’s get you
in touch with Paul [Westerberg] and go from there.”
We talked and talked. I think because I had no real
credentials, other than the New Monkees [a Monkees
television show/album reboot], that it appealed to
them in a way because it was such a left turn. They
asked if I liked to drink a bit, and I said, “I don’t drink
at all.” I got that gig on a phone call, but it was really
about being persistent over the course of two
months, every couple of weeks calling people at
Warner Bros. That’s how I got the gig.
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were off the gig?
Yeah, we made our own mess. Tony did some work, and
I had those recordings. I really got into them. I had
notes on these songs and everything; I wanted the
gig so badly. We started from scratch and recorded
everything brand new.
How were The Replacements to work
with?
W/ Paul Westerberg
c David Konjoyan
It was horrific! I think it was a make-or-break thing. They
had been around the block, and people were hoping
and expecting they’d break on through. They had a
new guitar player, Slim Dunlap. I think he was the
bulldog of the band and had to prove himself. I was a
nerdy 28 year old guy. I wasn’t hip or cool, but I was
definitely genuine and authentic. I came in, guns a
blazing. First of all, Slim and Paul came in and we
worked on a track together called “They’re Blind,” with
a drum machine. Once they started working with me,
they called in Tommy [Stinson], the bass player, and
Chris [Mars], the drummer. Then we went to the Musso
& Frank Grill, and Michael Hill, the A&R guy, was there,
and we were all having dinner. Later we were walking
back down Hollywood Boulevard, and Tommy says,
“You know what I think of you?” Then he spits right
in front of my feet. All right, okay; got that!
Throughout the recording process – and I’m not going
to exaggerate – he threatened to beat me up a number
of times. “You fuck with our guitars, I’m going to kick
your ass.” We’re at Cherokee Studios, and every day
these guys would say, “You’ve got to drink with us.”
Bev’s [John Beverly Jones, engineer] like, “I don’t
drink while I’m working,” and I don’t drink [at all].
They finally said, “Okay, we’re going to go out
drinking.” I said, “What’s the point?” They said, “When
you drink, you let your guard down and say what you
us
really think about each other.” Okay, fine. So Monday,
Tuesday, and Wednesday night, we’d go to the
Rainbow Room, and everyone decided to start
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drinking. I’m a teetotaler, so I’m trying to be cool,
nursing half of my drink. Tommy sits next to me and
takes a big black Magic Marker, puts it on my right
knee, goes right up over my pants, up over my favorite
to
shirt, and down. I’m like, “Oh, okay.” Slim pulls a chair
up to me, faces me, and grabs my head. We’re forehead
to forehead, and he says, “You don’t know shit. I could
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kick your fucking ass.” I’m not a fighter, and I have a
really high threshold, but I finally said, “Fuck you,
man.” Honestly, at that point I didn’t give a fuck
anymore. Every day I’d go home to my girlfriend and
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say, “I’m gonna quit this thing.” The next day Slim
forgot he’d said all that to me. He’d drank too much.
34/Tape Op#128/Mr. Wallace/(continued on page 36)
He came in and was a little bit nicer. At that point I could hear a little bit of music, because with 2-inch
was like, “Fuck this.” We were supposed to start at tape, you put it on the bulk eraser, flipped it over,
noon, and Bev Jones walked in at 4 o’clock. I could and bulk erased, but you could still hear a hint of the
tell by his face something was up. He says, “I’m out!” middle tracks. It’s like, “I guess you could put it on
I ended up engineering and producing this wagon a tape machine and run them through.” They were
train going to hell in a handbasket. We had Mike doing that. They were grabbing reels from all over
Bosley, who was a friend of theirs from way back, as the place. I literally had to physically sit on top of
the assistant engineer. Tommy splintered a [Gibson] the master reels that we had because they were
Thunderbird bass guitar. He didn’t just break it – he erasing everything in sight. They actually erased an
splintered it. Paul was lighting bills on fire. These guys outtake of a song called “We Know the Night” that
didn’t drive, so I’d pick them up in my little ‘82 Honda was stunning. We have a 2-track copy of it
Accord at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, and somewhere, but it was a song that we had tried
they’d be doing blow and drinking. One day we were multiple times. Those were the kinds of things I had
up all night because Tom Waits came in. I was driving to deal with. I had to fight.
them back to the Roosevelt, and I used to do these Wow; amazing. Obviously, Paul liked
handbrake turns in my car. I’d scream up to the red you enough to call you again!
light and then pull on the handbrake with all these Yeah, he did, which was a shock. I learned a big lesson;
guys in the car. They’re like, “What the fuck are you I learned how to work with him. I actually went out
doing?” I was like, “Fuck you guys,” I was so pissed to Minneapolis before they did the next record, All
off. After two weeks of these shenanigans I decided Shook Down, and said, “Hey, I’d love to work with
that I was going to make the record. Even if everyone you guys.” I gave Chris a drum machine, Paul a
in the band died, I was going to make that record. I reverb unit – for demos – and told them I’d like to
got to a place where I was pretty much fine with work with them on the next record. I made the
everything; but every day I’d go home to my girlfriend mistake of telling Paul, “Now that I know how to
and say, “I’m done with this. I’m quitting this. I’m work with you guys, I think we can make a good
really done with it.” But I decided I was going to make record.” I think that was like, “Oh, no.” He did the
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the record. Yes, I was threatened if I touched their record with Scott Litt, but he ended up calling me for
guitars. Paul would do a guitar part and I’d say, “That [his first solo album] 14 Songs. I didn’t expect it. It
sounds great. Let’s take it back a little bit and tune it.” was pretty good.
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He’d say, “Oh, I forgot the chords.” I’d reply, “Really?” You were with Faith No More from the
They’d leave for the evening, and Slim would say, “If very beginning. The Real Thing was
you touch our guitars, I’ll kick your fucking ass.” when Mike [Patton, Tape Op #53]
Touch their guitars, like mess with il joined the band, but by Angel Dust
them? they were a more fully-formed group.
If I put them in time, or whatever. Literally, he The genesis of Faith No More was a band called Sharp
threatened to beat me up numerous times. So yeah, Young Men. It was what ultimately became Faith No
a
I did a little bit in L.A., but once we got to Paisley Man [later changed to Faith No More. -ed]. That was
Park I had a little bit of time. They were at home, so with Mike Bordin on drums, Bill Gould on bass, Mike
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they’d go home with their wives, or girlfriends, or Morris on guitar, and Wade Worthington on
whatever. I had this Publison Infernal Machine, a keyboards. There was a point in time where they
French digital delay/reverb. I’d go bar by bar. People transitioned. Wade left and Roddy [Bottum] joined. I
would complain the drums were lagging, but Chris was actually at that gig where they played half with
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was on it. Those guys were leaning so far forward. I’d Wade, and then he walked off and handed the torch
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take Tommy’s bass and mute everything else. I’d take to Roddy. Eventually they didn’t like working with
his bass on one track through the Publison into Mike Morris, the guitar player/singer, so they parted
another track, and I’d go bar by bar. “Okay, he’s 30 ways and became a trio. Of all the bands I worked
ms ahead, 40 ms ahead, but the bass is fine.” I’d take with, that is the band I have the closest, deepest,
the guitars and play them all back. That’s what we longest relationship with, because we really grew up
did before we had access to computers. I’d put together. I was with them as they morphed into
things in time. I worked a full day with them; I Faith No More. I did sound for their live show. I was
would go do that at night as well, and then come with them when they became a four-piece, before
back and work again. They’d always ask, “Did you Chuck [Mosely] joined. Then I was with them when
fuck with our guitars?” they were a four-piece before Mike joined, all the
It sounds like they wouldn’t have way up through Angel Dust. I was learning as they
remembered, regardless. were learning. We did the first record, We Care a Lot,
They didn’t. We were at Capitol Studios, and then we in six days; recorded and mixed. The band and I slept
came back to Cherokee and regrouped. They didn’t and recorded in the same room. After that, Chuck
want people to hear any outtakes. We were was out of the band, and they were looking for a
compiling the master reels and they’d ask Bosley, singer. I think Jim Martin [guitar] may have gotten
“Hey, what can we do with these outtakes?” “You the music to Mike first – he was tuned into Mr.
can run them through a bulk eraser!” Because they Bungle before I was. A lot has become clear after the
wanted to be thorough, they put each one up on a fact; Mike Patton was slightly ambivalent about
24-track deck to listen. On tracks 12 and 13, you being in the band. His heart was in Mr. Bungle, but
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he saw an opportunity to be in another band that was
further along. I think he decided to join forces on a
lark. In some ways, he was never fully committed to
Faith No More, but I will say that when he was with
us, he was all in. He wrote all those melodies and all
those lyrics for The Real Thing in a two-week period.
The music was done. Whenever Patton would ask,
Everything up through The Real Thing, Roddy had an
[Oberheim] OB-Xa or an OB-8 [synthesizer]. At the start
of Angel Dust he had an [E-mu] Emax. After The Real
Thing did really well, I ended up buying five DAT recorders
and I gave them to the band as a gift. They took them
on tour wherever they went and recorded. I think that
opened their minds to the idea of different sounds.
Certainly for Roddy; he now had a keyboard that could
play samples back. He ultimately sampled pieces of
music, drums, and all kinds of sounds. He’s the guy who
brought that into the band. He was the vanguard of that,
by virtue of the fact that he was into more programmed
dance music by that time. Also, his worldly travels; there
were samples and sounds from South America. That really
informed what they were trying to bring to their
audience, whether it was lyrically or sonically.
Another huge record you did was Maroon
W/ Faith No More at Prairie Sun, Cotati , CA
5, with their debut, Songs About Jane.
c Roddy Bottum
Yes, it was. It’s getting close to 14 or 15 million sales
change this part here?” For “Malpractice” he came up worldwide now. I heard those demos, and they were
with those ideas. Because he was part of the band, he really good at writing verse chorus, verse chorus, and
could show his real self. Also, as Faith No More became then just noodling around to the outro. They were
successful they wanted to distance themselves away really good songs. They were previously a band called
from the idea that they were a funk-metal band. I Kara’s Flowers – more of an alternative rock band.
wanted to distance myself away from that sound as well, They made a record for Warner Bros., but disbanded.
because when I was present mastering The Real Thing, I A couple of guys went to college. They got really

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“Could we extend this part, or change these chords?” almost quit producing. The record sounded really bad; it enamored with Lauryn Hill and Outkast – more urban.
they were like, “No, that’s it.” Patton had to was thin and overtly compressed, which I did. It was my I got these demos, and they were really good.
superimpose everything on an existing framework. I fault. I drove back in my little Datsun, and it sounded so You were more known for Faith No More

give him a lot of credit to be able to pull that off.
Those lyrics on that record are fantastic. Those
melodies are ridiculous for a guy who was 19 years
old. He and I used to argue. Whenever he sang, he
had that really nasal, adenoidal, adolescent vibe, but
when I wasn’t recording he’d get into this full-
throated, beautiful tone, where he’s singing this R&B
stuff. It’s like, “Oh, my god. Let’s put that on the
record!” He’d reply, “No, I don’t want to do it.” I used
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thin in the car. I put it on my home stereo, and it still
sounded so thin and compressed. I called my mom and
asked how to get into real estate, because I didn’t know
what I was doing. It sounded so bad. I felt really bad
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about what I did for quite a while. Fast forward to MTV
and the radio. When that song came on MTV, it crushed.
It was perfect. The focused thing I did accidentally, but
a
it sounded huge on the radio. Angel Dust is really a
response to that record. Much, much more low end. I
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and such. How did you end up getting
those demos?
That’s a good question. My manager got those demos, and
it’s possible, at the time, that those demos were
intended for another person on his roster. I’m sure they
gave the demos out to a number of people, because
Nile Rodgers was one of the producers on board for
that. Nile would have done a really good job on that
record. What I heard was that when he found out the

to argue, because he has this beautiful, rich voice.
It’s incredible. Almost operatic.
He’s amazing. I think he was doing two things. One, he
put on a bit of a persona that distanced him away so
compressed a little bit of vocal and drums, maybe a dB budget was $65,000 – because it was on an indie label
or two. I recorded and mixed with minimal compression. – he said, “I can’t make a record for $65,000.”
The compression on that record was all done in You could today!
mastering. I presented a very un-compressed, non high-
But at that time most records were a minimum of
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that it wasn’t Patton on Faith No More, but a facet of end thing, knowing that when I went to John Golden
$150,000 to $200,000. I was kind of chosen by
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Mike Patton; a persona. It made it so that when he did
music with Mr. Bungle, he could have his own voice.
But two, along with that, he had a persona that really
appealed to the audience, because it had that snotty
us
[Tape Op #121] – who mastered our other records – that
default, but I was also really tenacious. I listened to
I could say, “I want everything squeezed together.”
their demos and had extensive notes, like I always do.
That’s how he got that sound. It was a completely
I was able to say, “Okay, this is what I think is good.
different thing. But you’re right, in a way, that was a
This is what I think you need to work on.” They had

vibe that was a response to being in a band he wasn’t
fully committed to, or the response to me being a
producer dude. It was a thing that really connected
with the audience. It was the right sound, and the
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band fully together. In a weird way, Patton was an outlier
a song called “Sunday Morning” that was the most
on The Real Thing, and Jim Martin was more of an outlier
promising track for me, at the time. This is before they
on Angel Dust. Patton, Roddy, and the band were all
wrote “This Love” and “Harder to Breathe.” A lot of
focused, but Jim Martin was really not present the way

my peers thought they were a Jamiroquai rip-off. At

right attitude. He was absolutely, 100 percent correct.
That’s what drew people to that. Even the way he was
bending notes. He didn’t land on the notes. When he
to
that we wanted, expected, and needed him to be. We
the time, there was a lot of new-metal on the radio;
really needed Jim’s guitar. Otherwise the guys could tip
Maroon 5 was an outlier. They were the band I took
to material that was too pop, melodic, or light. He
the biggest risk on. They were on an unknown label

was by himself, he could. His pitch is so good. He was
kind of floating through it. He was absolutely right.
That morphed on the next record.
Things changed.
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brought in the weight. From the album We Care A Lot to
called Octone, with an unknown manager at the time.
Introduce Yourself to The Real Thing, we all relied on Jim
I was actually offered to work with Days of the New
Martin to come in with the [Gibson] Flying V and the
on their second record. They were offering me
Marshall half stack with the weight that would tip it so

$50,000 to produce it. I was like, “I can make more

Yes. On Angel Dust, Mike Patton became a part of Faith No
More. He was fully invested. His name, his aesthetic, and
his heart and guts were in that record. He was there
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it didn’t get too cute or too light. We needed that, but
money doing Days of the New.” But these Maroon 5
he wasn’t available. It was really, really, really difficult.
songs were so good. If nobody blew it, we had a shot.
A lot of samples were used on that record. I went to see them play live at The Whisky a Go Go

