Interviews
By Roman Sokal, Tchad Blake, Tom Herbers
Perhaps one of the world's current greatest bands is Low, who hail from Duluth, Minnesota. The trio, consisting of the married team of Alan Sparhawk (guitar, vocals) and Mimi Parker (percussion, vocals) with Zak Sally (on deep bass), create hauntingly beautiful nouveau-American gothic music. It...
Interviews
Shelly Yakus is one of the true legends of the engineering trade, and his storied career demonstrates the value of an early start. ...
Interviews
Located just five minutes west of New York City, in suburban Tenafly, New Jersey, Alan Douches' West West Side Music Studios off...
Interviews
In the last six months I've been forced to learn my way around Pro Tools a bit while...
Interviews
Hi Roman; In regards to your question about Bob, I once worked in a situation with him at...
Tuning Nightmares, Part II Intonation, applied fretboard math, and other unspeakable studio terrors.
People often write Tape Op asking how recording engineers start working in the field, and how they develop their own studios. With his obsessive, old-fashioned work ethic, Peter Katis almost makes the process seem obvious. Tarquin Studios, named for his younger brother who joined us for the interview, has moved from the Katis family basement to the top of a house of its own. Along the way Peter has worked with musicians ranging from Mercury Rev (who love his old keyboards) to The Get Up Kids, from Guster to the Raymond Scott Orchestrette, from Oneida to Alex Blake. Producers like Scott Litt [Tape Op #81] and Eric Drew Feldman have joined him behind his mixing board. He and Tarquin still play in three bands, the Philistines Jr., the Happiest Guys in the World and the Zambonis, and they both also skate on the ice hockey team of the legendary New York studio the Hit Factory.
DISCLAIMER #1: DO NOT TRY ANYTHING BELOW UNLESS YOU HAVE READ MY PREVIOUS COLUMNS, HAVE A THOROUGH UNDERSTANDING OF ANALOG ELECTRONICS, USING MULTIMETERS, DISCHARGING FILTER CAPACITORS, AND GUITAR AMPLIFIER REPAIR IN GENERAL. TUBE GUITAR AMPLIFIERS CONTAIN LETHAL VOLTAGES THAT CAN KILL YOU, EVEN WHEN THEY'RE UNPLUGGED! IF YOU DO ATTEMPT THESE REPAIRS, YOU DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK. WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE IF YOU FRY YOUR AMP OR YOURSELF! DISCLAIMER #2: I'M NO EXPERT. I LEARNED EVERYTHING I KNOW FROM READING ABOUT AMPS, EXPERIMENTING, AND BLOWING THINGS UP. THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS NOT COMPREHENSIVE, AND IS SIMPLY WHAT HAS WORKED FOR ME OVER THE YEARS.
I record a lot of drums, and I'm rarely happy with the sound of my snare drums. I mean, they work, and no one else complains, but I imagine how they could sound better. When I first ran kick and snare through this preamp I just about shit my pants. There was that deep bottom thunk, high end attack...
On the back of the Fugs' second album on ESP, they're pictured holding EV 664s in their hands. Hopefully the mics rested on stands, because their large bodies make them awkward to carry. The 664 relies on the Variable-D® design principle to reduce proximity effect. In a Variable-D microphone, ports...
I don't know why the world works this way, but it seems that everyone jumps on the bandwagon like sheeple. What I'm getting at is that most people will choose one item over another based on popularity or marketing rather than looking at the options and choosing the best one for them. Cool Edit is a...
What impresses me most about Eventide is the company's ability to reinvent itself more than Madonna. This company's been making audio gear since the dawn of time (or thirty years, whichever comes first). Remember the 1745 delay? Of course you don't, you're too damn young. Don't worry-welcome to the...
You know, mastering engineers can dream too. I know what it is like for Tape Op readers to dream about getting that one special Neumann U 47 microphone or that vintage API console, but I am here to tell you that we too (mastering engineers) dream of getting pieces of gear we really can't afford. In...
What do you do when the guitar player you're recording wants reverb on their guitar but doesn't have any on their amp? Do you "add it in the mix"? Screw that, add it to the amp. The Holy Grail is a digital reverb pedal with simulations of spring, hall and flerb. The spring is fairly realistic,...
When I was contacted about reviewing the LD-2ube and was told that it was a tube mic for $300, I said, "Huh? yeah! I'll check that out." I've used it on every vocal session since then. This mic is within the stream of mics made in China that are knock-offs of other "name" microphones. I just look...
While trends in monitoring come and go, these speakers probably fall second to NS-10Ms as dinosaurs of the nearfield world. Any similarities between the two speakers ends there. The Matrix 805 reaches lower frequencies than its size would indicate, with very low distortion for its ported design. It...
MBHO is a well established German company specializing in high-quality condenser mics. Unfortunately, MBHO is not very well known in the U.S. Originally part of the hi-fi company MB Quart in the early '60s, it later became an independent company led by Mr. Herbert Haun. As well as manufacturing its...
Certainly one of the coolest and most inexpensive devices I've stumbled upon over the last couple of years! Pick-up the World pickups are technically contact microphones. (Contact mics were originally designed for medical and military purposes.) A thin piece of polymer film works as the contact...
My three fave plug-ins + an interview with Dave Amels of The Bomb Factory In the last six months I've been forced to learn my way around Pro Tools a bit while mixing some budget projects. Sonically, I'd rather mix through a console although I really enjoy the process of mixing on a computer. The...
Like it's bigger brother, the Summit TLA-100 and the venerable LA-2A, the TLA-50 has a less-is-more approach, with only two knobs, gain and gain reduction, on its half-rack space panel. There are however two three position switches for attack and release times, giving you a bit more control than...
Four Freeware/ Shareware Software Synthesizers: Recently, for better or worse, my guitar has been gathering dust. I've been neglecting the faithful Fender for instruments which gather no dust: virtual synthesizers. And if you're a soft synthesizer junkie like me, or if you dig the sounds of square...
The Wiggler is a tube-driven vibrato and tremolo stompbox unit for use with guitars, keyboards and more. There are controls for volume (make-up gain after tremolo is something many boxes lack); intensity (blend of signals); mode (four levels of tone control as far as I could tell); a vib/trem...
SE. Electronics is one of many companies these days who are marketing Chinese-made condenser microphones for prices which border on the absurd. The company offered my studio a discount rate (on top of the already low price) if we purchased microphones directly from them. The prices wound up being...