Tucked away in a basement in Brooklyn, NY, is a sweet little studio known as Marlborough Farms. It's also the residence of Gary Olson, the driving force behind The Ladybug Transistor. In this studio Gary and his pal Bill Wells have made a number of amazing sounding albums for Ladybug, Saturnine and the Essex Green. And it was all done in a small room with no isolation. How? Let's see...

Where did all your gear come from?

Gary: I've kind of amassed a lot of stuff. I've been doing it for about 5 or 6 years. Bill owns a lot of the recording equipment and I own a lot of the musical stuff... a lot of the amps and keyboards.

When did the studio get up and running at the house?

Gary: I moved in here about 6 years ago. We started off with a Teac 80-8 and an Allen & Heath System 8.

Bill: ...16 input. Then I decided that I needed to do something and I bought a [Soundcraft] Ghost. I did a lot of research as to what I should buy and I didn't have a huge amount of money to spend. I decided, at the time, that I didn't want to get a console, an old console and have to re-cap it and have a lot of maintenance problems throughout time. The Ghost is a good sounding console, it has great EQ and effects sends.

Have you had any trouble with it though?

Bill: Very little, actually.

How did you guys meet and how did that work into getting a studio together?

Gary: I was interning at a radio station when I was in high school and Bill was working there and I wound up working for him over there and that's how we met. I wound up doing a lot of work at the radio station, like splicing interviews together. I got interested in recording live bands and I sort of roped Bill into all of it. We used to go out and record bands for the radio stations every now and then.

At shows?

Gary: Yeah.

What were you using then for that set-up?

Gary: It was a pretty crude set-up. Well, we had a digital set-up that we used to use.

Bill: The PCM-F1. Of course in those days, it was pre-DAT.

Is that a Sony?

Bill: Yeah, we probably had a JVC VCR and a Nakamichi F1. I think whatever we could borrow from WBAI (where I worked). There was an old Tapco mixer that we used.

Gary: I think we used to take a board feed and throw up a couple of [Neumann] KM84s.

Bill: To fill it out.

Board tapes are horrible, especially in smaller clubs.

Gary: Really dry board tapes are so awful.

Bill: Our first album credit was Psychic TV Live at the Pyramid.

Gary: We did some other interesting stuff. We did Sonic Youth once, around the Daydream Nation time, which was cool.

Bill: That was my first attempt at multi-tracking live. We later edited it down for broadcasting and had it broadcasted. We recorded two nights at Maxwell's. That was a really interesting experience.

Gary: So that's pretty much how we got started recording, just doing live radio things. I think shortly after that we got a hold of an 8-track.

Bill: I dragged him over to a studio sale and I decided to by a 1/2" 8-track. I didn't even have a console yet. I borrowed a friend's console, which I ended up buying, and that was the beginning of Marlborough Farms.

Did you have the space already?

Gary: Yeah.

Was Ladybug forming around then?

Gary: A little later on. I was sort of tinkering around with things, but Ladybug started more around '94. When you got the 8-track, did you start working on your own things? Gary: We had some friends that we would record, but mostly it was our own stuff that we were working on for a while.

This is the basement of your house, and you and your friends live on the floor above it, but your landlord lives upstairs and that hasn't really created a problem?

Gary: Right. He's been pretty tolerant and our neighbors haven't said a word to us.

That's kind of amazing.

Bill: Yeah. Some time we would like to upgrade and move out of here.

Gary: I saw a nice Elk's Lodge a few blocks away from here that's for rent.

It seems like this is kind of a word- of-mouth kind of studio. It's not a full time job for anybody?

Gary: It's hard to do that because it's in the house. We do get people who want to do stuff — if it wasn't in our home I'm pretty sure we could be doing it full time. It's hard to do album projects here. It's easier to do a few songs.

Bill: Although we have had album projects here recently.

What other projects have there been?

Gary: We spent a lot of time on the Ladybug album [The Albemarle Sound] — last Summer to the beginning of the Winter — then we took a break from that. Then Essex Green started recording in January up until the Spring.

Do you both engineer sessions?

Gary: Yeah. Bill worked mostly on Essex Green stuff because I was burned out after doing the Ladybug album.

And when did you move up to the 1" 16-track?

Gary: About a year and a half ago. Bill: It was the first album Ladybug did on 16 tracks.