while we were rehearsing the songs. He could say, “I Had you done a record like that and it was a guitar wankfest. Every song had solo
don’t like that song. Let’s not do it.” Or, “Could we before? after solo. Adam [Levine]’s a wicked guitar player.
36/Tape Op#128/Mr. Wallace/(continued on page 38)
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Producer Island
You have a band. They’re making music, and we’re
on this island. It’s a nice enough island; there are
some coconuts. I’m your producer, and I say, “Hey,
man; I think this is really cool, but I think there’s a
better island on this rickety bridge that goes off into
the mist.” They’re like, “Eh, it’s cool here man. We’ve
got some drinks and coconuts. It’s pretty cool.” And I
say, “Well, I think there’s a better island.” “What does
it look like?” “I’m not sure.” “How do we get there?”
“Well, I think if we go on this rickety bridge we’ll find
it.” “Okay, fine. Let’s go.” Now picture you, me, and the
band are going across this bridge, and all of a sudden
the wind’s going. There’s rain coming down. The band
yells, “Hey, man; let’s go back to our island!” I say,
“No, I think it’ll be cool.” “Fuck you, man, we’re going
back!” The bridge is falling out, and you’re walking.
You can see the river down there; people are hanging
on, and you’re holding each other. We finally get
through, and lo and behold there’s a nicer island.
There’s fruit, a stream, drinks, better instruments – and
better songs. They’re like, “Oh, dude; this is cool. Why
didn’t you tell us? I didn’t know it’d look like this.” I
wasn’t sure we’d get there, but I knew where we were
at wasn’t where we were going to be.
They’re not a pop band; they’re a guitar band. He’s a Yeah, it really worked out. I took less money and they
very instinctive, intuitive guitar player. I told my
manager, Frank [McDonough], “I can’t do this! These
guys are a bunch of guitar wankers.” Later I saw them
play the Viper Room, and it sounded really cool. We
got together, and I said, “I think if you guys can write half they finally upstreamed to BMG, Clive Davis After you’ve done it long enough, you
some bridges, we’re going to have a great record
here.” I think I got the gig by default. I’d done work
with Sheryl Crow, so I had some other pop sessions,
but nothing like Maroon 5. I got to the rehearsal and
told them they had to write bridges. They asked,
“Why?” I replied, “If you do, you’ll have a classic You bring up an interesting point about
record, and also, people might cover your songs. Your
choruses are great, but when you get to chorus two,
you guys plateau. What if we actually rose above that
so people go, ‘Oh my god, how could this get any
better?’” That was the big push I did with them. In
two weeks of preproduction, they wrote those You’re absolutely right. To me that is the crux of the I think you’re more comfortable with that part than I am.
bridges. I tracked them all with monitor wedges on
that record. Off the floor, I had great performances,
because the drummer was in the big room and the
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guys were all in their guitar booths. No headphones.
I told them, “I want you to walk in and play like
you’re playing live.” I had amazing recordings. As we
got into overdubs, Adam and Jesse [Carmichael] were
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into the urban thing. I ended up taking these drum
tracks and chopping out the ambience, making them
really tight. A friend of mine, John O’Brien, did loops off and make a left turn. As a producer, I will always
to
with them. We were basically making a Justin
Timberlake record before Justin Timberlake. At the
time 750 megabytes of RAM cost $750. We didn’t
have any budget! We erased all that. I committed to
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those sounds and erased the live off-the-floor drums,
and guitars, and all that. We took a big left turn and
made an urban record with all these loops. We
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couldn’t afford the $750 to pay for another hard drive
to save it. We did it, and got into mixing. I mixed this to do.” I’ll push really hard, and it gets me into
38/Tape Op#128/Mr. Wallace/(continued on page 40)
first song called “Tangled.” I played it for James
Diener – the head of Octone – and he was like, “Nope!
You’ve got five white dudes with guitars, and they are
not going on an urban tour. It’s not going to
happen.” I re-recorded seven tracks of drums while
mixing at Can-Am [Recorders]. I basically saved my
own ass in the mixing process of that record. It cost
me another two and a half weeks of work, and I didn’t
get paid any extra money. As a father and a husband,
I was like, “Oh my god, this is killing me!” As a
producer, I had to get it right. I couldn’t walk away,
and I couldn’t bellyache. All through that time, James
Valentine, the guitar player, was like, “We need this
to be a rock record. We need more rock guitars.” I
leaned that way, but I was trying to follow Adam and
Jesse’s vision. I was trying to accomplish that within
the confines of a rock band. Those drums are cut live
in the big room at Can-Am. I had this way of
approaching it where I put the drums in a booth and
they were all padded with blankets; very tight-mic’d.
I had the sliding door open a bit, and then added
ambient mics. That’s how I like to capture drums. Get
really tight, and then be able to open it up when I
want it. That’s what I did for that sound, but that’s
paying for your commitment.
It worked out.
gave me an extra point, because they didn’t have a
lot of money to put into it. It was my biggest career
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long-shot I’ve ever taken. It didn’t sound like
anything on the radio, at the time. In a year and a
wrote the check, and “This Love” became an il
international hit. I still get royalties from Maroon 5!
That fucking record is still helping me pay the rent
and keep the lights on because we did it right. But at
a
the time, I was taking a 50 percent pay cut.
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navigating the internal politics of the
band as a producer, as well as how
important it is to make people feel like
they made a contribution. You have to
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make it work and satisfy the boss.
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whole job. You’re between two rocks. You’ve got a
band who wants to do their creative thing and
express themselves. “This is our artistic thing; our
statement.” You’ve got a label who’s like, “That’s
great, but we want to make some money, and the
more money we invest in you, the more control we
have over how it’s going to turn out.” My wife thinks
I go to work and boss people around. I’m between a
label that’s funding it, and a band that wants to go
side with the band. We’ll have fights and argue, but
after a couple of times I’ll be like, “Is that what you
guys want? If it’s what you want, I’ll back it 100
percent. It’s not what I want to do, but it’s your
record.” That’s my job. I feel like the label’s got a lot People become less precious as they
of power. They have all the lawyers, and they’re this
multinational company. I try to provide a unified
front for the band and say, “This is what we’re going
trouble. That’s a big part of being a producer. The
label’s going to push what they want. They’ll pull you
aside and say, “Listen, the way so-and-so’s singing on
that song, you’ve got to fix that.” I’m in the trenches
with the band, like, “Fuck those guys. We’re doing it
this way!” My gut with Maroon 5 is that I loved what
we did initially, and I thought it was the right thing
to do, but I also wanted to go with the artists and
follow their path. One of the biggest lessons for me
is that I can start at Point A and believe I want to go
to Point B, but sometimes I do have to go to points
B, C, D, E, F, G, and sometimes come back to Point B
and realize it’s the right thing. We’ve got to go there.
We’ve got to follow the muse. I had already worked
so hard on that record, and we were already pushing
to the finish line. They wanted to mix and get it
going. That’s when I thought, “Okay, now the actual
work begins.” At nights I’d go to sleep thinking,
“Fuck, I don’t know how in the hell we’re going to get
out of this. The songs are in pieces. The album’s in
pieces.” I have to go on momentum and believe in
my gut. The next day we’d move forward a couple
more steps. That’s production. I feel that way every
night before I start a project; I have no idea if I’m
going to serve this band, or artist, as good as they
need. I’m going to bring everything I can to it, but I
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don’t know if I’m going to pull it out. They put their
trust and faith in me. For me, I might do a few records
a year as a producer. If one of them doesn’t work, it’s
fine. But for them, this is it. I have to do it right and
bring everything I can to it.
can put an X on the calendar, usually
about the midway point, where
someone’s going to lose their mind.
“Everything’s a disaster. Nothing’s
working. What are we doing?” It
really used to bother me, but now I
look forward to it. If it’s that safe, up
to a point, and everybody’s that
comfortable, I’m not doing my job in
terms of pushing people out of their
comfort zone.
I spent a good decade of staying within my comfort
zone. We always stayed on budget. I wasn’t the best
producer at that time; I could have done more.
Subsequently, I’m much more open to push and get
there. But I don’t know if I look forward to those
moments. I know they’re essential, and we have to
push to get through it. You’re right; sometimes it’s
about the music, and sometimes it’s not. It’s about
perceptions, or peoples’ feelings are hurt. “Why’s so-
and-so playing guitar and not the guitar player?”
“Well, he has this weird thing he did on the demo
that’s honestly wrong, but it’s the right thing.” I do
that all the time. I don’t want any credit, and I don’t
care who plays it. Put your name on it. Great.
get older and have more experience,
but that first record is their record.
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 Back to Angel Dust, that was really the sound of a band
being torn apart. They got to the point where they
had to coalesce, but at the time Jim was pulling
away. Roddy had an issue with substances, and was
also coming out as a gay person. That record had one
of the highest levels of daily strife, stress, fatigue, and for ESPN? Can we use it for college basketball?” That
challenges. Jim would come in and play guitar parts
and the band would come in say, “What in the hell is
he doing?” He’d do these noodly, melodic things and
the band wanted him to bring in weight. There was
such a schism with that band. At the end of that
record I said, “You guys need a new guitar player, a
new producer, or both.” I quit producing for two That was never a consideration, back in
months after that record. A lot of that project was
carried by sheer momentum, as well as Patton
stepping up and nailing vocals, and melodies, and
being super prepared and hyper-focused.
Interesting. Some of the best records You’re absolutely right. What I try to tell bands, and this is
have that behind-the-scenes chaos.
Honestly, I think the best records have to have that. You
have to be at the point where you’re all in, and you
have to go for the jugular. I did plenty of pleasant and
nice records. There were a lot of times where I wasn’t
comfortable saying, “No, that’s not good enough.
We’ve got to do something different.” It’s not because
I want to fight about it. It’s because we’ve got to get
to the guts of this record. I did this O.A.R. record [All
Sides] that had a song called “Shattered (Turn the Car
Around).” It was their biggest record. I was basically
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fired a couple of times [during that project]. I was
ready to do it, and I wanted to work with them. I
tracked a demo of this one song, and it was away
from what they do; a little bit edgier. Like between
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O.A.R. and Sublime-like. The A&R guy was like,
“Nope,” and that was it. I thought, “I guess I’m not
doing the record.” Then, two days later, I get a call
a
and it’s, “You’re on.” I called and said, “You know, I
really want to work with you guys, but I don’t think
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you have the song you really need. I hate being the
guy saying, ‘I don’t think you have the song.’ It’s a
dick move, but I don’t think you have it.” The
manager was like, “Okay, you’re fired. You’re out.
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Goodbye.” Then, three or four weeks later, they wrote
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“Shattered” and some other songs. That’s the same <www.mcdman.com/wallace>
band where I had a song completely in pieces on the
“I did plenty of pleasant and nice records.
us
There were a lot of times where I wasn’t
comfortable saying, “No, that’s not good
enough. We’ve got to do something
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different.” It’s not because I want to fight
about it. It’s because we’ve got to get to
the guts of this record.”
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40/Tape Op#128/Mr. Wallace/(Fin.)
floor for three days. It was a song called “This Town,”
where I said, “If we do it right, it’s going to be
anthemic live. I think sports people are going to want
to use it.” Because I got a 10 percent co-write on it,
for a year after I would get requests, “Can we use it
was one of the few times where I said, “I know
exactly where this song can fit. We’ve got to get
there.” They said, “Dude, the original version’s fine.
We’ve got this demo. It’s totally cool.” I kept saying,
“It’s not there yet.” I remember going home and
thinking, “Fuck.”
classic record production. Now you’re
thinking, “How are they going to make
money with this song?” The traditional
outlets have been minimized.
my general aesthetic, I say, “Listen, there are going to
be a couple of songs I might push pretty hard.” It
might be a single, a leadoff track, or whatever. I’m
going to push pretty hard for that, and I’m going to tell
them straight up, “We’re going to do that.” But I also
expect we’ll have a couple of songs that are going to
be weirdo, odd arrangements and left turns that we’ll
have to do in order to balance that. When we work on
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those songs, we are gonna go on their meandering,
cool, crazy, fucked-up journeys. That’s important,
because I want this band to be balanced. I don’t want
people to think they’re just a pop band. “No, you guys
are also artsy-craftsy. You want to do this jammy bit.
Great. Let’s jam out. Let’s have a couple of songs that
are seven minutes. Fine.” That way I feel the band is
at least heard for who they are. We’ll put our toes in
the pop area, or have an ESPN track, but we’re still
going to do our thing. Let’s make a record that’s
creative and artistic, but we also need some songs that
can push it through. After they had “Shattered,” O.A.R.
were able to play Madison Square Garden, because they
had toured for so long. They were a jam band/hippy
band/college band, but they also had a song that
fucking connected with people. That’s the job – to try
and help them make a career out of it. r
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it sound beautiful it would ju
made
“If I
KEVIN ARMY
Kevin Army was a secret force behind the East Bay punk
explosion of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Being a generation
older than the bands he worked with brought depth and
wisdom on two-fronts that informed the music: his
experience as an artist from the dawn of punk
internationally and his career as a vinyl record collector
with an encyclopedic knowledge of sound. He had cut his
teeth at his own studio, Dangerous Rhythm in Oakland (a
studio that he bought from his mentor, Matt Wallace (see
Matt’s interview this issue). Dangerous Rhythm was the
go-to underground rock studio in the Bay Area during the
mid-1980s, and it was also the first professional studio
that I personally recorded in. Kevin produced some of the
most seminal bands of the East Bay punk sound, including
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Operation Ivy, Jawbreaker, The Mr. T Experience, and I thought any instrument might make
Sweet Baby. In addition, he also engineered Green Day’s
second major label album, Insomniac.
to
When did you start playing music?
When I was in third grade or so. I started playing piano;
my mother taught me. She got a book and she
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showed me a few things – the basics. Music was all
that I wanted to do! They had to limit me playing So, you gave yourself a headache with
records when I was 7, because all I wanted to do was
sit in front of the record player. This is why I became I think so. When I was in 7th grade, my mom gave me
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a record collector, so that I could have as many
records and listen to them as much as I wanted. They
42/Tape Op#128/Mr. Army/(continued on page 44)
by Ian Brennan
photo @
st kill it.”
Dangerous
Rhythm 1986
io
by David Ginoch
of 3DBB
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limited me to an hour a day at one point, because Led Zeppelin and Don Ellis, which was pretty crazy
they couldn’t take it. [laughter] Everyone knew I out in the suburbs. I would come home and lock
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loved music. I remember my parents opening up their myself in my room and play all day, every day. Within
trunk, and it was stuffed with records that people two hours of picking up the guitar I had written a
had passed on for me. First, they got me a toy song, which I had never done with piano. Guitar
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saxophone. Then the piano; an upright. I learned a immediately resonated with me.
little bit, and I immediately started playing songs by What year do you think the East Bay
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ear. I really impressed my family when I learned to punk scene started? And what year
play “The Age of Aquarius” on my own. [laughter] did it end? 
They would make my relatives listen to my horrible Well, there’d been an East Bay scene since 1977. But
renditions. In school I was given the choice between what the East Bay became known for – the scene
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violin or viola; I chose violin. The worst choice ever, around 924 Gilman Street – started in 1986. That
if you wanted to carry an instrument that was scene never ended; it is still going. Obviously, it
[essentially] a neon sign that said, “Beat me up.” peaked in fame when Green Day became popular, and
with that perhaps some of the initial innocence and
someone a mark for bullies. lack of self-consciousness were lost. That brought
No, you could play sax. I was the only boy in the string some interlopers, though I don’t think many of them
section. That’s a whole other level of commitment – actually joined into that scene. I would call the
to not just learn an instrument, but to get hazed and interlopers the bands from outside that scene who
have your ass kicked in the process. My teacher was would suddenly say, “We’re kind of punk rock. We
terrible. She didn’t teach vibrato, so I got headaches sound like Nirvana and Green Day,” without ever
all the time. Vibrato is what makes you sound good. having gone to Gilman. Kind of like the journalists
who never wrote a word about Gilman until Green
your own playing? Day hit it big, and then couldn’t shut up about it. I
mean, if you lived in the East Bay and missed seeing
the choice to play guitar. We had an awesome and writing about Operation Ivy, you couldn’t have
teacher that would teach us music theory, as well as been that good of a rock journalist, could you?
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How was the reception to the early East equipment, and he was making really good recordings. and said that if it was any more, the record would just
Bay punk scene? But for my first year, I was sucking. The rooms skip when played and he couldn’t master that. “You
Well, everything was met with resistance by reviewers. sounded amazing. Those were the best rooms for have to go get a de-esser. That will cure your
They later embraced it. But did anyone write about drums, ever. problems.” I went and bought a $100 de-esser, and
that before it became successful? There was that How many rooms were there? the next record I did was Mr. T Experience. It was the
whole period previously where punk rock was just A moderate-sized main room, a drum booth, a vocal lowest-budget project that I had ever done, so all I
considered garbage. You just have to go with your booth, and this outside room that was a reception could do was throw up the microphones, record it
heart. I think the Gilman bands influenced each other, area. I started recording drums out there, opening the without doing anything, and mix it in two or three
yet they remained unique at the same time. door and putting mics out, and I would get this huge hours. I couldn’t go crazy with manipulating sounds.
What was your first studio experience? ‘80s drum sound. When I started, I really loved reverb It didn’t sound awful. That was the first time I came
I was in bands back then, and if you were in punk rock and room sounds too much. Matt came up with this back from the mastering and thought, “Hey, that’s
bands you ended up recording with people at studios way where you put a snare through a speaker and okay. It sounds better than the things I spent
that hated you. I started producing before I started then mic’d and gated it. I’d get that ‘80s awful snare hundreds of hours on.”
engineering. I made my horrible single. Some people sound, which I started putting on everyone’s records, Who turned you on to John Golden?
liked the way it sounded, so they asked me to produce regardless of the necessity. It sounded horrible. There Matt Wallace told me about John. Just like John
them. I hired the right engineer, the best engineer, to are a lot of people whose records it is on. Please let mentioned in the interview you did with him of how
do my single. I listened to all the local records and me use this forum to say, “I’m sorry.” [laughter] his reputation spread. Matt said to me, “I just went to
picked the one that sounded the best. And this guy Did Matt teach you to splice tape? this guy and he listens to the record all the way
was a fucking coke freak. He was a good engineer, but Yes. When I was just producing, I wasn’t getting hands- through.” That did not happen elsewhere. “He takes
he was fucked-up on drugs. He was annoying, and I on, but I was observing the engineers. People used to his time, listens to your stuff, and suggests what else
didn’t get along with him. This is one of the things come into a studio, be overwhelmed, and think, “How you could do.” The next record I did, I went down
that got it into my head to do engineering. This guy am I going to learn all that?” But if you look at a there and he showed me what I was doing wrong. It
was doing lines every 15 minutes! At the end of the mixing board, you only have to learn one channel and was a life-changing moment.
day he’d say, “I don’t know what kind of studio you’ve the patchbay. In my career I learned that people had What were the studio options for
been to before, but usually the artist brings drugs for trouble with the patchbay because they didn’t alternative bands in the 1980s in the
Bay Area?

the engineer.” [laughter] Everyone hated the record,
but it sounded good. Most independent records just
didn’t sound good.
How did you get involved with
memorize it. When I had to go into different studios,
I would go in the day before, write down the
patchbay, and then go home and memorize it. It looks
more overwhelming than it is. Obviously, it gets more
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There were very few. There was a place that I found in
Oakland called Bay Sound Reproduction. They were
more into soul music, but they tolerated me. I’d done

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engineering? complex when you get to mic’ing and signal path and
I decided I was going to engineer, so I went back to all that. But people were paying for me to learn.
school in 1986 or so. And the first day I was at school, You later went on to own the studio,
correct?
I got a job from Matt Wallace, since I had been
hounding him. That’s how I got into engineering. My Yes, I bought Dangerous Rhythm Studios with my old
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intention was to go to SF State’s program. My first day business partner, Bill Raymond, from Matt. We owned it
on the job was Matt Wallace teaching me how to run for two years. When you own a business, you end up
a
an 8-track recorder, which he had learned at a having to do all kinds of details and busy work that
community college in the East Bay suburbs. The ironic aren’t about engineering. Also, I realized that to
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my own demos there. That’s where I took the first
bands I produced: Love Circus, Pariah, and the Church
Police. It didn’t sound great, but it had a nice
environment. In hindsight, I can see that a lot of
things I worked on didn’t sound great, but the
performances were there. That’s what I was good at.
The records had a good vibe on them.
Why is that?
Because that’s what I’m good at. I understand what it is,

thing is that the first few projects I engineered just upgrade equipment would cost more than it was worth. and how to give it a chance to happen.
sounded terrible. I could freelance and get the same rate I would be And how do you do that?
Why did you hound Matt Wallace for charging at the studio, with a lot less headache. We Make the artist relax. Be their best friend in five minutes.
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a job? were too small of a business to get a business loan; we Never let the technical things get in the way of the
Because he told me he was looking for someone. I called were laughed at by a loan officer. I got out of the studio music. If you have a choice of exhausting the singer by
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him every day for a month. He hired me because I and built relationships with better small studios, like spending two hours getting a perfect vocal sound, or
showed the most interest. He wanted to move onto Dancing Dog in Emeryville and Sound And Vision in San getting a shitty vocal sound in minutes and going with
larger studios. He owned this little studio, so he Francisco, which were both wonderful and cheap. them while they are still on, go with the shitty vocal
trained me for a month. We did a session where I tried What was the first record that you were sound. You will have something that is more interesting
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to run the whole thing, and then he was like, “Here proud of, on a sonic level? to listen to. Some of the stuff I recorded back then –
are keys. Start booking yourself. These people are The first Mr. T Experience record [Everybody’s Entitled to the Turn It Around! [Maximumrocknroll] compilation
calling.” I started working all the time, and Matt still Their Own Opinion] because they didn’t give me was done in two five-hour sessions. Five bands in one
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worked sometimes, too. Dangerous Rhythm was on
12th Street, across from the Fruitvale BART station.
The building is still there.
I know it was an 8-track, 1/2-inch
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enough time to fuck it up. We had a 13-hour budget day, four the next, and almost no time to mix. They got
for the whole thing. I had been screwing up and, yes, two takes of two songs. It doesn’t sound good, but it’s
John Golden [Tape Op #121] showed me how I had amazing. It’s the first record put out with Operation Ivy,
been screwing up. Crimpshrine, and Sweet Baby. It’s still being listened to.

