Motown & Memphis

It is truly remarkable to step back and examine the full societal impact that some recording engineers and mixers have had on American culture. During his 18-year tenure as Chief Engineer for Motown Records, Russ Terrana captured and crafted the sounds for many of the Detroit...

Terry Manning is one of my heroes. His career has encompassed working with many Stax and Hi artists — Rufus Thomas, Booker T., The Staple Singers, Al Green; working with some of rock's finest — ZZ Top, Big Star, Led Zeppelin; and still leading a busy life these days...

In Tape Op # 44 we did a feature on Memphis, Tennessee, and its rich music and recording history. We vowed to return to Memphis, especially for Ardent Studios and Terry Manning - key figures in any history of Memphis music recording, along with Jim Dickinson whom we interviewed...

The VAC-6c pop screens provide a unique solution to the "How do I tame those damn plosives?" dilemma-you know, the overbearing "P" sounds that create huge low- end peaks on vocals when mics are in cardioid or figure-8 mode. Their Variable Acoustic Compression...

What is this box? I've had it for almost a year, and I'm still not sure how to answer that. For one, it's basically two channels of tube circuitry that can be run in normal or overdrive modes. The circuits can be switched as far as the distortion types (I never...

I get handed a lot of CDs at trade shows from 'industry' types and I wish I could say good things about them, but it's usually pretty hard. I was pleasantly surprised by this disc of surprisingly good alt.country tunes that bandmember Peter Glanville of Glyph...

Somewhere on the thorny road to legend, hotel recording genius (and Eric Clapton victim) Robert Johnson wrote, "This stuff I got'll bust your brains out." While he may have been referring to the poison that took his life, he may as well have been describing...