Were you guys getting frustrated with having only 8 tracks?

Gary: We managed with it pretty well, there were certain advantages to it.

Bill: Decisions were made a lot quicker.[laughs]

Gary: When you have only 8 tracks you do a mix and you have to be able to live with the results, with more tracks there are a lot more things to pay attention to but of course there is added flexibility. 

Bill: I ended up with my Ghost console because I wanted something with available automation and it was the only thing in my price range besides a Mackie. One of the next things I'd like to buy is a really nice mic pre.

What are you using now?

Gary: Just the board. Dangerous, huh? [laughs] Bill: I've been thinking about getting an Avalon. The make a really excellent one for like two thousand dollars. Plus it's got compression and EQ.

Sytek makes some really nice ones that have four channels and it's 850 dollars.

Gary: I've heard really good things about those John Hardy mic preamps.

So how much do you guys charge here?

Gary: Should we tell him thirty an hour? [laughs] We've charged twenty-two for a long time but it varies. We should raise it I guess.

Bill: We don't really sit there and count every hour though.

When you get calls from someone you don't know wanting time do you have to pick and choose who you let in?

Bill: That is a tough one you know. We've turned down some stuff I guess, with people living here and whatnot we can't take every job that comes up. It's hard to say — we just have to pick and choose.

Do you explain the situation to people, like the drums being in the room, unlike a "slick" studio or whatever?

Bill: Usually people haven't been disappointed that it is a project studio.

Gary: A lot of the people we get haven't been in big studios, so they see anything and think it's cool.

Bill: And a lot of the bands that have been in big studios with separate control rooms and whatnot still want to work here and I'm very gratified by that. We've gotten good results on our records.

The records I've heard that came out of here were really professional sounding and if I didn't know about this place I'd think that they had been recorded in a bigger studio. What do you think the future of the studio will be? A bigger place or...

Gary: Yeah, we'd really love to do it full time. We just have to find a cool place. At first I didn't think people would travel this far out to record [from NYC] but I guess the prices downtown are outrageous.

Bill: It's been frustrating having to turn a bunch of people down just 'cause we can't accommodate them time-wise and whatnot, plus we need time for our own projects, so we are looking to step up a bit.

MARLBOROUGH'S FUTURE:

Our newest purchase — not even delivered yet! — is a 24-track 2" recorder; a Sony/MCI JH-24. We actually might wait until the studio relocates to put it in service — moving that 500 lb. beast in — and later out of — the basement space is looking like a total nightmare! We've been looking to upgrade from the MX- 70 1" format for some time, while remaining analog. We've also recently acquired an EMT 140 stereo plate reverb. It's a huge, heavy monolith, but we were instantly impressed by the sound, even before retensioning/retuning. We've owned some "Great British Spring" reverbs for a long time, which are very decent units for that type of sound. We've also been talking about acquiring an AKG BX-20 spring reverb. Once the studio finds a new home, I want to construct an actual "echo chamber", when the extra space for it can be found. We also have some new, smaller toys in the outboard department: Another dbx 160X, a Pultec EQ, and — to cure a pet complaint of mine — an Orban de-esser! Vocal noises seem to bother me more than anyone else! My favorite piece of new gear these days is our Avalon VT-737, which I bought mainly for the tube mic pre. We've gone crazy tracking with it, especially vocals and bass guitar (with the "instrument" input). The unit's opto-compressor and EQ don't usually get used except on tape returns at mix down. I think there are more Avalon preamps in our future. Last spring, we tracked drums for the new Ladybug LP with some API 512s which were also impressive, so I'm looking to land some APIs as well. Also some pre's in the $500 per channel category — maybe Sytek? With mixing the new Ladybug record as the impetus, we plan to replace the Ghost LE with the same but mute-automated version. We both agreed we needed some sort of automation for a change, especially after the complex mixes on records like Albemarle Sound. For the present, the automated Ghost was the most cost- effective solution but there's still a Neotek in the studio's future. We've also begun the hard process of finding a suitable new, larger home for the studio. I've been dealing with issues like real estate specs to minimize the amount of necessary sound isolation. Also cost-effective interior construction and acoustic conditioning, especially with the ability to add more as the studio grows — like building iso-booths within a raw studio space later on. It's all very exciting, if a bit scary. Rents are high in the New York area! -Bill Wells