Tascam with a Carvin mixing board. What were you doing wrong? It was a remarkable session, because everyone was
What was in your microphone locker? I was cranking the high-end on the vocals and I wasn’t cheering each other on. They loved each other’s bands.
[laughs] using a de-esser, so John had to use a de-esser on the That is not the way that rock bands used to be. The vibe
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Okay, what was your best mic then?
A [Shure] SM57. Our condenser mics were from
RadioShack, and they were battery-powered. We had
a pair of Sennheiser MD 421s. That was our high-end
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whole song. Worse, I was cranking the high end and is incredible. The two Operation Ivy tracks are
running it through delays, so the S’s were going all exploding with energy. It’s from my years collecting
over the place. John sat down me and patiently said, records. You can listen to old Chuck Berry records and
“This is what you are doing to the grooves of the they sound good, but they are raw and there are

mic. Matt set up this studio with no money and cheap vinyl.” He showed me the view under a microscope, mistakes in places. There is a place in “Around and

44/Tape Op#128/Mr. Army/(continued on page 46)

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 Around” when the bass player just totally loses it. But
do people still listen to that song? There are all kinds
of soul recordings that are funky sounding, but in a
way that is attractive. They are not technically up to
major label standards, but they endure.
How much were you recording live?
I almost always recorded the band live, and then
overdubbed the vocals. The only time I did live vocals
was with Filth, because he was a screamer and I
thought we’d get a good vibe. They were a band
where if I made it sound beautiful, it would just kill
it. How do you make this thing completely them?
By respecting who they are and not Like what?
trying to make them sound like There are a lot of old soul records that may have only
someone else. sold 200 copies. I had this record by this group,
The worst thing is that years later bands would call and
want to sound like bands that I’d worked with. I’d say,
“You should want to sound like you.” It’s a fine trick
trying to sound sonically like the era you are putting
records out in, but still sounding like yourself. How do
you make modern recordings compete with these
horrible, loud, pop songs out there?
You recorded loud bands. How do you feel
about the loudness wars today?
Things aren’t so different now. The loudest thing I did was
Revenge Is Sweet, and So Are You by The Mr. T
[Fleetwood Mac’s] Rumours. Its vibe is cold, cocaine-d
out, unhappy people, because they were going
through all of those weird relationship troubles. There
is a weird, fucked-up vibe underneath this pleasant
music. People are really responding to it again now.
There’s a level of detachment, but there’s some
strange, strong thing that lasts through time. On The
Beatles’ records, the atmosphere is strong. Every time
I go back and listen to them, I am shocked at how
powerful they are. That’s true of these collectible
records that I trade in that failed, because they were
too raw. But they are so strong and so singular.
Mixed Feelings. You put it on and it’s like euphoria.
You feel like you are in an emotion with them. It’s
like taking drugs. When I heard Nevermind by
Nirvana, it was like, “Oh, this is the first time
someone didn’t water one of these bands down.”
They took the band and made them even more
powerful. The drums were all over the place. No one
would let a drummer play like that on a major label
record at the time. They’d always say, “Play less, tame
it down.” Instead the guitars got louder, and the
drums got crazier. That was a defining moment. I

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Experience. I ran the mix through three compressors, watched for years – people would sign these indie
squashed the mix, and then I had John Golden turn up bands and then wimp them out. But as far as
the volume so it went into the red on the digital, commonalties – good songwriting is always good

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against his wishes. At the time, it was really loud. songwriting. A good vocal can carry a bad record.
That’s what they are doing with records now, just with Creedence Clearwater Revival are a great example of
different equipment and to different frequencies. that. You take the vocal out and it sounds like this
How many singers did you have il half-baked band. But you put the vocal back in and
physically hold the microphone how could you lose?
during takes? What about John Fogerty’s vocals were so
Only once in a while, like if they were too stiff and it good then?
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would make them more comfortable. I liked to have He was just so raw, passionate, and immediate. I
the bands jump around as they played. had a realization once, listening to Garth Brooks
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Did you ever let them sit down? singing “Unanswered Prayers.” He is so inside
I would lose the fight sometimes, but as much as that song. I understood why he was so huge. He
possible I would have them stand. And close was just 100% himself.
together, because if the guitar player is 10-feet away What were the reasons that the East Bay
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from the drummer, he’s not going to play in time. I punk scene was different?
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hate headphones. The best is to find a place where Those bands had amazing pop sensibilities. What blew me
everyone can stand close together, and it sounds in away was The Mr. T Experience developing a pop
time, and they don’t have to wear headphones. sensibility. They were the first band I heard doing punk
With your decades of being a professional rock, but catchy pop, around 1986. Operation Ivy had
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record collector, what do you think is it all. They were unbelievably catchy. And Jesse
the commonality of a great record? Michaels was a great singer. He had this ability to have
It has to be the strongest version of itself. Like Barry a punk rock voice, but with melody. After I heard
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Manilow is the strongest version of Barry Manilow.
Think of those tom toms that you would laugh at
back in the day. But those grandiose tom toms are so
grandiose – they are strong; it’s all the way. The
to
Sweet Baby for the first time, I was just exploding with
energy for a week. That’s what you’re looking for as a
collector, something that is exploding. Look at Green
Day. How many bands write great songs, over a 25-

schmaltz level on those records is huge! It’s not year period? Let’s not say Jawbreaker had a great pop
watered down. songwriter, but just a great writer. In the East Bay
But it’s radical in its own way. scene, there was this desire to write lyrics that had
It’s extreme. If you listen to “Mandy” it’s not just a little meaning. People were trying to do something that had
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dramatic. It’s got those huge tom toms, and he’s more value than pop songs. I always had bands give
singing in his own way – which is very emotional, and me lyric sheets so that I could know where to punch
it modulates at the end. He pulls out all of the stops, in and out. Half the time I couldn’t understand what
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and the drama of that song is complete – it’s like a they were singing, but then I would read the words
movie. An album that is enduring forever now is and be amazed.
46/Tape Op#128/Mr. Army/(continued on page 48)
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 Did it also help you to know how to capture the music?
You need to know what the band is trying to put across. Having a lyric sheet is very
useful. It helps you understand the depth of the song.
Would you try to always meet bands in rehearsal before the
actual sessions?
Yeah. Going over to someone’s rehearsal studio for two hours solves so many problems.
Meeting the people, and making sure that you can get along with them. Making friends
with them ahead of time. You can find out about equipment issues and tell them if
anything needs help ahead of time. Little things – like, “Change your guitar strings. Put
on new drums heads.” Or, “This drum set sucks. Get a new snare.” That way you can be
recording within three or four hours, rather than tweaking sounds for two days.
What are some key mic’ing techniques for you?
Minimal mic’ing. Having the mic as close to the singer as possible. I would shove it as
in-their-face as I could and try to get every sound out of a voice.
Would you ever put up a second mic for them?
No, just a spit screen an inch away from the mic and then let the singer go at it. I love
[Neumann] U 47s, or [AKG] C12s, but I’d also just use a [Shure] SM58 in some cases.
What are your favorite preamps?
I like APIs much more than Neves. They let more of everything through – more highs and
lows, and they’re more transparent. I have done records on horrible consoles that had
an edge. A Tascam console could add a transient edge. I did a lot of records I was
happy with on the cheap version of the Tascam or Soundcraft. I love tube preamps. I
used to use an Altec preamp on guitars. You have to remember that the East Bay
bands were incredibly young; teenagers, most of them. No one thought punk would
make them rock stars. Most of the bands didn’t have any preconceived ideas, sonically.
They just wanted to have fun with their friends and make a recording. They were

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uninhibited. Some of them were totally unaware of the process of recording. It was a
whole new thing, and a whole new world. I’d just throw up mics and let it happen.
That’s why so much of it has a totally unselfconscious feeling.

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What do you think is the most punk thing that someone could
do today?
Just be yourself, which a lot of punks wouldn’t approve of. Probably the most punk thing
you could do is to stop being a punk. That’s what I’ve done! r
<www.kevinarmy.com>
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Kevin in Oakland across the street from the
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old studio building 10-25-2018. c JB.
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Ian Brennan is a Grammy-winning music producer (Tinariwen) and author. His fifth book,
Silenced by Sound: the Music Meritocracy Myth, will be published in the fall of 2019. His most
recent projects are the Tanzania Albinism Collective’s 7-inch single for Jack White’s Third Man
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Records, and the Malawi Mouse Boys fourth album, Score for a Film About Malawi Without
Music from Malawi.
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48/Tape Op#128/Mr. Army/(Fin.)

