Steve Albini

Interviews

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Eddie Kramer

Interviews

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Digital Mixing

Article

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Universal Audio

Interviews

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Unwound

Interviews

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Plaid

Interviews

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MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

JULY 16, 2025 INTERVIEWS
Phill Brown

Phill Brown: Are We Still Rolling?

BY PHILL BROWN

We interviewed Phill Brown in issue number [#12] of Tape Op. Over the years he's worked with some of the greatest artists ever, like Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Traffic, Spooky Tooth, Jeff Beck, Led Zeppelin, Robert Palmer, Bob Marley, Steve Winwood, Harry Nilsson, Roxy Music, Stomu Yamash'ta, John Martyn, Little Feat, Atomic Rooster, and Talk Talk. This is another excerpt from his (still!) unpublished book, Are We Still Rolling?URL Last issue: Phill worked on Robert Palmer's Pressure Drop. –LC

JULY 16, 2025 INTERVIEWS
Universal Audio

Universal Audio

BY ERIC BROYHILL, JOHN BACCIGALUPPI

When Bill Putnam, Jr. mentioned to me that his brother Jim was in the Radar Brothers, it didn't really sink in 'till a few minutes later. When it finally did, I rudely interrupted him and Eric with a loud, "Oh, that Radar Brothers!!" and screwed up the interview for a few minutes over my enthusiasm for the band. Their last CD, The Singing Hatchet, was one of my favorite discs the year it was released. When I heard it was done in a home studio, I was impressed yet not surprised, as it made perfect sense that the laid-back vibe of the CD could only come from a home studio or a humungous recording budget, which didn't seem likely. Think of the best, more melodic moments of early Pink Floyd and you're not too far from the Radar Bros. sound. Later, I had a chance to talk to Jim about his band, studio and Universal Audio.

JULY 16, 2025 INTERVIEWS
Universal Audio

Universal Audio

BY ERIC BROYHILL, JOHN BACCIGALUPPI

After a pretty damm good surf session one fine sunny day in Santa Cruz, California, my friend and fellow recording engineer, Eric Broyhill and I stopped by the Universal Audio offices to talk with Bill Putnam Jr., who along with his brother Jim, revived their father's legendary company. Eric wrote the interview and I took photos. All I have to say is that Bill's a very gracious and inspiring guy, but if he thinks he's gonna sit in his office next time we come through town he's mistaken. We're gonna drag him into the ocean and make him surf.

COLUMNS

On Top Of The World
END RANT

GEAR REVIEWS

Gear Reviews

ADP-1 Professional Active/Passive Direct Box

by ADP-1 Professional Active/Passive Direct Box  |  reviewed by Ezra Meredeth, Larry Crane

How do you review a DI box? Here's what we did. We set up a passive DOD 265 DI ($20), the Raven Labs ADP-1 ($349) and Avalon Designs Ultra 5 Direct ($1450) in a row, all patched into the same mic pres and coming up on the mixer at the same volume (the Avalon's tone controls were off). Then we could...

Gear Reviews

Cubase VST 32 Version 5

by Cubase VST 32 Version 5  |  reviewed by John Baccigaluppi, Shaun Lopez

There are quite a few different recording programs available now, and they're all really pretty amazing. It would be hard to say that one is drastically better, or even different, from another. I think it comes down to personal preference and learning the details of each package enough to decide...

Gear Reviews

D2424 Hard Drive Recorder

by D2424 Hard Drive Recorder  |  reviewed by John Baccigaluppi, Chema Salinas

Last year saw the introduction of several competing 24 channel, 24 bit stand alone hard drive recorders from Tascam, iZ Technology (Radar), Alesis and Mackie. As all of these units sound good and perform a similar range of functions, it's difficult to choose between them. The first question you...

Gear Reviews

E-A-R Earmuff

by E-A-R Earmuff  |  reviewed by Andy Hong

Quicker than inserting earplugs (and waiting for them to expand). Bright red and big - they're hard to lose. Put them on like headphones and walk into any tracking session without fear of blowing your ears. Great when you're setting up mics, and the band is warming up. Peltor even makes a belt clip...

