Val Garay's Custom Gear: Studio Secrets Revealed

Producer/engineer Val Garay is best known for his work on albums by James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Toto, Kim Carnes, Seals and Crofts, Jackson Browne, and The Motels. Interestingly, he comes from a show business family. His father was an entertainer who was close friends with Errol Flynn, Max Baer, Lauren Bacall, and Bing Crosby. We met up at his home studio, off of beautiful Topanga Canyon, in Los Angeles, to discuss his career and recording techniques.

How do you like having coaxial reference monitors, compared to the other speakers you have?

Well, I learned on Altec 604Es, which are coaxial speakers, so I relate really well to coaxial speakers. And the 604Es at The Sound Factory had Mastering Labs crossovers in them. These are Tannoys with Mastering Labs crossovers. These are very similar, to me.

They're great speakers, aren't they?

Yeah, they're wonderful. I tried the Manley cabinets, but I didn't like the bigger black cabinets. I liked the stock cabinets better. Doug Sax built these for me 30 years ago. I have the wood cabinets. Everybody has their own preference. I just bought these ATC monitors — these are the new passive ones that they just started making. I don't like powered speakers. My theory is that you make great speakers and then great amp makers make great amps. Great speaker manufacturers don't seem to make great amps, and vice versa. I prefer passive speakers. Speakers are so amp-friendly. If it's built-in, you don't have a choice.

Well stated.

It's the component issue that's been going on for centuries. I had a set of Genelec 1030As that had the power, but they just never sounded right to me. These ATCs sound great. I'm just trying to figure out what kind of amp to use with them. Right now I have these two huge Manley monoblock amps that I was trying.

How do you like them?

They're very hi-fi. They're not punchy or tough enough for pop music, to me. They're more of a hi-fi amp.

Yeah. They'd be great to have for your hi-fi at home.

Yeah, but look at the size of these things! They weigh about a hundred pounds [each].

You're not moving them easily.

Yeah, well they're all disconnected now. I'm going to probably put the same amp on these as I have on those, which is a Bryston 4B SST. I love that amp. They're made in Canada. Somebody said to me the other day, "You must really like U.K. speakers." I never thought of it that way, but these were made in the U.K., and those were made in the U.K.

I read somewhere that those are custom [Yamaha] NS-10s?

Yes. Years ago, when I had Record One, everybody loved NS-10s, but they always used to have to put something over the tweeters, because they were really mid-range peaky. I said to my chief engineer, "I have an idea how we can modify these speakers and make them sound better." He said, "What do we have to do?" I contacted Larry Jackson, who owned Jackson Cabinets, who built all the cabinets for Westlake and for the Super Red speakers. I drew the cabinets up the way I wanted them done, with a half-inch bigger ID than the stock NS-10 cabinets. The stock NS-10 cabinets have boxes with half-inch particle board and a face with three quarter-inch particle board. These are inch and a half marine plywood in the front, and then half-inch birch-faced particle board in the rest of them. Then they're stuffed with fiberglass, and the tweeter that used to be here is now lined up with the woofer. The tweeter was always counter-sunk and the woofer was surface-mounted. It's been sunk; and the crossovers were modified by this company called Hemisphere. They used to make Hemisphere Timeline crossovers. We wrote down all the components, and now we can manufacture them. Yamaha wanted to manufacture them with me, and use my name, but I couldn't come to an agreement with them.

Oh, really?

They never got made, but about 50 pairs of them are out there, being used. They sound unbelievable. You remember what Yamaha NS-10s sounded like. They never had any bottom-end. They used to be oak-faced, oak veneer; but I got tired of explaining to everybody what they were, so I just painted them black so that nobody would ask about it. The whole box was oak.

Val Garay’s Custom Gear

I read somewhere that those are custom [Yamaha] NS-10s?

MORE INTERVIEWS

Jeff Zeigler

Emily A. Sprague “I want to share music that shows how real life sounds.”

Jim-E Stack

Pete Min Getting Out of Your Own Way

Outer Marker Records

Liz Pelly Music Streaming: Helping People Think Less