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Universal Audio
Ocean Way Studios plug-in
Universal Audio’s Ocean Way Studios for their UAD platform
is a room emulation; this is the most basic fact when trying
to describe the plug-in. But this simple description does a
huge disservice to what the plug-in can actually do. The
boffins at Universal Audio had a genius idea to take
convolution to the next level by capturing the sound of
multiple rooms in a single studio facility, from various
positions in the rooms, and using a whole host of mic pairs
at each position. Oh, and not just any “studio facility,” but
Allen Sides’ [Tape Op #106] Ocean Way (formerly, and now
again, United Recording). United was originally designed
and built by M.T. “Bill” Putnam Sr. – father of UA’s Bill
Putnam. Sides supervised the creation of Universal Audio’s
Ocean Way Studios by providing his renowned mic collection
and his intimate knowledge of the studios’ A and B rooms.
Convolution is a technology that allows us to capture an
audio snapshot of a piece of gear (see Waves’ Q-Clone and
Acustica’s Nebula platform), or a place (AudioEase’s Altiverb
[Tape Op #28]); it has also become an integral component of
software amp modelers allowing for impulse responses (or IRs)
– the raw material of the convolution process. It’s a mature and
incredibly useful technology that can allow reverbs to go places
that purely algorithmic ones cannot. Universal Audio has
cleverly combined convolution and impulse responses – with
some innovative algorithmic reverb techniques – into a plug-in
I’ve found infinitely useful for bringing realism to tracks that
have been recorded with minimal or no actual room mic’ing.
The Ocean Way Studios plug-in provides for a number of
dispersion patterns (“Sources”) for Studios A & B based on the
type of instrument being sent to the reverb (drums, strings,
piano, etc., along with three guitar cabinets). These are merely
suggestions, and there’s no reason you can’t send a vocal to the
us
piano source, for instance. Choosing one a dispersion pattern
loads a default set of mics for the Near, Mid, and Far locations.
The type of mics, as well as the distances within each location,
can be continuously changed, and these choices make a
nm
significant difference to the results you get out of the rooms.
Also, these aren’t just a random selection of any microphones.
From humble Shure SM57s to pairs of AKG C12s, Neumann U
to
67s, Neumann M 50s, and rare mics like the RCA KU-3A
unidirectional ribbons, it’s an enviable collection by anyone’s
standards. Universal Audio has also captured multiple patterns
for a number of the mics, so there are cardioid and omni choices
pi
for the AKG C12s and Neumann U 67s, among others.
There are two modes of operation in Ocean Way Studios:
Reverb and Re-Mic. Reverb is the traditional method of
setting up the plug-in on a send and varying the amount of
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signal that you are sending into the space. On the other hand,
Re-Mic is a fully “wet” setting that should generally only be
50/Tape Op#128/Gear Reviews/
used as an insert. According to the Ocean Way Studios’
manual; “The dry signal is processed to sound as if it were
recorded inside the studio space itself, by emulating the
direct signal component. This processed source signal thus
inherits the sonic characteristics of the studio acoustics,
source dispersion patterns, and microphones with more
accuracy and realism than is possible with reverb processing.”
To put it simply: if you recorded in a less-than-ideal space,
the Re-Mic mode can be a lifesaver!
I’ve been using Ocean Way Studios on a variety of projects
both in Reverb and Re-Mic modes. Studio A is a glorious
sounding space, and using the “Strings” source loads the DPA
Microphones 4006 omni mics that are placed in the loft area
above the control room – brilliant for adding size and distance
to drums! I will generally add in some Mid mics as well for a
tighter, more early-reflection sound that add mass to the kit
(the aforementioned RCA KU-3As are faves). An instance of
Ocean Way Studios on drum room mics that were recorded in
a dodgy space can truly save a recording.
One particular album I’ve been mixing was recorded in a
decent sized studio, but no room mics were used during
tracking on any of the drums or amps. Ocean Way Studios
Studio B to the rescue! There’s a quality to this room that, with
a little bit of each instrument added to the send, really makes
you feel that the recording has been transported to a new
acoustic environment. The pan positions are maintained
within the space, but you get that sense of size and reflection
from the walls of the room. I think the true beauty of Ocean
Way Studios is that it doesn’t sound like a reverb (I have all
the reverb options I need until the day I die) – it actually
sounds like a real freakin’ room! Or in this case, one of the
.c
greatest recording studios ever built.
That’s probably the best way to sum up Universal Audio’s
Ocean Way Studios; it does something that no other plug-in or
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piece of hardware I have can do, and does it in a musical,
useful, masterful way. Any reservations? I’d love a resizable
interface; on my 4K display there’s a lot of squinting and
leaning in to get a clearer view of things (aging be damned).
a
Other than that, all I can do is give Ocean Way Studios my
highest recommendation! ($199; uaudio.com)
gm
-Don Gunn <dongunn.com>
Qdea
Synchronize! Pro X software
@
Years ago I was wandering around London with several
recording engineer/journalist types, when I made an offhand
ic
complaint about the interminable wait I was going through
during hard drive backups at the end of every day’s session.
Zach McNees quickly asked me if I was using any backup
software. I replied that I was simply overwriting entire folders
of sessions. “You need Synchronize! Pro X,” Zach promptly
exclaimed. When I returned home, I installed this file
synchronization and backup utility software (for Mac OS only)
and gave it a try. Immediately what had been 45 minute
overwrites turned into only 3- or 4-minute synchronizations,
depending on how many GB of audio we had recorded or
generated that day. There are probably all sorts of other
routines I could be doing with this app, like automated,
scheduled backups or such, but I just use this in the most
bonehead way and update my session folders to my personal
drive every night before heading home. I’m not a very
computer tech savvy person, and I felt kinda dumb for not
looking into this sooner, but now I’ve been using Synchronize!
Pro X for years. I’ve never had an issue, I’ve saved hours of
time, and my personal life has improved by getting out of the
studio quickly (and safely) at the end of the day!
($49.95, 7-day trial; www.qdea.com) -LC
ADAM Audio
T5V & T7V monitors
Some of the best money spent on your studio is in your
playback. Invest some of your hard-earned cash on a good
monitoring setup, and your mixes and production choices
will improve dramatically. ADAM Audio has been making
high-quality reference monitors for many years, and
although the company’s ownership has recently changed, the
product remains recognizable. I like ribbon tweeters, and in
a perfect world one might even have a pair around as an
alternative to standard tweeter monitors in order to offer a
different perspective on the top end of mixes.
Featuring 5-inch and 7-inch low end drivers, the T5Vs and
T7Vs are 2-way active monitors that claim a frequency
response of 45 Hz to 25 kHz and 39 Hz to 25 kHz,
respectively. Their polypropylene woofers, along with a rear
firing port, provide plenty of low end energy for use in many
genres, while the U-ART 1.9-inch accelerated ribbon driver
(tweeter) has a nice, wide high-frequency dispersion, making
for a large listening sweet spot. In fact, this is the same
tweeter design employed in ADAM’s S Series monitors [Tape
Op #123]. The T5Vs are rated at a max SPL of 106 dB and the
T7Vs at 110 dB. The back of each speaker has switches for
+/-2 dB high and low shelving adjustments, balanced XLR
and unbalanced RCA inputs, and a level control with a range
of -60 dB to +18 dB. The cabinets are reasonably well
om
constructed and look sleek.
I was initially interested in a new set of small monitors for
my home setup as an alternative to the Event Electronics
PS5s that I have been using (I’m not even sure where I got
them). I had not typically been doing much hypercritical
listening at home – just edit work before bringing projects
to my studio to mix. Some 20 years ago I thought those old
Event monitors sounded pretty good, but I have since
learned to appreciate a finer reference monitor – and I now
mix on PMCs and Focals.
Out of the box, the T5Vs sounded pretty dang good for
what ADAM totes as their “budget” monitor. The low end is
meaty for such a little box and the top end is as I expected;
smooth with decent clarity but not harsh or brittle. Because
of their size I found them to be a valid “check your
midrange” option, against a pricier speaker. The T7Vs are a
more grown up version of the T5Vs, with the bigger woofer
providing more oomph. The tweeters remained very similar
to the T5Vs. I set the T7Vs up in my mix room beside my
Focal Trio6 Bes [#114]. This is not an apples-to-apples
comparison – due to the vast price differential between
these two monitors. On their own, without a bunch of A/B
testing, the T7Vs handled low end heavy music pretty well,
and my ears were not destroyed after mixing a song that
really pushed the ADAMs’ tweeters. Stereo imaging was good,
and, as noted, the sweet spot was wider than you’d get or
expect from most budget priced monitors.
The T Series monitors would be at the top of my list of
recommendations for a budding engineer, or neighbor with a
home studio in search of a solidly built, but affordable
option. In fact, I recently had a filmmaker in my studio. He
took a quick listen to the ADAMs and proclaimed he would
be returning the pair of monitors he had just purchased so
he could buy a pair of T7Vs instead. For fun, I plugged the
T5Vs into my television for movie night, and they provided
nice clarity and beefy low end. I also connected them to a
Mytek Brooklyn DAC and had the same overall impression
when listening to CDs, files from my computer, and my
phone. The music was clear and detailed with a defined low
end, good midrange presentation, and a nice, smooth high
end. Compared to my old “beater” Event monitors, the
difference was night and day. When compared to the more
expensive ADAM Audio monitors, the T Series seemed a little
less firm and a little less fast across the spectrum, but
editing and leveling with the T5Vs at home translated well in
the studio and vice versa.
I would gladly have a pair of these monitors for either my
home rig, or as second set at the studio, and the associated
price tag makes that an easy decision. For those without a
ton of cash that are thinking of purchasing a first set of
monitors or an upgrade pair for a project studio or broadcast
work, the T Series should be seriously considered.
(T5V $399.98/pair MSRP, T7V $499.98/pair MSRP;
adam-audio.com) -GS
Readdle
Documents 6 iPhone
& iPad file manager
I still give most mixes and masters a test listen in my car.
Three hundred years ago I did this by burning CDs, but now
I use my iPhone. Over time this has become much more of a
pain in the ass. I posted mixes on a web server and for years
listened to them directly in my phone’s browser, but
downloading MP3s or WAVs over the air is slow and seems to
have gotten flakier through the years. I could load mixes
onto my phone, but my studio computer isn’t set up for that,
and loading music onto an iPhone is clumsy and screwy in
my opinion – probably because Apple wants us all to pay for
their streaming service. I could use Dropbox, but I don’t
think their player is that great.
I knew a better mousetrap must exist. After auditioning a
bunch of apps, I settled on Readdle’s Documents. Documents
is like having an exposed file system and Finder on your
phone. It also has a built-in web browser. Plus, just like on a
desktop computer’s browser, clicking MP3 or WAV, or ZIP links
will download files to Documents’ filesystem. Within
Documents you can rename and delete files, create folders,
extract ZIP files, and so on. And importantly, Documents has
a decent media player that behaves like a proper iPhone audio
player: just like iTunes or Spotify, all of the phone’s usual
media controls work. You can switch apps, turn off the screen,
and control playback from the lock screen. The Previous/Next
controls changes tracks within a folder and feels like you’re
just playing music on your phone. Most of the other document
apps I tried didn’t include this crucial feature.
So, now when I upload a ZIP file of mixes for a client, or
when a mastering engineer sends a WeTransfer or Dropbox
link, I copy the URL then launch Documents to download and
unZIP the file. Then the mixes are on my phone for as long
us
as I want. No data connection required for listening – no
fucking with ID3 tags to keep them organized. It’s as
friction-free as I can imagine. Plus, now my work-related
audio lives in one place on my phone, separate from my
nm
Perfume Genius and ZZ Top MP3s.
One last thing: Documents has been in the app store forever
and has millions of users. When I began using it, I emailed
to
Readdle support with a few nerdy feature requests. One of
those features I asked about appeared in the next update! No
joke, this app has materially improved my engineering life.
And for reasons I don’t understand – it’s free.
pi
(free; readdle.com) -Scott Evans <antisleep.com>
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GIK Acoustics
Room Kit Package #2
After two grueling months of learning how to pour concrete,
run electrical wire, frame walls, and hang sheetrock, I have
just finished transforming my detached garage into a mixing
suite. The end result is a rectangular room (solely intended for
mixing; not tracking), measuring 11-feet by 19-feet with an
A-frame ceiling (11-feet high at its peak). It was always
obvious that acoustics in this rectangular room would be
problematic, much like the bedrooms-converted-to-studios I
had put together in my past seven years of moving from rental
to rental. As the studio manager of Jackpot! Recording Studio,
I discussed my concerns with Jackpot! owner/Tape Op editor
Larry Crane, and he recommended that I check out the GIK
Acoustics room kits. Room kits have always been appealing to
me, as they include all of the necessary/essential pieces
needed to treat a room at a bundled price point.
Larry put me in touch with James Lindenschmidt, a GIK
Room Designer, to discuss my space. I should mention GIK’s
fantastic customer service. James took the time to study my
room measurements, consider my budget, and help figure out
exactly what I needed for my space. GIK offers a wide range
of products, from panels and bass traps dedicated to
absorbing frequencies, to diffusors that treat distortion
(such as comb filtering and flutter echo in musical detail,
vocal clarity and response cancellations). Their FlexRange
technology is a proprietary and patented system that allows
an individual panel to absorb specific frequencies, as
opposed to absorbing broad frequencies; this is useful when
you want to tackle low end energy in your room without
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affecting the midrange to high end frequencies. I was
interested GIK’s Room Kit Package #2, which includes six of
the 242 Acoustic Panels, four of the 244 Bass Traps [Tape Op
il
#113] with FlexRange Technology, and a single Monster Bass
Trap. The panels themselves measure 2-feet by 4-feet, so this
kit covers a lot of wall space! Following James’ advice, I
complemented the Room Kit Package #2 with two extra 244
a
Bass Traps (intended to go on the two ceiling walls above my
listening position) and a wooden Scatter Plate diffusor.
gm
While budget has been a big concern for me, having a room
I could trust was even more important.
All of the walls and ceiling of my space are insulated with
rock wool, with one layer of sheetrock on top. The floor is
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concrete. Before any treatment, the sound was bombastic,
ic
overtly live, and had flutter echo for days! It was so reverberant
in my studio that I sometimes had a hard time distinguishing
someone’s words from only a few feet away. When the panels
arrived, I was pleased by how large and hefty they were. For
the treatment intended to be hung on walls, I went with GIK’s
recommendation by using Ooks Hooks, but any typical picture
frame hooks will do. I first hung the 244 Bass Trap Panels (one
in each corner), and the Monster Bass Trap on the wall directly
behind me. This alone made a dramatic difference in the room’s
liveliness! I then hung the remaining 242 Acoustic Panels using
the mirror trick; two on the wall directly behind the monitors,
two on each side wall and one on each ceiling wall above my
listening position. The mirror trick works like this: while sitting
at your listening position, have a friend hold a mirror against
the left wall at speaker height, then move toward the back of
the room. When you can see the reflection of the left speaker
in the mirror, mark that spot. That’s your first reflection point.
Switch walls and repeat.
At the risk of hyperbole, these panels made a loud
rectangular room sound like a professional studio. I was, and
still am, blown away at how controlled the sound is in such an
Gear Reviews/(continued on page 52)/Tape Op#128/51
initially problematic space. From my listening position the
sound is tight, detailed, and free from any flutter echo or
buildup. I haven’t yet found there to be any “odd” spots
throughout the room, which is nice to know when I have
clients sitting behind me listening to mixes.
I’ve just finished mixing the first record in my new studio,
by Grammy-nominated artist Celia Woodsmith, and was a little
hesitant to send off the first round of mixes (as I’m still
getting used to a new space and new monitors). So far, I’ve
received glowing feedback from the artist and her producers –
I know it’s because they are hearing what I’m hearing. Anyone
looking to treat a room, whether it’s a square bedroom studio
or a professionally designed space, should absolutely look into
GIK products. The staff is friendly and incredibly helpful. The
panels look professional (and can even be custom printed with
your own graphics) and have outperformed my expectations!
This Room Kit is the most important and worthwhile
investment I’ve made for my space.
($758 and up; www.gikacoustics.com)
-Gus Berry <gusberry.com>
Black Lion Audio
Seventeen compressor
What!? Another Universal Audio 1176 clone? Well, not
om
exactly. Black Lion Audio has been modifying entry-level gear
[Tape Op #48], into top-notch studio grade equipment, while
building outboard gear – such as the Micro Clock [#83] and
various microphone preamps [#100] – for over a decade. The
Seventeen was designed in conjunction with Tobias Lindell,
who has made different iterations of the UREI 1176, most
notably the Lindell 17X and XS. Although the feature set of the
17XS is very similar, the Seventeen has a redesigned IC on the
front end and uses relays to minimize noise. A peek inside the
actual unit reveals Nichicon capacitors, a toroidal power
transformer, and quality components throughout, which is no
surprise. The steel enclosure, along with the rest of the build
quality is great. Every knob is detented, making recall a breeze,
and it’s also easy to match when used in stereo, which the
Seventeen supports via an RCA link on the back of the unit.
Black Lion Audio sourced the manufacturer of the original
UREI 1176 output transformer to make the Seventeens’, and
it’s a big part of the compressor’s character. Two other major
differences in this design from typical 1176-inspired devices
are Seventeens’ sidechain filter and a wet/dry mix that both
greatly expand this compressor’s palette. It’s mostly assembled
in China, after which Black Lion Audio installs the transformer,
calibrates, and burns in the unit, then performs a final quality
control inspection.
In practice, the design choices are smart and efficient. I
always accidentally bump the push type buttons on most 1176
types, throwing something askew. Not so with the Seventeen.
An actual power switch on the front resolves this problem and
smaller, individual ratio buttons also help. You can achieve
multiple compression curves by selecting any combination of
ratios. Gone are the +8 and +4-meter readings. In a hybrid
setup like mine, I don’t look at the compressor to see my
output, just gain reduction, so I don’t miss the readings at all.
The VU meter is LED and has a soft glow with a different hue
than most lamps. The Seventeen also has a true bypass,
completely removing the signal from the compression circuit.
A feature not mentioned yet are the low- and high-pass filters.
Both are in the signal path at -6 dB per octave slopes, with
the low-pass set at 10 kHz, and the high-pass at 100 Hz. One
 point of note, when engaging the filters, a pop/click is heard
– not a huge deal as these functions are usually “set and
forget” or not often changed… but the pop is audible. The
LaChapell Audio
sidechain lets you set what frequencies the compressor will
500DT Dual Topology Preamp
LaChapell’s boutique tube preamps have earned a
start reacting to, with a five-position switch from Off to 100,
reputation for being some of the best around, so when they
200, 300 and 400 Hz. The wet/dry Comp Mix knob streamlines
announced their ultra-affordable 500DT preamp earlier this
parallel compression duties while not affecting the stereo
year, my interest was piqued. The 583S 500 Series tube mic
linking. Attack time ranges are continuously variable from 20
pre [mk2: Tape Op #104] received rave reviews, but the
μs to 800 μs, while release times are 50 ms to 800 ms – a very
500DT is nearly half the price while offering a similar tube
snappy compressor indeed!
technology. I couldn’t pass up the chance to check it out.
So, what does it sound like? It sounds like a modern FET
The 500DT is a 500 Series preamp that features TrueTube™
compressor! Bass guitar was a lot of fun when using the
technology, which supplies the 12AX7 vacuum tube with a
sidechain and setting the Wet/Dry to about 75% to let the low
proper 250 volts to unlock its full harmonic potential. That
end come through unaffected – allowing me to keep some of the
in itself could be the tagline of a product – but wait, there’s
original dynamics of the performance while the top end received
more. I love flexibility, so when any piece of gear features
a slight boost to help cut through the mix. Driving the input
a blend knob, I add it to my infinitely long list which I’ve
really hard delivered some wooly, fuzzy tones, which I love! It
eloquently titled “Want.” The 500DT allows you to blend
was different bite than other 1176 clones, as I had more control
between tube and solid-state circuits. So, if you’re that
over what the compressor was seeing. On drums I could easily
person who can’t make up his or her mind as to which type
use this compressor where I would normally use a VCA based
of preamp to purchase, worry no more. You could buy two
compressor (due to their expanded options). And yeah, it smacks
of these puppies for approximately $1,000 and get the tonal
room mics by offering that distorted and forward sound FET
flexibility of four preamps! That’s a big deal for those with
compressors do so well! I generally use two compressors for
limited budgets and lofty aspirations.
vocals: one for the fast transients, and the second for overall
So how does the 500DT sound? I’m the type of person that
compression. This unit fits the second role beautifully because
wants to hear the tube working, and I don’t want to have
it allows for a lot of control. A common technique is to run an
to think twice about whether or not it’s adding something
audio signal through an 1176-style compressor without any

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to sound. With the 500DT, there is no mistake. At
compression, this imparts the character of the gear and I had
conservative settings it is warm and sparkly. As you crank
great results in this way with the Seventeen.
up the gain, you’ll begin to hear the delicious tube
Black Lion Audio has made a strong entry into compression.
harmonics that we all know and love. Compared to similarly
The Seventeen covers a lot of ground at a very easy to swallow

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priced tube preamps that I own, I found the 500DT to be
price. Its expanded options provide a wide feature set that
on the warmer and fuzzier side at aggressive settings, which
most 1176-inspired compressors don’t offer. It’s versatile, in
is what I want from a product offering a blend knob. Want
that it has the ability to apply very clean or gritty compression
il a driven tube sound but with more clarity? Turn the dial a
while providing a Mix/Dry knob. Having the Seventeen as
little to the right. Want clarity but a little more beef in the
addition to my other 1176-style compressors is an awesome
lo mids or compression in the hi mids? Turn the dial a little
luxury. Though some of the same ground is covered, they all
to the left. This is tremendously helpful to me when I’m
sound different – and that’s the point!
a
recording with a minimal setup. I don’t want to rely solely
($649 MSRP; blacklionaudio.com)
on plug-ins to achieve a tone that sits in the mix right, and
-Kevin Friedrichsen <greyroom510.com>
gm

I don’t always have enough outboard compressors to

Ultimate Support provide additional processing options. For instance, if I’m
17455 Mini Drop Boom traveling with a single lunchbox unit, I need to be choosy
Andy reviewed the Ultimate MC-125, a tall boom stand, in with 500 Series gear I use. The 500DT packs a lot of
@

Tape Op #91. He was right – they’re great stands. Sharkbite flexibility into one unit!
Studios in Oakland has six or eight different big mic stands, In regular use, I found the 500DT to be particularly handy
ic

and the only one every engineer seems to like is the single
Ultimate MC-125. Anyway, one of this stand’s cool features is
the 6-foot boom at the end. It has a single very sturdy clutch
us
for satisfying the vintage tube style of high end that I’m
often looking for. You know, the kind that minimizes vocal
sibilance and tambourine jingles and ride cymbal stick
sound. I’m engaged in an eternal war with acoustic guitar

that allows the 6-inch post to rotate and spin. Having this at
the end of a long boom is like having a robot super-wrist at
the end of your arm – the mic can point in any direction
regardless of the large boom’s angle. You can adjust the mic’s
nm
pick transients, and the 500DT proved its mettle in the heat
of battle. Paired with a Shure SM57 on a snare drum, the
500DT wrangled the entire frequency spectrum nicely – so

angle without touching the boom. You can screw mic clips on
and off while holding the mic still. For big or expensive mics,
or big expensive mics with integral clips or cables like my old
RCA ribbons, this is great.
to
much so that I felt less inclined to EQ and compress. I’m not
suggesting that you can or should bypass those steps, but
you may be more disposed to, which is nice. One of my
favorite applications for the 500DT was clean and dirty-ish

I liked this tiny boom enough that I started nicking it from
the big stand to use on other stands. It makes vocal mics
easier to hang, and mono front-of-kit ribbons easy to position.
pi
electric guitars, where it was able to really clamp down on
a sound that can sometimes be tricky, so it sat nicely in the
mix. It outperformed all of my other similarly priced
preamps in this regard.