Gear Reviews

Evil Twin model 90 tube direct box

by Evil Twin model 90 tube direct box  |  reviewed by Henry Robinett

I've been a fan of the Evil Twin for several years. This is a great, warm tube direct box. You might wonder about the questionable extravagance of an $850 direct box. Well if you think of it as merely a DI you might be right, but you'd also be limiting your purview. You can use the Evil Twin to...

Gear Reviews

FATSO Jr model EL-7

by FATSO Jr model EL-7  |  reviewed by Andy Hong

FATSO is an acronym for Full Analog Tape Simulator and Optimizer. When digital multitracking first became affordable, it took only one session using 16 tracks of ADAT to convince me that I didn't want a digital multitrack in my own studio. Last year, I found myself returning to the world of digital...

Gear Reviews

MK 219

by MK 219  |  reviewed by Martin Chittum

Russian microphone manufacturer Oktava has been around since the 1950s. The MK 219 (a.k.a. MC 219) has been one of their most known and respected models for quite some time now, and is considered a staple in many studios, especially in England. The MK 219 is a solid state large-diaphragm condenser...

Gear Reviews

MoogerFooger-102 Ring Modulator

by MoogerFooger-102 Ring Modulator  |  reviewed by JD Foster

I gotta say I LOVE Bob Moog's MF102. I got one when they were first released and I have used it on something on every project since. I've had the best luck using it as a mix effect on shakers, hi-hat, piano and on the repeats of an echo. Set at the lower frequencies, it does an amazing tremolo...

Gear Reviews

MPX-500 Effects Processor

by MPX-500 Effects Processor  |  reviewed by John Baccigaluppi

We recently installed a MOTU/Macintosh hard-drive recording system into our studio. While some of the plug-ins sound pretty good, the reverbs generally leave something to be desired. Or, if they sound good, like Unversal Audio's RealVerb, they use a lot of the computer's CPU and processing power....

Gear Reviews

MX-60 Front End One

by MX-60 Front End One  |  reviewed by John Baccigaluppi

I've had this in my studio for a few months now but didn't have much chance to use it until recently. To be honest, one of the reasons I didn't use it much is because I have several other mic pres/compressors that cost quite a bit more than this one and that sound really great. But once I finally...

Gear Reviews

Opal DPR-944 2+2 compressor/gate

by Opal DPR-944 2+2 compressor/gate  |  reviewed by Andy Hong

Many of us don't have the means to afford a rack full of processors to do all the things we need to do as practitioners of our field. So instead, we end up making compromises, oftentimes buying gear that is capable of performing more than one task, but not necessarily with the fidelity or control...

Gear Reviews

Platinum MixMaster

by Platinum MixMaster  |  reviewed by Andy Hong

In my living room studio, I mix on a Sony DMX-R100 digital console feeding my 24-bit Alesis Masterlink via a digital link. Therefore, I don't have much of a need for an analog mixdown processor. Occasionally, I have clients that want to mix to analog tape to "warm up" the sound. That's when I fire...

Gear Reviews

Refillable Duster

by Refillable Duster  |  reviewed by Andy Hong

Instead of paying big bucks for prepackaged air check out the ReAir refillable air sprayer. With about ten strokes of a standard bicycle pump, you've got a canister full of compressed air to blow crap out of crevices, patchbays, tape head assemblies, disk drives, etc. When it runs out, just re-pump...

Gear Reviews

Seek Wah effect pedal

by Seek Wah effect pedal  |  reviewed by Pete Weiss

All right, this thing is really cool. Sadly, it's also very expensive and is an extreme example of a "one trick pony." But what a trick, man! The Seek Wah sends your signal through a series of envelope filters. There are eight tiny pots so you can control the sensitivity of each filter. There's a...

Gear Reviews

Vortex effects processor

by Vortex effects processor  |  reviewed by William Bernhard

In 1993 Lexicon came out with a couple of effects processors, the JamMan and the Vortex, that seemed to be here one moment and gone the next. The former is an incredible looping delay, possibly one of the first of its kind, and the latter was a stereo "audio morphing" effects processor. I first...