2 in 1 studio: House of Faith/Guerilla Recording

BY KATHERINE COPENHAVER, IAN SWANKE

Bart Thurber, once described by a record reviewer as the punk rock Phil Spector, has a favorite expression — "An engineer drives a train — I'm a recording guy". He's a West Coast legend to the 1,800 plus rock bands (including a Minor Forest, Diesel Queens, and J Church) plastered on the walls of his control room at House of Faith studios. Bart's studio partner, Myles Boisen, is no slouch either. He's engineered and/or mastered hundreds of pop, blues, and jazz recordings, as well as dozens of avant-garde musicians from around the world, like Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, Eugene Chadbourne, John Tchicai and the Rova Saxophone Quartet. He's also regarded as an authority on vintage mics and microphone testing, with numerous articles published in Electronic Musician magazine and Mix Books publications. When Myles is at the board, the studio changes monikers to Guerilla Recording. He also teaches audio engineering at Guerilla (in 1979 he began teaching one of the country's first university-level recording studio programs). Here begins the story behind three tracking rooms and a sky-lit control room in a unassuming part of Oakland, California.

Bob Olhsson: Magic & the Motown Sound!

BY PHILIP STEVENSON

It's the mid-60s and tubes are glowing hot in studios from 30th Street to Abbey Road. Wheels are in motion and the legacy of Leonard Chess and Sam Phillips is welling up in the ears of America. In Detroit, Berry Gordy is alchemizing the collective genius of Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, James Jamerson, Benny Benjamin and a host of others with his own, to forge a juggernaut of sonic power and consistency equal to anything before or since. It swings like a motherfucker and it sounds like gold. The staff and musicians work hard, doing takes over and over until they get them right. They try multiple mixes and follow them all the way to acetate before deciding on a winner. In the mastering room, Bob Olhsson is cutting vinyl on "Signed, Sealed, Delivered", another fluid combination of muscle and sweetness that jumps off the needle. It will hit #1 on the R&B charts. This is Motown and it is beautiful. Recently Bob moved to Nashville and he's excited. Astoundingly, after working with some of the most talented people of his generation, Bob is still optimistic and hopeful about the future of aesthetics in the labyrinthine, difficult world that is popular music. He's still working, and poetically enough, he's even starting to cut vinyl again. He is disarming, friendly, and generous with his time. There's no hint of professional jealousy or egoism. Most mysteries can never be looked into; they fade into hearsay and rhetorical inventions. Talking with Bob, I felt lucky that he's not about those vain distortions. He reflects on things too clearly. He's our window.

Bob Olhsson: Looking at Digital Recording

BY PHILIP STEVENSON

Build a tube Mic Pre: Build Your Own Two Channel Vacuum Tube Mic Preamp!

BY SCOTT HAMPTON

When asked to come up with a "do it yourself" tube mic pre project, I thought long and hard about what topology to go with. I designed a number of different hybrid tube/discrete class A designs (eliminating transformers because of their large expense) but ultimately settled upon a classic tube/transformer- coupled design. The thought being, if you are going to spend the time to build it, then make it worth the effort. In my opinion, the transformers in a tube amp are just as important to the sound as the tubes, so building a transformerless tube amp would not provide much of the desired characteristics which people seek in tube gear. I stole the basic design from the tube mic pre that I build and sell, and tried to make carefully chosen "compromises" to get the cost down. The philosophy was to eliminate the very expensive components that make only subtle improvements, while putting money into the important things (like high quality audio transformers). The result is a two channel tube mic pre — featuring Jensen input/output transformers (optional), phantom power, input pads, and regulated supplies — that can be built for about $400 in materials. A kit is available though my company, which provides circuit boards and key components that would be difficult to source. Everything you need to know to build the preamp however is contained within this document, the kit only makes assembly easier.