Finally, I wondered, “does Ultimate sell these separately?” Sure

enough they do, and they’re only $24. They’re sold as an MC- Where the 500DT fell a little short were instances when
125 replacement part, but they screw onto any 5/8-inch stand the source was already warm, and in need of some clarity
just fine. I bought a few right away, and I’m stoked. – or at the very least required no additional warmth. Kick
ju

($24 MSRP; ultimatesupport.com) drum, bass guitar cabinets, and passive ribbon mics were a
-Scott Evans <antisleep.com> tad too dark to my ear, in most scenarios (even at

52/Tape Op#128/Gear Reviews/(continued on page 54)

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to
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Please Support Our Advertisers/Tape Op#128/53

 aggressive settings). However, other preamps that I might
choose are tonal one-trick ponies, so it’s more of a situational
preference than a slight against the 500DT and its flexibility.
I could have chosen to go with the solid-state sound, but,
given the option in the context of a session where I can
allocate it elsewhere, I’d prefer to play to the 500DT’s
strengths (I should also note that the Hi-Z input does a great
job of bringing out low mids and can minimize the weak-
sounding high end that often accompanies direct bass
signals). The only other minor gripe that I have is that the
output trim doesn’t have a center detent, but that shouldn’t
stop you from taking this unit for a spin.
The 500DT is an unbelievable value at $499. If you’re
someone with a bedroom setup or project studio, this is
definitely worth checking out, as it covers a lot of tonal
landscape while being easy on your wallet. Conversely, if you’re
running a larger operation and looking for something vintage-
y that brings a lot of personality to the table, the 500DT could
be a great addition to your rack at a low price.
($499 street; lachapellaudio.com) -Dave Hidek
Micparts
12-251 mic kit
& VPS1 power supply kit
Micparts is a DIY microphone mod/build company started by
Matthew McGlynn, of the wonderful microphone resource
website <recordinghacks.com> and Roswell Pro Audio. Matt
started Micparts a few years ago to offer upgrades for “donor
mics” (generally less expensive Chinese mics, like the MXL 990)
that were good platforms for modification to the electronics,
.c
capsule, or both. More recently the company has been offering
complete mic kits (both solid-state and tube) that include the
body, capsule, and circuit.
One of their latest kits is the 12-251, a reinterpretation of the
il
original Telefunken ELA M 251 with the elongated AKG C12 body
style made of heavy brass. This body is available in a black
powder coated finish with the Micparts logo, or a bead-blasted
silver finish without a logo. It’s a classy look that’s a little closer
a
to the original AKG C12 cylinder. A note about the AKG
C12/Telefunken ELA M 251 history: AKG introduced their C12 in
gm
1953 and built them for about 10 years. Telefunken
commissioned the ELA M 251, which was manufactured by AKG
and based on the C12. The AKG C12 and the Telefunken ELA M
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251 share the same capsule, but there’s a variation in the circuit
of the Telefunken that rolled off the top end a few dB, and the
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mics had different body/head baskets as well. As of publishing
this review, Micparts has introduced a new kit called the V-251,
which retains the single-stage circuit design of the original
Telefunken ELA M 251. The capsule of the 12-251 is Micparts’
us
own RK-12, which they also sell separately as an upgrade for
“donor mics.” This is a dual-diaphragm capsule that is rigorously
tested and subject to strict quality control by Micparts.
The full 12-251 kit comes with a flight case and all necessary
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components to build the mic: An Electro-Harmonix 6072 tube,
a 7-pin cable, an IEC power cord, and a pre-built, Chinese made
power supply. For $169, you can add their VPS1 premium
to
power supply kit, which includes Neutrik connectors and larger
heat sinks for better long-term reliability, better noise filtering,
and higher quality components throughout.
When I ordered my kit, I opted for the 12-251 in the silver
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finish (a $20 upcharge over the black finish) and added the
VPS1 power supply kit. I’ve built a number of preamp and
compressor kits over the years (Classic Audio Products, Inc.
[Tape Op #77 & #95] and Hairball Audio [#84, #93, #110, &
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#126] mostly) and I’m generally comfortable with a soldering
54/Tape Op#128/Gear Reviews/
iron and digital multimeter, but this was my first foray into
the land of mic building. There are two small PCBs for the mic,
and the main components on them are pretty straightforward.
The trickier part of the build is the wiring for the tube socket,
the 7-pin output, and then from the socket to the boards, as
well as from the capsule to the boards. If you’re a first-time
builder, this may not be the best kit to start with. The VPS1
power supply build was similar to the mic build in that the
PCB population was mostly a straightforward affair, but the
trickier part of the build was the wiring from the pattern
selector switch to the jacks to the board. Nothing was
insurmountable though – when I was done, everything
metered proper continuity and voltage as expected (always a
nervous moment in a build)!
Testing your build is always a bit nerve-wracking, as you
hope for the best but always expect the worst, so I was
overjoyed when the first thing I heard when I spoke into the
mic with headphones on was my voice sounding big, resonant,
and clear. It reminded me of what I like about my Soundelux
E47 [#37] – a really pricey mic with a richness of tone that’s
just lush and “expensive” sounding. A good torture test for a
mic is to see how it behaves when placed smack in front of a
drum kit. The 12-251 doesn’t have a particularly pronounced
proximity effect, so back a meter or so from the drum kit gives
a rather neutral, unexaggerated picture of the whole set. If you
want a pushed or blown-out, extended low end, there are
obviously better mic choices, but the 12-251 certainly holds its
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own as a hyper-detailed and smooth mic.
To hear how the 12-251 fared next to my Soundelux E47, I
placed their capsules as close to each other as I could while
running both through Vintech X73 [#47] preamps to my
Apogee Symphony Mk II [#118] converters. Talking into the
mics (set to cardioid at their power supplies) straight on axis
from 8-inches away, the Soundelux E47 had the chestiness I’m
so used to from that mic along with an airy, but decidedly non-
hyped, high end. The 12-251 sounded equally classy but is very
much its own microphone – the extreme low end was a bit less
exaggerated, but no less present, and the top was like silk with
a little more of the “air” frequencies than in the Soundelux
E47, without even a touch of harshness. On my speaking voice,
which is a reedy baritone (who actually likes their own voice?),
I preferred the 12-251 over the Soundelux for its more
balanced reproduction.
To really give the Micparts build a proper workout, I invited
Lacey Brown <laceybrown.com> to my studio, along with her
beautiful voice and acoustic guitar. I placed the 12-251, my
Soundelux E47, and my Neumann U 89 capsules as close to
each other as I could and recorded Lacey playing her guitar and
then doing the same singing over the guitar arrangement. For
these tests I used Seventh Circle Audio’s T15 [#84] mic pres,
which are transformerless and ruler flat from below 20 Hz to up
around 40 kHz – so they provided a perfect testing platform to
compare the pure sounds of the mics. I intentionally didn’t
label the tracks with any identifying clues and sent the Pro
Tools session to a couple of other engineer friends to get their
take on the three mics (I obviously knew which tracks were
which mic). The consensus was unanimous that the 12-251
was the vastly superior mic on the acoustic guitar tracks – it
provided the perfect balance of string attack/airiness and body
from the guitar. I would be happy to have that acoustic guitar
sound forever more.
Vocals were more interesting, and I think that’s as much down
to how we as people react to the sound of the human voice as
it points to anything technical. Two of us preferred the 12-251
and the Soundelux E47 equally on voice, while the other
preferred the Soundelux E47 and the Neumann U 89. Lacey has
some pronounced sibilance in her vocal delivery that was
slightly more apparent on the 12-251 than with the other mics,
but I would gladly trade a little more sibilance in the source if
it’s balanced by the glorious presence and dimension that the
12-251 offers. She truly sounded like she was right in front of
me rather than playing back on my monitors!
For my final round of tests, I compared the stock 7-pin cable
the microphone ships with, to Micparts’ premium cable made
with Neutrik XLR7 connecters and Gotham GAC7 cable. I’m not
usually a fan of cable tests – perhaps I’m too tin eared to hear
enough of a difference? However, in this instance when using
the 12-251 in front of a Fender ‘68 Deluxe Reverb (on loan from
my friend Bill Rieflin), the sound from the XLR7 when compared
to the stock cable was tighter and sounded more like what I was
hearing from the amp in the room. The stock cable made the
transients a little splashier for lack of a better description. Is it
worth the extra $94 for the premium cable? I think so!
Enough of me waxing on about this mic. I think it’s bloody
brilliant and I imagine that Micparts will have difficulty
keeping these in stock due to the orders. I honestly feel that
if you’re handy with a soldering iron and want a high-quality
tube mic that easily stacks up to the classics, this is the way
to go. Get one!
(12-251 kit $629/black, $649/silver; VPS1 kit $169;
XLR7 Cable $94; microphone-parts.com)
-Don Gunn <dongunn.com>
PreSonus
Temblor T10 subwoofer
I’ve run expensive professional studios, visited many friends’
small home project studios, and at home I have what you might
loosely call a studio. I’ve heard incredible music produced in
home studios, and I’ve also heard (and personally produced)
utter garbage in both. In my opinion, there’s no piece of gear
that’ll guarantee a great recording. Music is one part technical,
and maybe as much as eight or nine parts inspiration, emotion,
and passion. The technical side of this process can make an
enormous difference, but there’s certainly much more to it than
specs. Maybe this is a roundabout way of getting to the point,
but I’m trying to lay a foundation for talking about a subwoofer.
I know people who’ve made both incredible and horrible music
with and without a subwoofer. My home studio didn’t have a
subwoofer for many years, and I like a lot of what happened in
that studio. But now, after installing a subwoofer in my studio
I really wouldn’t want to sit down at my monitoring rig again
without one. A subwoofer can clearly paint the picture of what
low frequencies are actually doing; the importance of which
can’t be over-stated. It can also be massively inspiring – adding
us
the kind of soul-moving (both literal and figurative) feeling that
evokes emotion.
The PreSonus Temblor T10 sits in a really sweet spot as far
as price and performance for studio use (whether pro or
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home). It features a 10-inch woofer with a 250-watt amp and
is packed with extremely useful features – all at a price point
as low or lower than its competition. It’s listed frequency
response is 20 to 200 Hz, and produces a clean, clear low end
to
that is genuinely surprising. I took the T10 out of its box and
randomly pushed it under my desk – crooked and in no
particular location. The overall sound was excellent.
pi
I’ve got a pair of Adam A7s [Tape Op #57] in my home studio
that I’ve never particularly loved. In fairness, I’m not
enamored with ribbon tweeters in general. To my ears, the A7s’
high end is harsh and fatigue sets in fast. Like many nearfield
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monitors, I feel the needed low end is lacking my monitors,
but the simple addition of the Temblor T10 has transformed my
A7s – they’re now surprisingly comfortable for me. I can listen
longer, and the highs seem less sharp when used with a
subwoofer. Either way, I enjoy mixing far more with the
subwoofer. I’m now getting really clean low end without
distortion or over-stated boominess.
The T10’s controls make set up dead simple. A flexible input
gain (-30 dB to +6 dB) sets the preferred amount of subwoofer
into the mix (which could vary for me from session to session
based on song type or personal preference) – I adjust day-to-
day depending on mood. I like to use the T10 in a subtle way,
so I tend to set the low-pass filter (adjustable from 50 Hz to
130 Hz) in a way that assigns only the lowest frequencies to
the subwoofer. For me this is a good setup for clarity. An
On/Off high-pass filter allows for removal of frequency content
below 80 Hz (less work for the monitors). Phase reversal,
balanced and unbalanced inputs, and a Ground Lift switch are
also provided. A unique feature of to the Temblor T10 is a
balanced Sub Out port that allows for the connection of a
second subwoofer.
My single favorite thing about the Temblor T10 is that not
only does it have a bypass connector for a footswitch – the
footswitch is included! Nothing else I found in the T10’s price
range includes a footswitch, which I use constantly as a way
to either rest my ears or to audition what the mix might sound
like on systems that don’t reproduce the lowest frequencies
well. This integrated bypass feature is critical enough to my
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workflow that I wouldn’t recommend buying a subwoofer
without it. For that reason alone, I’d recommend the T10 over
the T8 [#117]. A footswitch isn’t an enormously expensive
piece of gear, but having it come in the box with the
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subwoofer you just bought is awesome!
In practice, the Temblor T10 is incredible. I’ve heard truly
expensive subwoofers that I’ve avoided using because they
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seemed to take away from the music more than reinforcing it.
I’ve heard cheap subwoofers that exaggerate the low end in a
way that makes it sound worse than music that’s missing low
end. With the Temblor T10 I can quickly dial in sub frequencies
a
to taste, and better than that, my mixes translate well – I was
grinning ear to ear the first time I auditioned a mix on another
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test system that had come from the rig with the subwoofer
attached. Solid, powerful, and clear low end with nothing
exaggerated or misrepresented. For many years I was
@
frustrated with mixing at home, only to find that the low end
of mixes were distorting (or missing) on legit systems. Some
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say that they can mix low end frequencies on headphones, but
I’ve spent thousands of dollars on every pair of headphones
known to man (obvious exaggeration) and was personally
never happy with the outcome.
The PreSonus Temblor T10 is rock solid, sounds incredible
with very little fiddling, and is packed with useful features
that its competitors don’t have, or can’t implement as well. If
you have full-range monitors and aren’t complimenting them
with a subwoofer, this one is screaming your name. In my
opinion, there’s just simply nothing in this price range that
gives as much quality and versatility as the Temblor T10.
($499.95 street; presonus.com)
-Brandon Miller <Brandon@mavrik.us>
www.tapeop.com
see more of our
bonus/archived
reviews online!
Gear Reviews/(continued on page 56)/Tape Op#128/55

Gear Geeking w/ Andy…
For almost two decades now, a crucial component of
my cross-platform file-sharing and backup strategies in
my home and personal studio has been Network
Attached Storage (NAS). My first NAS appliance was a
10 GB Quantum Snap Server that I purchased for $499
back in 2000. A few years later, as my storage needs
outgrew the Snap, I installed a Dell rackmount RAID
running Windows Server, with a SCSI tape drive for
additional backup. Over the years, I upgraded the Dell’s
disks until I hit the controller’s hard limit of 3 TB total.
Meanwhile, I repurposed my retired, rack mount
“Franken-Mac” into an iTunes and general media server
by installing a RAID card and OS X Server software.
Then in 2012, I bought my first Synology DiskStation
DS1812+, an 8-bay NAS appliance that supports
multiple RAID configurations with hot-swappable, user-
supplied drives. My DiskStation is currently loaded with
seven 3 TB disks from the Western Digital Red line
(with firmware optimized for NAS use). Six of the drives
are configured as a Synology Hybrid RAID, allowing two
drives to fail without data loss; and the seventh drive
is designated as a hot spare, which the Synology will
utilize if any of the other drives fail. Total usable
capacity is 11 TB. I have a second 1812+ that
automatically mirrors the first. The two are in different
buildings that are networked via fiber optic lines, in
case one building burns down. The most crucial data is
synchronized to an ioSafe disaster-proof drive [Tape Op
#90] that hangs off one of the DiskStations. In
addition, I have cloud storage for offsite backup. The
gateway to my network is a SonicWall, which allows me
to securely connect via VPN (Virtual Private Network)
to my home and access my files remotely. I’ve also
spent time with high-performance RAIDs optimized for
high-bandwidth media production from Proavio
(installed in my NYC studios), as well as value-priced
systems from Thecus, QNAP, Netgear, and Western
Digital. Within this latter group, Synology doesn’t offer
the highest transfer rates, but I wouldn’t hesitate to
recommend Synology first — because Synology’s
DiskStation Manager OS (DSM) is so easy to use. The
DSM interface is accessible via a web browser, and the
user experience is not much different than clicking and
dragging your way through macOS or Windows desktop.
Contextual help is available everywhere, and even if
you understand only the basic concepts of networking
and RAID storage, you can still set up your DiskStation
in half an hour, with Synology Web Assistant offering
the initial guidance. DSM is built on top of Linux,
which means you can get as down-and-dirty as you
desire. Despite being a command-line geek (I run Red
Hat Cygwin on my Windows machines), I’m content
with DSM’s default UI, and I use the built-in Package
Center to install/update officially supported software,
us
like Media Server, OAuth Server, various cloud-specific
synchronizers, PHP, etc. There’s even an iTunes Server
if that’s still your thing. I also have Docker installed,
which gives me access to thousands of third-party
applications. For example, I’m using Docker to run the
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controller software for my UniFi wireless network.
Western Digital offers setup that’s perhaps simpler,
but its software has far fewer features. Thecus and
QNAP include advanced software out-of-the-box, with
to
a corresponding uptick in complexity. Earlier versions
of ThecusOS were truly difficult to use, but the latest
version has a UI that looks awfully like Synology DSM.
Meanwhile, QNAP QTS reminds me of Windows 2000
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and classic website design, with a navigation menu
positioned to the left of a text-heavy interaction
pane. With that said, if transfer speed,
transcoding/encryption performance, or baked-in
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features are your top priorities, these brands offer
better value than Synology. –AH
56/Tape Op#128/Gear Reviews/(continued on page 58)
Apogee Digital
Special Edition 2×6 I/O Module
The new Special Edition 2×6 I/O Module for Symphony I/O
Mk II offers the highest quality AD/DA in the Symphony line.
The module can be added to existing Symphony Mk II audio
interfaces [Tape Op #118] or purchased pre-installed in a Mk
II chassis. I won’t rehash details on other Symphony products
[#87, #99], but this Special Edition is a legitimate standalone
mastering converter.
The analog I/O includes two balanced inputs via XLR
connectors, and six outputs via DSUB 25-pin connector.
Digital covers two inputs and outputs via AES XLRs, optical I/O
supports ADAT, SMUX, and S/PDIF with two to eight channels
each way depending on sample rate. Finally, S/PDIF via RCA
provides two channels in and out. As explained in our
coverage of the Mk II chassis, word clock in and out on BNC
connectors and dedicated computer connectivity is available
for Thunderbolt or Pro Tools | HD option card.
Apogee suggests a Thunderbolt-enabled Mac computer
running OS 10.9.5 or higher. Oddly enough, I conducted many
of my tests using an ADK computer running Windows 7 (64
bit) over AES, which is not technically supported, but does
work – like really works! Using the unit as my primary DA, I
set up everything using only the Symphony’s front panel
controls. Moving to a Mac OSX system provided me with robust
Symphony Control Software, which allowed me to take full
advantage of the power in this box. Testing the AD with
Windows 7 was more complex routing-wise. Specifically: I
needed the AD to convert the signal from the mastering chain,
pass that to AES, while simultaneously mirroring the signal out
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of the DA. To set this up, I connected an Apple laptop to the
unit via Thunderbolt, created the required routing, and saved
the configuration. I restarted the converter in standalone
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mode, and the template was ready for use. Mac OSX-based
studios can skip this workaround, having constant access via
Maestro, Apogee’s proprietary interface control software.
I have to stop agreeing to these converter reviews. Trying
a
to describe top-tier performance is elusive. Upper-echelon
converters provide such detailed representation that
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differences come down to personal preference, but I love the
Special Edition 2×6 I/O Module’s DA! I compared it against the
two favorite DAs I use most: a transparent model and a more
colored, but musical, model. Measured against my reference
@
DA, which is a high-headroom high-transparency design, it
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took some time for me to discern one converter from the
other, and even then, I wasn’t scoring 100% on blind
attempts. Versus my favorite musical converter, I was
genuinely disheartened by how much I preferred the Apogee.
My converter seemed to have extra low end while the
Symphony was smooth at the bottom. I believe the Symphony
had a touch more in the upper midrange, but I would describe
it as focused and clear rather than forward or strident. As a gut
reaction, I kept characterizing the Apogee as sweeter, but only
subtly sweet – like a Japanese dessert, never overly sweet like
some gas station plastic wrapped confection.
As an AD I found the Apogee on par with my reference
converter. So, I gave up trying to pick which was which. Since
I usually do not clip my AD, I didn’t test the Apogee that way,
but I did appreciate how occasional peaks were handled
gracefully with the SE – the unit does have Apogee’s soft limit
processes. While I could use these in a tracking situation, I have
other devices that I prefer for these tasks. Ultimately, I ended
up using the Apogee as my AD for the rest of the test time. I
particularly appreciated how Symphony provides reference
calibration choices that are not tweakable on my chosen AD.
Miscellaneous housekeeping before I have to go: the
touchscreen is slightly smaller than others but seemed to be
crisper and easier to read. The rotary control has heft and is
easy to use in the middle of a session. I found the
headphone amp to be very satisfying in quality and ability
to drive various impedances. A built-in cooling system
monitors the temperature inside the enclosure and can auto
power vent fans depending on user preferences. Firmware
updates require a Mac OSX machine. The tested unit has an
open card slot for expansion for one of the many various
cards available from Apogee.
I’m old enough to remember when Apogee’s UV-1000 Super
CD Mastering System and their AD-8000SE converters were
seemingly required gear for respectable mastering houses.
Then, Apogee converters seemed to be mostly used by
recording and mixing studios. Now they are back for
mastering types, and we should rejoice! Apogee’s claim that
the SE is their best sounding converter to date is not
unfounded. Though you might find a converter you like more
than this new Symphony, it would be for personal reasons. I
can’t find a single thing wrong with the sound quality of this
unit. Bravo to everyone who contributed to the research,
development, and implementation of this!
($1895 MSRP 2x6 SE I/O Module only, $2995 MSRP Pro Tools
| HD or Thunderbolt chassis; apogeedigital.com)
-Garrett Haines <www.treelady.com>
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On Stage Stands
CM01 Video Camera
/ Digital Recorder adapter
MM01 360° Ball-Joint mic mount
I’m a big fan of the On Stage CM01 Video Camera / Digital
Recorder Adapter, which allows me to use a mic stand as a
camera “tripod” when I visit studios to do interviews, or to
support a Zoom recorder for interviews or those oddball
remote sessions. A 5/8-inch socket fits onto a typical mic
stand, a ball-joint allows a wide range of positioning with
locking knob to tighten it down, and the 1/4-inch
thumbscrew fits right into my camera base. After our recent
review of the Tama Iron Works Studio mic stands [Tape Op
#126], my pal Billy Barnett [#66] from Gung Ho Studio in
Eugene, OR, dropped a line about another product he finds
helpful. The MM01 has male and female 5/8-inch threads (so
your mic clip mounts on it) and a ball-joint mount, like the
CM01, that allows you to pivot the mic into position with
360° rotation and 180° tilt.
“If you have heavy mics to hang at 90°, here is a $10
accessory that will make all the difference in the world. It’s
especially useful where the mount and cable are integrated
(like an old Neumann U 47), as you can spin the bracket
independently of the stand and mic mount to tighten or
loosen. This usually is more of an issue with large, old school,
roll-around Atlas studio booms, where spinning the boom
itself is quite difficult.”
We reviewed the Audio-Technica AT8459 swivel mount in
issue #120, which serves a similar purpose but with two ball
joints and wider range, but the MM01 is simpler and much
cheaper, and it’s easier to spin the male thread into the mic
mount than the AT version. I’d say buy both. It’s a simple
problem solver, and it’s worth having a couple of these
around! (both $10.55 MSRP; on-stage.com)
-LC & Billy Barnett <gunghostudio.com>
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Please Support Our Advertisers/Tape Op#128/57


Universal Audio
OX Amp Top Box
My experience with Universal Audio’s Ox Amp Top Box
definitely cleared up any misconceptions or doubts I’d had
about this device. More than just a reactive load box, power
attenuator, and guitar recording system with emulations, the
OX is much bigger than the sum of its parts. What UA means
by “reactive load box” is that when connected, your amp
actually sees OX as simply a speaker, thus maintaining all the
character of your tube amp while offering Universal Audio’s
Dynamic Speaker Modeling Technology. The maple striped
front face of the OX houses control knobs split into their
analog and modeling domains. Via its own built-in Wi-Fi
hotspot, the hardware communicates with the OX software
app, which offers an easy to navigate UI reminiscent of
existing UAD plug-ins. The back of the chassis offers balanced
stereo line/monitor outputs, S/PDIF outputs (RCA and
TOSLINK), a selectable ohm speaker output, and a dedicated
power connection. I wanted to find out how the OX fits into a
studio workflow, and what uses it may have other than just
providing rocking guitar tones!
To clarify, the OX application does not do any processing,
this happens with DSP in the physical OX Amp Top Box
hardware itself. The App is where all parameters are selected
that offer a slew of customizable, modeled combinations that
can be built into RIGs with a Mac or iOS device, then saved for
attitude from pretty much any source – albeit a very colored
sound. If pedals work well with your amp, then the same will
be true for the OX. When using the hardware without the app,
six RIGs can be saved to the OX and selected manually with
the RIG knob.
The beautiful thing about the app integrating with the
hardware is that you don’t lose anything. The presets you
create are stored. The OX saves so much time in the studio –
you get the processed signal from the OX Amp Top Box while
at the same time getting a mic’d amp signal in its tonal sweet
spot. The OX is a brilliant solution for recording guitars, even
if you own a solid mic selection and a beautiful room to record
in. One caveat, there are no Celestion Vintage 30 speaker
models, but there are three USB ports, and a footswitch, which
I sense will come into play with firmware updates. There is so
much to go through with the OX that I can’t possibly cover it
all here – there’s even an Easter egg triggered via a momentary
footswitch that turns the OX into a primitive looper? I highly
recommend sitting down with an OX if you can.
($1299 MSRP; uaudio.com)
-Kevin Friedrichsen <greyroom510.com>
Electro-Harmonix
Hum Debugger
Hum Eliminator pedal
You all know the scenario. You’re in the studio, the guitarist

om
is getting sounds, and even though they may have a great
easy recall later. App parameters that comprise a RIG setup
tone, as a recording engineer all you hear is the obnoxious
include three different channels of customizable, modeled
buzzing hum from their guitar, pedals, and amp. You pull all
microphones (two close mics one room mic), a speaker cabinet
the unused pedals out of the chain, swapping wall warts for 9-
emulation, and a master effect section. The room mic

.c
volt batteries, checking cables, and flipping the amp’s ground
modeling controls offer a damp setting that changes the live-
switch. Then you make the guitarist rotate, probably getting
ness of the room. The room mics can be placed (or spatially
less hum when the headstock points towards magnetic north.
configured) in the app, and the physical Room knob on the OX
But the hum is always still there, because that’s what single
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Amp Top Box controls the level of the room mics. Convenient.
The Amp Top Box benefits from the app’s appropriated suite
coil (and sometimes, humbucking) pickups generally do. I’ve
been using iZotope RX [Tape Op #123] to remove this hum
of UAD plug-ins, which include an EQ, an 1176 compressor, a
post tracking, but on sessions where I’m tracking to analog
stereo delay and a stereo plate reverb. Once plug-ins are
a
tape (and staying on it) software obviously doesn’t work.
configured in the app, they’re live as you are recording, which
Stompbox-based noise gates can help, but frequently they cut
will save you CPU processing. You do not have individual
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off held notes too quickly, are difficult to set up properly, and
outputs for the different mic models, so hard panning the
making them impossible to trust.
close mics into separate inputs can be an easy workaround. A
So, imagine my skepticism when guitarist A.G. Donnaloia
Cone Cry parameter in the app allows you to vary the speaker
brought in an Electro-Harmonix Hum Debugger pedal during a
model from “new” to “broken” which adds additional
@

Johnny Boyd session. If you assume this is a noise gate, you

harmonics to certain notes. All of this processing affects only
are wrong. After explaining the pedal to Jack Endino [Tape Op
ic

the balanced stereo line and S/PDIF outputs, while the

#13] he correctly deduced that the supplied 7.5 VAC power
attenuated guitar signal runs an all-analog signal path.
supply was the key; it lets the exact AC cycle (60 Hz in the US)
Keep in mind that the OX is to be used with tube
enter the pedal, from which I suppose an inverse image of the
amplifiers, not solid-state units. The maple striped facade of
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hum profile (or an EQ filter) is created in order to remove the

the enclosure sits atop amps beautifully, weighing in at 14
unwanted sound. Note that this means you’d never be able to
pounds. When playing an electric guitar and “diming” a
power this from a typical multi-unit pedal power supply or a
Fender Bassman, the OX surprised me – there was no hum!
battery. Besides the usual on/off footswitch, there’s a
The articulation was all there, and the OX’s below 3 ms
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Strong/Normal switch that in Strong mode removes both odd

latency was not noticeable. On bass the OX performed equally
and even harmonics and in Normal just removes odd
as well, although the app’s selection of cabinets isn’t as
harmonics of the hum.
useful as for guitar. I compared some of the speakers to real
We tried the pedal on the session that day, and initially I was
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life versions and the OX faired very well, however that’s not
blown away by the elimination of the single coil pickup hum.
how I approached this device. What matters to me is its
Clean tones seemed undisturbed, and the noise basically
impact in the mix and the song. Does it sound and feel good
disappeared, even on the lighter Normal setting. This was on a
to the client? Does it save time and improve my workflow?
jazz/standards-style session, and I was mic’ing A.G.’s small,
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On all these marks, the OX delivered in spades!

high-end boutique tube amp with a ribbon mic. I began to
The attenuator is stepped in five positions, and in practice
notice a lot of what I perceived as room tone, so I put an
was very accurate for landing near the sweet spots for different
acoustic baffle near the rear of the mic to reduce any reflections
amps I used: but what about other uses? Re-amping with the
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entering the backside. The sound was the same. I turned off the
OX is killer! Running drum machines and synthesizers with a
Hum Debugger, and the “room tone” went away. So be warned;
re-amp box allowed me to get all sorts of grit, ambience, and
58/Tape Op#128/Gear Reviews/(continued on page 60)
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Please Support Our Advertisers/Tape Op#128/59

 it does add a little latency or something that spatially mucks up the sound when playing with
very clean settings. We ended up removing the pedal and using RX later instead. I had gotten
excited and already ordered a new Hum Debugger online earlier that day, so now I wanted to
proceed warily. I had a feeling that on super rocking lead or fuzz guitar, that this pedal would
work better, and I was right. On a fun session, for a new project called Sunday State, Steve
Turner was playing bass. He’s really known for his awesome fuzz guitar work in Mudhoney, and
on one song it was decided to have Steve throw some wild soloing down. Immediately there
was a lot more hum than desired, and we were tracking exclusively to tape (and mixing in
mono!). I plugged in the Hum Debugger, boom – the hum was gone, and Steve’s tone stayed
the same as far as any of us could tell. Heck yeah, problem solved!
I’m glad I bought this pedal, and I’ll be keeping it in mind to try when needed. Like I said,
I’ll be wary of using it on cleaner guitar tones, and happy to try it on fuzzy lead sounds, but
in all cases I’ll be watching this pedal like a hawk – making sure it’s doing the job properly
and not messing up the tone. ($156.70 MSRP; www.ehx.com) -LC

Kludge Audio
510 Transwarmer
Digital processing has come a long way. Within the modern DAW there are a plethora of
tools that replicate our favorite real world classic gear, yet many engineers still reach for
actual analog equipment to achieve that special something. For me, when choosing an
analog process over the convenience of digital, it’s because I’m hearing the equipment
interact with the audio in a manner that plug-ins can’t yet achieve, in my opinion. When
mixing, the way a circuit absorbs and transfers the signal can lead to choices that would be
totally different without this interplay – in this way, a large part of what we hear are the
sound of input and output transformers. Not that long ago, nearly all audio equipment was
transformer coupled, so it was not unusual for signals to pass through several transformers –
even in a simple recording chain. This high count of transformers in the audio path would

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add to the sonic “syrup” that led to what many now associate with a classic sound.
The Kludge Audio 510 Transwarmer is an attempt to reclaim some classic character. Inside
this single-channel 500 Series module is a completely passive design consisting of one

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specifically tuned audio transformer, intended to recreate and magnify a coloration of several
transformers in the signal path by providing some mojo in a very cost-effective manner. There
are no knobs or meters on the front panel. You simply run signal through Transwarmer and
vary the level you send until you get the amount of saturation you are looking for. This means
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no recall when mixing! The only thing on the front panel is a termination switch. The left
position is for driving a 600 ohm input, while the right position engages a 600 ohm load
resistor on the output (for modern equipment with high impedance inputs). In practice, I
found that it’s best to just use your ears with the Transwarmer – if you like the sound of it
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one way or the other, then use it that way!
Running audio through outboard isn’t a new concept. The Transwarmer streamlines this idea
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in a convenient format with an effect that isn’t necessarily dramatic, but results in a signal
that is a bit softer in the highs, with a more controlled transient response and increased
overall RMS (Root-Mean-Square) energy. Simply patching this in after a preamp or compressor
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while tracking can certainly add a bit of flavor to your signal!

Kludge was nice enough to send me two units for review. Within minutes of unboxing them,
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I began running stems through the pair of Transwarmers. I loaded up a tracking session for
a record I produced in early 2018 – Strange Worlds/Fierce Gods by the heavy, progressive, post-
metal band Orphans Of Doom. Subtle saturation of this transformer seemed to round out the
kick drum and toughen the snare drum up in a pleasing way. Across an aggressive guitar bus,
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there was a beneficial softening to the tracks. In my experience, one of the magical things
about the sound of analog equipment is that I am able to crank up the volume with less
harshness. There is something very valuable about this when recording and mixing aggressive
rock, as I do. Inserting the Transwarmer after a mic preamp added a complexity to the sound
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while seeming to compress the signal a bit – this was really nice for tracking acoustic guitar.
I could also see this as useful for tracking other stringed instruments like upright bass, cello,
and violin. It may take a more refined ear to fully appreciate what Kludge is offering, but it
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certainly does what it claims.

The only thing I questioned while using the 510, was taking up a precious 500 Series rack
space with a passive unit. The upside though is that the Transwarmer requires no additional
current from your power supply, thus leaving more juice for power hungry 500 Series mic
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preamps. The Kludge Audio 510 Transwarmer is an inexpensive way to add some genuine
analog life to your tracks. It’s dead simple to use, and at $249 per channel is a solid addition
to any 500 Series rack. ($249 street; kludgeaudio.com)
-Justin Mantooth <justinmantooth.com>
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60/Tape Op#128/Gear Reviews/

 Output
Arcade loop synthesizer plug-in
Arcade is a new cloud-based software instrument from Output that offers an ever-
expanding subscription-based loop synthesizer, while also allowing you to use your own
loops. The plug-in can be used with most DAWs (AU, VST, or AAX), and is compatible with
Mac OS X 10.9 and up, or Windows 7 and up (64-bit). Install was pretty painless, and I was
up and running quickly. The user interface is clean, uncluttered, and visually appealing with
a futuristic look. I found the program to be very intuitive and it was easy to find whatever
I was looking for. Arcade’s browser groups the content into Lines (which is akin to a master
library), Kits (much like presets in a library), and Loops (building blocks for all the kits). You
can audition the audio in your project’s tempo and key before adding to your session, or use
the search window to search based on keywords, etc.
As Arcade is cloud-based, you don’t have to worry about additional hard drive space for
storing every sample that’s available – you just download what you want. Downloaded
samples are then available locally, and accessible in Offline mode whereby streaming is not
required. Like other cloud-based apps, Arcade is a subscription service. For $10 a month you
are given access to all of the sound packs in Arcade, which, as of my writing, numbers 19.
That breaks down into over 20,000 loops and thousands of kits. There are new additions daily
available via the Arcade plug-in, and they are currently offering a free 100-day free trial, so
it’s a no brainer to download the app and give it a test drive. I personally think the
subscription rate is a bargain! For composers under a deadline and limited budget, Arcade is
like a loop synthesizer and library that you can easily mold to create quick original
compositions.
Set up is quick, and though I was able to get rolling without referring to the manual,
Output recommends reviewing the Quick Start Guide and checking out their Walkthrough
video online – these will help you get the most out of Arcade. Each kit is made up of 15

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loops laid across the keyboard with the white keys dedicated to playing loops while the black
keys allow you to modify the loops. You engage sliders (mod wheel, etc.) to alter the
character of the loops. Loop editing functions can be accessed at the bottom of the white
key that each loop is assigned to. Here you can adjust the start and end of the loop,

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crossfade, volume, pan, pitch, direction, and filter. This window also allows you to set the
level of your FX sends to either pre or post mode. In the Advanced tab you will find the
original key and tempo of the loop. The ability to sync to tempo and select the key of loops il
is a huge upside. I liked that I could easily match the key of my project or choose a relative
key for some interesting harmonic blends.
Arcade goes further by using key switches to allow you to play loops in various pitches on
the fly. I was able to play a static synth note and create a cool melodic line just by using
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the key switches, plus the mini keyboard icon in the upper right corner of the window
illustrates it for you in real time – so flexible! This feature alone really helped make these
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loops work with my musical ideas. I usually find loop-based products to be so restrictive,
that I often feel I’m working my compositions around them, but not so with Arcade.
There is a macro overview page where you can edit parameters associated with each kit’s
macros. These vary depending on the kit. For example, one kit had Space, Parallel Dirt, Filter,
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and Pump as controllable macros. You can assign these macros to MIDI controllers or just
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use your mouse to change up the sound. The macro parameters can be edited in more detail
by clicking the icon under the mixer icon to the left of the full keyboard.
The mixer page has a channel strip for each loop with two sends, along with pan, volume,
and solo. Effects available include chorus, compressor, multi tap delay, stereo delay,
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distortion, EQ, filter, limiter, lo-fi, phaser, and reverb. A click on the wave icon provides an
overview of modulation parameters, which can be adjusted per assigned parameter. I found
the editable parameters to be fairly standard, while offering a little more depth than other
plug-ins of this variety.
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The basic menu has adjustments for speed (1/2, x1, x2), legato (off, on), input quantize
(1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, off) – which I found really tightens things up when playing a bunch
of loops. There is a kit voice limit (adjustable from 6 to 15), which means that you can assign
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15 loops to one instance. The plug-in is not multitimbral in your DAW, but that just means
you load up another instance for an additional 15 loops. You can also manage your account
settings here under the Account tab.
The various Factory kits in Arcade can be customized to fit your needs. Unlike many other
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loop-oriented products, you can alter Arcade’s loops in real time while the loops are playable
and mapped out across the software interface’s keyboard. As a sidebar to Arcade’s content,
I loved that you can use your own loops in Arcade by simply dragging and dropping them
within the plug-in. Additionally, I could modify my own imported with Arcade’s effects and
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creative modifiers. It is really as easy as dragging and dropping – big props to Arcade!

Gear Reviews/(continued on page 62)/Tape Op#128/61

 Full disclosure – I’m not usually a fan of loop-based plug-
ins for things other than drums/percussion, but Arcade has
changed my mind. This is a great tool to add additional color
to your projects while offering a lot of content – I found tons
of inspiring stuff to play with, from subtle to over the top
(in a good way). This is more than just a tool for those
making EDM styles. I found content here that works for
quirky indie scores, world music, high impact trailers,
ambient styles, and more. A lot of quality sound design is
housed in this library. This is also a great instrument to
create a quick vibe that you could build on with other multi-
sample instruments. Using their Pocket Band kit I was able
to lay the groundwork for a quick funk mock-up that I added
guitar, horns, and a few other lines to.
Plenty of flexibility is on hand to customize, and Arcade
has more features than I could possibly unpack within the
scope of this review. But the ability to tweak all of the
loops on the fly, coupled with the unique way that Arcade
allows me to assemble sometimes bizarre combinations,
makes it a definite keeper for me. It’s a very simply laid out
and creative plug-in – which is great when I’m working
against a deadline. The patches are very well programmed
and recorded, and I can see myself using Arcade with a
variety of projects.
($10 per/month; output.com)
-Will Severin <www.willseverin.com>
Looptrotter
Emperor 500 Series limiter
A few months ago, I was lucky enough to travel to
Copenhagen to record an LP for the awesome band Town
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Portal. It was easily the best audio experience of my life, and,
as a bonus, our basic tracks sounded fantastic. When I sat
down at home to mix, all I wanted to do was “big” things
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up a bit. Parallel compression seemed like a good way to
increase the drums’ density and size without taking away any
transient snap or messing up my mix. So, once I got the mix
going, I took a quick detour to audition two or three parallel
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drum chains. This turned into a few hours of printing more
chains to compare, then turned into me borrowing gear from
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the studio next door to print a few more, then turned into
me sending those tests to two friends who ran my drums
through a dozen more setups, and sent files back. This was
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ridiculous, yes, but super educational. One takeaway was
that you can’t always predict how a parallel chain will sound
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combined with the original signal, and in fact lots of stuff
that sounded cool on its own didn’t work so well blended.
Okay, set all that aside for a bit. Looptrotter Audio
Engineering is a cool Polish company that’s been on my radar
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for a year. They make a handful of novel compressors and
saturators – all very bright yellow. The Emperor is an aggressive,
fast FET limiter with only a few controls; an Input level knob,
Sidechain low-pass and high-pass buttons, plus a button that
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toggles between Fast, Med, and Slow speeds. That’s it! There’s
a 2 rack space version with big VU meters and stereo linking,
and also a 500 Series version with LED metering and no linking.
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I reviewed a pair of the 500 Series units.
The Emperor’s three compression controls only take a few
minutes to understand, but they combine to offer a lot of
options. The Input knob causes more compression and
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saturation. The speed buttons change both attack and
release times: Fast swallows transients and rebounds
immediately, Med feels like a middle-ground Universal Audio
1176-style setting, and Slow lets lots of transient through
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while pumping a bit as it recovers. The sidechain buttons
change the signal that the compressor’s detector circuit
62/Tape Op#128/Gear Reviews/
hears: one reduces low frequencies, and the other increases
high frequencies. You don’t hear these filters directly –
they’re only used by the compressor’s detection circuit – but
they can really change the compression character,
particularly on an aggressive compressor like this.
There are three other controls on the front panel that I
haven’t mentioned: a bypass button (labeled Process) plus
Wet and Dry output knobs. Unlike some other units, Bypass
really means bypass – the level controls aren’t active, so it’s
easy to match level between your original signal and the
processed one. I find this really important when auditioning
compressors and EQs, otherwise it’s too easy to prefer
whichever signal is louder. Separate Wet/Dry knobs make it
fast and easy to try different parallel ratios, or to listen to
only the wet signal while you’re fine-tuning sounds. Which
finally brings us back to my extended introduction: parallel
signals often sound pretty different on their own than when
blended in. With the Emperor it’s easy to think about both at
once. In my testing I came back to this over and over again.
Sonically I like the Emperor a lot, and its controls are
immediate and gratifying. An obvious use for a compressor
like this is for kick and snare drums. You can do “turbo”
parallel processing in one unit, smacking and shaping
attacks then blending for aggressive attack. You can high-
pass the sidechain on a kick drum to let the attack drive the
compressor rather than all the low end energy. The Slow
setting lets a lot of transient pop through but levels out hits
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and brings up sustain. When used gently it makes kick
drums bigger and more even, plus does a nice thing to
snares too – a different shape than a Universal Audio 1176
or an Empirical Labs EL8 Distressor [Tape Op #32] at a 4:1
ratio. If you set the Emperor’s speed to Fast while driving
the input hard, you can blend just a little wet signal in for
giant kick drums, snares, and toms. I also compared the
Emperor to one of my favorite compressors for kick and snare
drum, the Tonelux TX5C – another 500 Series compressor
with a tilt-able sidechain and wet/dry blend. The Tonelux is
bright and creates a distinctive “pop” while the Looptrotter
is tonally darker and less snappy – offering a unique
character of its own.
Strapped across an entire drum bus, it’s easy to
dramatically change drum sounds. The low shelf button
keeps the kick drum from creating pumpy over-compression;
Slow mode lets lots of drum attack through and provides
movement that works on its own or blends well in parallel;
Fast mode crushes drums and sounds cool in parallel. On
vocals, the Emperor’s distortion character is flattering, and
again, a lot of gain with Fast mode blended to taste will
thicken and even out vocals so there’s less word-by-word
fader riding needed, but with far fewer weird artifacts on
hard glottal sounds. For vocals I liked both sidechain buttons
engaged – the low shelf kept plosives from triggering weird
compression, and the high shelf provided useful sibilance
ducking. (That’s pretty much how de-essers work).
I like LED meters on fast compressors like this – not unlike
a Distressor or an FMR Audio RNC 1773 [#13]. But when
you’re using the Emperor for saturation it’s easy to let the
meter make you feel bad about how hard you’re driving the
input levels. Whatever! Crush! By the way, the RNC has a
digital sidechain, and the Distressor has an analog sidechain
with digitally controlled functionality. The Emperor feels
similar but Looptrotter tells me the sidechain is all analog.
There is a tiny Arduino chip on the PCB; the front panel
controls are digital and the Arduino brokers settings between
the panel and the analog circuit. This is arguably good for
recall and unit-to-unit consistency.
 I have a few minor gripes. Like every 500 Series unit, the little knobs are little. So, they’re
hard to match and hard to recall. The little buttons are little too, and they’re sensitive so it’s
easy to press one by brushing against it. And finally, at least one of my units didn’t always
remember its button settings when it powered up – so keep an eye on that between mix days.
But these are minor complaints. The Emperors are cool. They’re a clever, easy to use take on
FET compression and color, they ask to be used aggressively, and I don’t know of another
compressor with this set of controls. Looptrotter’s YouTube channel has genuinely useful,
hype-free demo videos. Spend some time watching them and you’ll get a good idea of what
these units do. (500 series $529 street, Stereo rack unit $2660 street; looptrotter.com)
-Scott Evans <antisleep.com>

Apple
Lightning to USB Camera Adapter
I recently got a new iPad and my CME Xkey mobile USB MIDI keyboard [Tape Op #115]
wouldn’t work properly with it. It would function perfectly for a few minutes, but would
then give me a, “This accessory is not supported by this iPad” message, forcing me to have
to unplug it and plug it back in. I contacted CME support, and they got back to me
promptly and told me the problem was probably in the third party USB to Lightning adapter
that had shipped with the CME originally, and that Apple had discontinued support for any
third party adapters with the new version of their iOS. They suggested I buy the new Apple
connector, and that it would probably work, so I did and the keyboard now works perfectly
with the new connector. Meanwhile, the old connector still works fine with my old iPad, but
I’ll likely send it to the electronic recycler, and it will hopefully not end up somewhere in
the ocean. The new connector is 4.75 inches long, whereas the older one is 6.5 inches long.
The new one has a squarish female USB connector, while the old one had a rounded
connector. They are both white. Asides from these few differences, they seem to be pretty

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much the same, except for some internal digital identifier that tells Apple’s iOS to not work
with the older one. Just in case you’re counting, at 4.5 inches this cable costs about $6.50
per inch. It came packaged in a recyclable cardboard box, with two recyclable instruction
manuals and a nonrecyclable plastic hang tag. Do I need to state the obvious here? Shame

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on you, Apple. ($29; www.apple.com) -JB
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Gear Reviews/(Fin.)/Tape Op#128/63

 Tape Op is Made
Possible by our
advertisers.
PUT YOUR AD
ON THIS PAGE:
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64/Tape Op#128/Put your ad on this page: https://www.tapeop.com/mediakit/

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The Panoramic House is the ultimate VRBO for musicians. A live-in residential studio in West Marin, CA
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overlooking the Pacific Ocean with API & Neve consoles, 2” tape, Pro Tools HD, and an echo chamber.
Each room of the house is filled with musical instruments except for the gourmet kitchen with a Wolf range.
Plenty of room and solitude to get into a creative space but only 30 minutes from San Francisco.
Rates start at $350 a day.
ju

panoramic-house.com • john@onefinmanagement.com • 916-444-5241

Please Support Our Advertisers/Tape Op#128/65
 Tough Love
by Larry Crane

Is there a fine line between naïve encouragement and pessimistic, dour warnings of
possible failure? (i.e. “Just do it! DIY!” vs. “Give up. It’s impossible.”)
Over twenty years ago I was making plans for my first true commercial recording space, what became Jackpot! Recording
Studio. My friends (“The Barn,” Tape Op #4) had previously met Dan Alexander, a noted studio owner, gear broker, and musician
from the San Francisco Bay Area. He had worked out a trade with them, bartering some of his used recording equipment for their
floor refinishing services. They recommended I call Dan and ask for advice about tape decks. Elliott Smith (also in Tape Op #4)
and I had decided that a 2-inch, 16-track tape deck was on the Jackpot! wish list. So, I called Dan and the conversation went
something like this:

LC: “Dan, Dave Costanza told me to call you. I’m looking for a 16-track tape deck. I’m trying to decide if an MCI JH-16 would
be a good fit.”
DA: “Why? What do you know about keeping one of those running? Do you have any experience with that sort of equipment?”
LC: “Not really. I’ve been running a Tascam 38 1/2-inch, 8-track for a few years.”
DA: “Those are toy tape decks. An MCI requires a lot of maintenance. Do you know how to calibrate a professional tape deck?”
LC: “No, but I’m sure I could learn.”
DA: “Ha. Okay, sure. Whatever. I don’t have any of those for sale anyway. Good luck.”

Initially I was taken aback. Where were Dan’s words of

encouragement? I thought he’d be proud of me wanting to

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join the studio owners club. But I soon got over the sting
and went on to buy a very temperamental MCI tape deck.
Soon I was stockpiling extra parts (see the Letters section,

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this issue). I also ordered a custom tape counter, bought
an MRL calibration tape, hired an experienced local tech,
and eventually learned how to repair this certain MCI very
intimately. Years later I moved over to Otari tape decks,
which are usually less troublesome, thankfully. It took
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decades of learning, and I’m still amazed that I remember
all the little tweaks one needs to know about working on
a
tape and keeping a deck running.
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I feel conflicted when I advise

musicians or novice recordists on what
equipment to buy. In most cases recommending a
medium budget computer interface and a few decent,
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affordable microphones gets me off the hook. In other

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conversations I find myself forcing the person to question

whether they really should take on buying a console or tape
deck. “Are you even capable of wiring that up?” “You know
you’ll have to buy an MRL tape and learn how to calibrate
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the deck.” More and more I see why Dan Alexander issued
words of caution to me, and I appreciate the irony that I’m
basically saying the same exact things to younger
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engineers now. I don’t wish for others to take the long,

difficult journey I went through; at least not all of it! But
the learning curve and persistence were worth it.
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Maybe it’s not so fine of a line. We all need to find our

own path, but sometimes we could pick a better route. r
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<danalexanderaudio.com>
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66/Tape Op#128/End Rant/

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 The Creative Music Recording Magazine

Extra Bonus
Articles!

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Eric Bachmann
Crooked Fingers, Archers of Loaf il
“Boogie”Bob Baldori
Chrck Berry, The Woolies, Lansing Sound
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Bonus No. 128

Dec/Jan 2018/19
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 Eric Bachmann
Can’t be Faked

by Ryan Sommer
photos
by Jeremy Lange

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Eric Bachmann started recording in the late
‘80s and early ‘90s with the indie heroes,
Archers of Loaf. The group had a unique

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sound that is still heavily cited today.
However it was far from a clean or heavily
“produced” feel, which is why listening to his il
latest LP, Eric Bachmann, on Merge Records
might shock fans of his early material. A
lush, intimate record (and on many critic’s
a
Top Ten lists by year’s end) that was written
on piano, Bachmann delivered nine songs
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that are undoubtedly at the top of his craft,

echoing influences like Leonard Cohen and Bob
Dylan, as well as utilizing female backing
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vocals that recall a vintage R&B vibe.

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I chatted with Eric while he was in Athens,

Georgia, working on his 2018 release,
no recover. For those of us who have been
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lifelong fans throughout his various

projects (Archers of Loaf, Barry Black,
Crooked Fingers, and solo), Eric remains an
anchor. Despite going through the wringer
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of the music industry, he remains unjaded

and is a constant fan of music. As The
National’s Matt Berninger put it, in his
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wonderful liner notes for Merge’s LP release

of Crooked Fingers’ Bring on the Snakes,
Eric “understands how seriously
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people take rock music.”

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70/Tape Op#128/Mr. Bachmann/

How are you approaching the new When you were making music with Yeah, the “there are no rules” vibe certainly was
record?
The equipment is a Ramirez nylon string [guitar], a
[Shure] SM81 [mic], an AKG 414 [mic] (at the 12th
fret) through a [Rupert] Neve [Designs] 5012 preamp, Yeah, absolutely. I’ve always been a big fan of Harry
Neumann TLM 103 through a BAE 1073 [preamp], and Nilsson, Lee Hazlewood, Glen Campbell, and ‘60s and
an Apogee Quartet [interface]. I’m renting a friend’s ‘70s baritones. I would say since Vee Vee [the second
house right now, and the room isn’t treated or Archers of Loaf album, from ‘96] on I knew I could do
anything, so I close mic and go in dry with the good
equipment. Dry as a bone going in ensures that I play
it well. I will add compression, post fader, for adding
backing and vocal tracks later, but not to tape. When
I need people, I’ll go to them and bring my mics, pres,
and interface. I’m not sure where I’m going to mix this
one yet, because I like to get it outside of the
computer through proper outboard gear.
I assume you are happy in both the
analog and digital realms?
The piano and drums I have done in the past have to go
to tape. I like those to hit tape a little harder than
you are supposed to. This is an acoustic record, so it’s
not an issue. Even though there are plug-ins for it
these days, it just can’t be faked. Or at least I’m not
willing to compromise.
Did you complete the instrumentation
for these songs in advance?
Usually I’m pretty organized, but with this I don’t have
arrangements. I’m going to make it an acoustic-based
record, with some cool textural sounds.
Walk me through a typical creation.
I have a Moog Little Phatty [synthesizer] that I use
instead of an electric bass. I might also use it for
textural pads. Matthew Nelson, who has played with
me on other solo records, will play guitar, and also Eric
Johnson, the old Archers guitarist, will come play on
some, which is weird because this is not loud rock
music. These are meant to be sparse arrangements, so
there will be layers for mood and atmosphere. Both
Matt and Eric are great at that sort of thing – I’m
excited to hear what they do. I’ll give them the
acoustic guitar part with a proper vocal take [to play
to]. Those will be exactly like I need them in order to
tell the mixing engineer where to focus. I feel that
when you mix, if you have too much shit it gets
problematic. Mixing is about what the focus is, so for
pop it’s about the vocal. For this kind of folk music,
us
it’s about the guitar and the vocal. Buried vocals
might sound more urgent, and that was the sort of
thing that worked in the Archers of Loaf, but that’s a
different thing than what I am doing here.
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The arrangements on Eric Bachmann
last year are wonderful. Were those
fleshed out with players while
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recording?
No. I went in with Jeremy Wheatley on drums, and we
had rehearsed. We did it at Echo Mountain
[Recording] in Asheville, North Carolina, and Jim
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Georgeson engineered. We hit 2-inch tape for the
drums and piano, and I took that home in Pro Tools
and added guitar. All the doo-wop vocals were
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arranged in advance, and I had purposefully left space
for them when they sang.
Archers of Loaf in the ‘90s, did you imparted early. I might use more textural things, as
know you had this kind of well as found sounds on the upcoming record.
singer/songwriter in you? What do you think of when people say
singing can be a bit like acting? That
if you put on a persona it may come
through cleaner and more
confident?
it. I knew it was a voice that I had, and in the Archers David Bowie was the master of that. Springsteen as well.
I wasn’t really using it. I’ll admit that I was afraid to Some people can become narrators, or the actual
do it in the ‘90s. I was afraid to not be in a “cool” rock people they are singing about. I’m hesitant to use the
band, but I loved performing. I couldn’t have come word actor, because then it sounds like you aren’t
out of the gate with a song like “Mercy,” and I didn’t being sincere or authentic. The least authentic person
have the capacity to write a song like that for a while. in the world was probably Bob Dylan, for his era, but
I was fitting in with my friends, which is a fine thing it didn’t matter because he wrote so god damn well.
to do for a while. Eric Johnson and I had a great time He wasn’t a hobo on the train, he was a college boy
creating textures with guitars in the Archers of Loaf; from Minnesota. But he was also a badass, so it didn’t
and Matt [Gentling, bass] and Mark [Price, drums] matter.
created a great bed for us to do it. They were such a How did those Barry Black records come
great rhythm section, and the reason why we sounded about?
the way we did on top of it was because Matt wasn’t That was me and Caleb Southern. Caleb was in Durham,
playing the root [notes]. He was playing the whole North Carolina. He’s a brilliant guy. We were living
chord without the roots. That combination is called together and just started noodling around. He started
chemistry, and that’s something that the Archers had; a studio in Hillsboro, [NC], so we tracked [Barry Black]
and now that is over, for the most part. We might do there. The second [Tragic Animal Stories] was with Bob
om
something, but it’s been difficult to find again. That’s Weston [Tape Op #18] in Charlotte, [NC], and that was
mainly my fault, because I’m always writing new more orchestrated. Caleb and I would bring in local
songs and not sticking around with the same people. musicians and have them play trombone or whatever.
.c
I’ve learned I’ll have a certain amount of control, but We had guys in from The Sex Police and Blue Green
not absolute, and I have to embrace that and let that Gods. I ended up really liking that. I wrote a lot of
guide. Let it take me where it will. string parts for those, which was a lot of work. But
Are there records that inspired you as a il now that could be easier with things like [Avid’s]
solo singer/songwriter? Sibelius software.
I am definitely a fan of [Bruce] Springsteen and [Leonard] What’s that?
Cohen. Lyrically, Cohen was the man; especially the first It’s arrangement software. Things that used to take me
a
record [Songs of Leonard Cohen]. Around ’96, I think it a whole day to do, now I can do them in about an
was You? Me? Us? – the Richard Thompson record. Also hour. I can play notes using MIDI, but it’s not always
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a lot of Townes Van Zandt and Bob Dylan. A lot of those the most accurate. What I do is drag the notes with a
records aren’t sonic marvels. People criticized Van mouse. It is so much easier than the old pencil, and
Zandt’s production for how square it was, but it didn’t having to erase mistakes.
matter because he was such a good songwriter. Any live Did you pick up techniques from other
@
recording of his, where it is just him in a room with a engineers during the Archers of Loaf
days?
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guitar, works because that’s how it was designed. One
record that had a huge influence on me for its I would pick it up through Caleb Southern. He was very
production was Caetano Veloso’s Transa, as well as Os meticulous, and he would let me engineer some.
Mutantes and Gal Costa. Those records are just so free, However, I don’t really view myself as an engineer. I
and there is an energy to everything, even when guitars if need to “produce” a record, like when working with
might be a little thin. I was a saxophone major at Azure Ray, I’ll get Andy Lemaster or Mike Mogis [Tape
Appalachian State [University] in ‘88 and ‘89, and my Op #51] to help, because they know their rooms, they
teacher gave me Joni Mitchell’s Blue and Transa by know their consoles, and they know how to fix
Veloso. Outside of school I was more into Television and something if it breaks. I get gain structure, and how
Sonic Youth, so I’ll admit I didn’t come back to it until to patch together a compressor, but I’m not the
later, but then I really fell in love with Gal Costa. All quickest at it. The biggest thing I can bring to
that speaks to the fact that a big personality is always recording is that I know how to play a lot of
going to shine. You could record Nina Simone on a instruments. I can also arrange strings. If someone
RadioShack microcassette and it would be cooler than needs a piano part, I can do it. I’m self-engineering
all the fanciest gear and [someone with] no personality. right now because I don’t want someone over my
It can be hard, if you are an artist with humility, to shoulder, going, “Can you hurry up?” [laughs] When
convince yourself to do that. I’m doing it by myself, I can be more meticulous. The
I think the Brazilian influence speaks to thing I’ve learned is that everyone needs to be
why you approached instrumentation meticulous. Even when you are working with really
on the Barry Black records the way competent engineers, the reason they are good at it
you did. Mr. Bachmann/(continued on page 72)/Tape Op#128/71

is because they take their fucking time. Nobody should
be fast. Playing engineer while performing is a
motherfucker. It takes me so long to do it. I don’t like
to comp much. I view having five or six dry takes of
the same song all the way through as insurance, in case
something gets messed up later. I recorded To the
Races [his second solo album] in the Outer Banks
[North Carolina] in a hotel room. Four mics in a noisy
room. I was there for seven days, and I could only
record for two of them because it was so god damn
windy! It was January in the Outer Banks; the stupidest
thing I’ve ever done. You get this romantic idea, and
then it’s just a technical nightmare.
What is that bass sound on the Crooked
Fingers’ Bring on the Snakes record?
us
Like on the “The Rotting Strip”?
For the most part, I’m pretty good at not letting things
get in the way, or not being married to an idea or a
sound. With Bring on the Snakes, I recorded with Brian
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Paulson [Tape Op #78] and I had an octave pedal dialed
a full octave below. So it’s an EBow on a guitar run
through that. It’s basically the E string a whole octave
to
down, which made it a bass. That’s the kind of ideas
that Paulson is great at. I’d love to work with him
again. It was done a lot like this current record, where
I just came in with chords and words, and we expanded
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it in his basement without any preconceived ideas
about what we were going to do. I feel like the best
records can be three sounds that are perfect. I mean on
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“Swordfishtrombone,” that Tom Waits song is just an
upright bass, a marimba, and his voice; and it is perfect.
72/Tape Op#128/Mr. Bachmann/(Fin.)
with DeVotchKa at the time. Elin could play the
nyckelharpa, a Swedish folk instrument, and she could
play the violin really well. She was great. Barton Carroll
played on a lot of the early Crooked Fingers projects.
Brian Causey, the owner of Warm Electronic Recordings;
Dov Friedman, the drummer on all the early sessions; and
Jo Jameson, who is now a police officer but played bass;
they are friends [of mine]. I still know them and talk to
them. We play shows together, even if they are in
different bands now. It’s a great community of people.
Another component is simple economics. I would still
love to be able to fly people out from New York to Athens,
but it’s expensive. Miranda Brown used to sing on all the
records, and I’d love to still have her do it, but she lives
in Massachusetts. Every music city has a mountain of
people that are great to hang out with, so you find those
people and things just happen. I’ve become good friends
with people, and they are there ten to fifteen years later.
Or they come back and they find you.
Is it important that someone who plays
in a recording setting for a record also
gels live?
I’ve had people that have played for records where it just
could never work out on the road. Records are so
permanent. I got Jon Rauhouse to play pedal steel on
my last record. I’d love to have him join me on tour,
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but he’s used to touring with Neko Case. I can’t afford
to pay him! We made a record together, so we should
do more touring; I’d love to do that. Digital was a
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saving grace for us, because I sent him the tracks as
Pro Tools files in Google Drive.
You also did the instrumental record
On the first and third Crooked Fingers records [Crooked
il [Eric Bachmann and Jon Rauhouse]
Fingers, Red Devil Dawn] there are a lot of strings, but if with him from last year.
you are recording a cello, a viola, and two violins… Merge Records were kind enough to put that in their
that’s one thing. It might sound busy; but if you just do online store, but I put out that album [as Telephant
a guitar and a rhythm track, and you leave all that
a
Records]. It’s a little thing, and I might put out more.
midrange to be filled in an appropriate way, it’s not a When you make music across the amount of genres that
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complicated mix. On that record there is me playing I have now… when you count the Barry Black records,
guitar and singing, there are some backup vocals, and the acoustic releases, and the band [Archers of Loaf];
then there are electronic found sounds that Brian it just confuses people. My thing is navigating how to
Paulson was bringing. He’d find another recording, from find the right audience for the material.
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another project, and destroy it through a bandpass What career advice would you give today’s
filter, maybe an MF-101 Low Pass Filter, and make a
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aspiring singer/songwriter?
texture out of it. Then there is bass; either a Moog or Streaming, the internet, and living room shows; all that
the detuned EBow. That’s all there was. We recorded has made my life financially better. It is always a
that on [Sony Pro] Vegas, and each song was eight to struggle in some of the same old ways, but it’s better.
twelve tracks. Andy Baker has mixed most of my Being an introvert, I was reticent to do the living room
records. He used to live in Athens, now he lives in shows at first. Then Josh Modell [The A.V. Club editor]
Taiwan, and he’s great at mixing. He mixed the self- introduced me to Bob Andrews, who runs Undertow
titled album. Martin Feveyear [Tape Op #23] mixed
[Music Collective]. For a small act like me, I’ve got to
[Crooked Fingers’] Dignity and Shame. let a booking agent know six months in advance to get
You had different musicians play the right rooms. With the living room shows I can give
with you in Crooked Fingers, and I’ve them two months, and I get more leeway to get the
seen different talented multi- dates that I want. I can travel when I want to travel,
instrumentalists on your shows. and I don’t have to have a record out. All that is better
Where do you find these people? for guys like me. It’s also a great environment, which I
A lot of it comes out of where I live. Elin Palmer, who played learned once I started. I can hear a pin drop, and
out with me in Crooked Fingers around 2008-09, was everyone that is there is there to see me. After I get
from Denver and was recommended by DeVotchKa. this new record out, I may bring a recording rig to one
Crooked Fingers did some shows with them. Tom or two of those! Get someone to record it properly. r
Hagerman, DeVotchKa’s violinist, and I had been doing a
<ericbachmann.com>
bunch together, but he couldn’t tour because he was out
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“Boogie” Bob Baldori of Lansing Sound

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Then and Now Musician, songwriter, producer, and entertainment lawyer “Boogie” Bob Baldori has performed
everywhere from Moscow to the Midwest for the past 40 years, and has called Lansing, Michigan home
for most of that time. In 1964, when he was in his teens, he started a garage rock band called The
nm

Woolies with his brother, Jeff Baldori. The band went on to score a hit in 1966, with their cover of Bo

by Jason Hatfield Diddley’s “Who Do You Love,” which they recorded with Lou Adler in Hollywood at United Western
Recorders. They backed legendary blues and rock musicians on tour, including Chuck Berry, Bo
Diddley, Muddy Waters, Little Richard, and John Lee Hooker. The Woolies went on to record three
to

albums, on which Baldori not only wrote the songs, played piano, harmonica, organ, electric piano, and
sang lead vocals, but also engineered and produced. Baldori has produced over 200 albums,
including two for Chuck Berry. Recently, Bob wrote and produced the musicals I’m Almost Famous
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and Boogie Stomp, and is producing a documentary also called Boogie Stomp. Bob was kind enough
to sit down with me in the control room of his Okemos, Michigan recording studio, Lansing Sound, to
chat about his career.
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Mr. Baldori/(continued on page 74)/Tape Op#128/73

 producing, writing, arranging, and performing. It’s so
the-woolies+chuck-berry-chicago-early70s
complex now that you can’t do everything well. I come
in here and try to keep the focus on the music and the
performances. For example, we just cut 13 songs, and
we’re operating at such a high and difficult
performance level that I can’t be in here thinking
about mic’ing and technology. Even when you try to
avoid it, technology to me is a distraction. It distracts
from what I think is most important: the music and the
performances. Once I get the tracks cut the way I like,
and I’m satisfied with the performance, I want to turn
it all over to an expert who I trust, like Mark [Stebbeds,
engineer/producer]. He’s the one that makes all those
How did you get started playing and When you were starting out recording, decisions about outboard gear. He gets a rough mix,
recording music? was it 2-track, or 4-track? sends it to me, and then we tweak it, both based on
I’ve been into music all my life. I started when I was At that time, 4-track was considered state of the art. the sound and the overall relationship of the voices
three or so, pushing the pedals on my grandfather’s Groups like The Beatles and the Beach and the instruments in the mix. He used to work at
player piano and listening to boogie-woogie. Later I Boys were starting to use the studio United Western [in L.A.], but now he’s got his own
got a little recording business going when I was in creatively, as well as overdubbing lots setup where he does all his mixing.
high school. After I got up here [Lansing, Michigan], of different parts. Were you doing the Can you talk about the musicals you’ve
when I was in high school, we started The Woolies. same kind of thing? written, produced and recorded?
And after we ended up in Hollywood recording “Who We were recording live, but there were ways to record I’ve been doing that since I was in college. I started out
Do You Love” with Lou Adler, I came back here and I several of the instruments on one track and then doing The Threepenny Opera with a terrific director at
wanted to keep recording. Through coincidence, I overdub the voices on another, so we took advantage MSU [Michigan State University]. I wrote a musical
ended up in an apartment in Lansing and opened a of that technology at the time. called I’m Almost Famous that played first here in
Lansing, then around the Midwest, and later in New

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little studio. I’ve had this studio [Lansing Sound] forWhen The Woolies had a hit with “Who
40 years, and we’ve made over 200 albums here. Do You Love,” did you go out on York and overseas. More recently I wrote play called
Was there a different location before package tours, or as openers or Boogie Stomp, which is what we’ve been recording
this? headliners? lately. We’ve performed it all over the world. We made

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There was. The first one was in South Lansing. Then I All of them. We had several booking agents here in a documentary film with the same title, and we’re just
moved to Okemos [Michigan] and operated a studio at Michigan. The William Morris Agency booked us on the now mixing the companion album.
Hamilton Road for a couple of years. I built this place Chuck Berry dates. There were many tours where we’d Who’s the other piano player on that?
be playing five to eight dates in two weeks with Chuck. Arthur [Migliazza], my partner, who I’ve been doing all
in the early ‘70s.
What have you recorded and produced So, you guys would play as his backing
il the shows with. It’s American piano music.
here? band and do a Woolies set? Any thoughts you’d like to share about
I recorded my group. We had a lot of success with Danny Yeah, sometimes. We’d open sometimes; or we’d just be recording and producing?
a
Hernandez and The Ones – he’s a piece of Lansing on the bill with Little Richard, or whomever. My approach to it is to try to do everything live and at
history. We recorded his song “You Haven’t Seen My You got to know Chuck Berry, Little the same time. I’m old school. I cut an album here
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Love” here. Eventually Motown [Records] put out Richard, Muddy Waters, and John Lee with R.C. Finnigan in two days. We wrote, arranged,
Danny’s records, which we originally produced at Hooker? recorded, and mixed these songs – the whole band
Lansing Sound and put out on my label, Spirit Records. Yeah, we worked with all of them. We’d back up Chuck was in [the live room], and he was in the vocal booth
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After that, I was on the road with Chuck Berry from Berry, Bo Diddley, Gary U.S. Bonds, and John Lee singing. We did 12 songs in two days, and they’re
about ’66 or ’67 on. He came out here in the early ‘70s Hooker on the same night. We did a lot of shows like good because everybody was competent at their
ic

and recorded an album, San Francisco Dues, which
should have been called Okemos Dues. [laughs] Most of
the basic tracks of that were cut in a studio I had in
us
that. instruments. We had Mark Stebbeds engineer it, so we
What was it like playing with those didn’t have to think about that. All we were thinking
musicians? Did you rehearse? about was playing and performing the songs. Same
with the Chuck Berry albums. That’s the way I prefer

Lansing. We were in the process of moving.
Did you record Chuck Berry live, or do a
lot of overdubs?
We overdubbed the vocals, but everything else was live
nm
It was fun. We didn’t have to rehearse, because we knew
all their material! to do it, but these days almost everybody comes in
Getting back to the current Lansing and pieces the song together, because the technology
Sound; did you build this studio allows it. But that’s a whole different approach.

and one take. Chuck was the most focused, yourself? Do you have any advice for folks who
concentrated player I’ve ever worked with. He would Yeah. When I started out, we ran it as a recording studio, want to get into recording and
come in in the morning with his songs written out, but I don’t need clients [to make a living] anymore. producing records?
and then we [The Woolies] would work out I’m an attorney, so it’s mainly for my own productions I could teach a course on that. I don’t really have a one-
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arrangements. We’d sit there and play through them and projects. But occasionally we’ll let somebody else line answer. Do what you love. The music business is
until we had something we thought was a track, and record here. upside down these days; it’s totally different than
then we’d record it. He’d be singing while we played Can you talk about how recording when I was coming up. Try to figure out a way to play
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it, but then we overdubbed his vocals.
What gear were you using?
That right there; it’s an Ampex AG-440 1/2-inch, 4-track tape
deck. We have a few [Neumann] U 87 mics that I use on
ju
technology has changed? live gigs and develop a live following. Try to stay
We started out using the 4-track Ampex machine, then focused on the music and stay away from the
moved to 8-track, then 24-track, and then digital. I technology, because the technology will kill you.
have all this analog gear, and it’s all wired up; but I That’s my advice! r

just about every session, because they sound so good. personally do not like the production process. I like <www.boog.com> <www.boogiestomp.com>

74/Tape Op#128/Mr. Baldori/(Fin.)

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