Using Transformers

Interviews

DIY Reverb

Interviews

Mac McCaughan

Interviews

Alan Evans

Interviews

MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

JULY 10, 2025 INTERVIEWS
Brad Avenson

Brad Avenson: Behind the Gear with Avenson Audio

For years now I've been bumping into Brad Avenson, a real down-to-earth guy who's been building his Avenson Audio company up with small, ingenious little tools to help us all make better records without busting our wallets. He began building mics with Erik Wofford under the Stapes name, and branched out with Avenson Audio and the STO-2 mics soon after. Avenson's Small DI is an amazingly tiny, in-line DI box, and the upcoming Mid-Side and Blend half-rack boxes look to be very useful. Plus he's got a headphone amp and a multi-featured IsoDI as well. Cool stuff outta Austin, Texas.

JULY 10, 2025 INTERVIEWS
Gurf Morlix

Gurf Morlix: Rootball Recording in Austin, TX

Gurf Morlix likes to produce, engineer, perform, write and even just plain talk about music. It might sound hackneyed to say, but music is his life's blood, the passion that drives his spirit. Born in 1951 in Buffalo, NY, Morlix decided to become a musician exactly one day after watching The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. When he got the chance, he moved to Austin, Texas, in 1975 to pursue his dream, and then made the jump to Los Angeles in 1981. After 10 years in L.A., he brought his well-honed skills and his sterling reputation back to Austin when he realized he could operate from the "Live Music Capital of the World" and still maintain a national presence. Along the way he's shared stage and studio with a wide variety of talented luminaries including Warren Zevon, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Peter Case, Mojo Nixon, Michael Penn, Jimmy LaFave and many other artists. Morlix was shot out of a cannon with his first record production credit in 1988, thanks to the release of singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams' self-titled third album, which included the hit single, "Changed the Locks" and "Passionate Kisses." The success of that seminal work created a demand for his recording skills that continues to this day. Besides making records for others, he's also engineered, produced and released five of his own solo albums: Toad of Titicaca, Fishin' In The Muddy, Cut 'n Shoot, Diamonds To Dust and his brand new record, Birth To Boneyard, the instrumental companion piece to Diamonds To Dust. Morlix prefers to keep things simple and work as inexpensively as possible. Even though he's produced records in lavish, modernly equipped studios for major labels, he's much more comfortable creating in his home studio where he's worked exclusively the past eight years. The Morlix sound is sensible and economical. He'll do whatever it takes to get a great track, but he's not going to rent a Telefunken Ela M 251 when a Neumann U87 will do just as well. He prefers to use the right tool for the right job — no gear for gear's sake posturing here — and his secret weapons in the studio tend to be the musicians themselves, rather than vintage compressors or jury-rigged mic chains. Call him the people's producer — he sounds like one of us.

COLUMNS

END RANT
Gear Geeking - Issue 76
GEAR GEEKING

GEAR REVIEWS

Gear Reviews

Alloy plug-in

by Alloy plug-in  |  reviewed by Dave Hidek

I've been hesitant to write this review, as I'd prefer that no one else know about iZotope's Alloy but me. Being a long time iZotope fan, I was excited to work with their new do-it-all plug-in, and it didn't disappoint. Alloy, like its name suggests, is a conglomerate of several sound-shaping...

Gear Reviews

EQSM1 500-series EQ

by EQSM1 500-series EQ  |  reviewed by Kirt Shearer

Even though the format has been around for decades, there has been an explosion of products in the last few years produced for the 500-series format. About the only thing that hasn't been shoved into one is a pair of nearfield monitors. This popularity is a good thing, because it means that you can...

Gear Reviews

Max for Live

by Max for Live  |  reviewed by Dana Gumbiner

Cycling '74 and Ableton have introduced a fascinating new version of the Max programming environment tailored specifically for instrument and effect creation within Live (Tape Op #72). Max/MSP and its video-oriented cousin Jitter have long been the go-to object-based programming environments for a...

Gear Reviews

MC Mix, MC Control, and MC Transport

by MC Mix, MC Control, and MC Transport  |  reviewed by Allen Farmelo

Whether to work with a control surface or not is a personal decision. If you do prefer to have faders, knobs and buttons under hand, the one thing we will all agree on is that the integration between the surface and the software is the key ingredient. Tight integration is why we still have...

Gear Reviews

Mellodrama: The Mellotron Movie

by Mellodrama: The Mellotron Movie  |  reviewed by Larry Crane

I would imagine most of our readers are familiar with the Mellotron, a tape-playing keyboard that became popular in the late '60s on songs like The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever." Ms. Dilworth took on the task of creating a video documentary of this curious device, from its origin as the...

Gear Reviews

PT2-500 mic preamp

by PT2-500 mic preamp  |  reviewed by Craig Schumacher

New at the 500-series lunchbox cafe this week is the PT2-500. TRUE Systems' Tim Spencer has managed to take the clean, full sound of his P2analog (Tape Op #44), create an even more full-bodied, high-resolution mic preamp/DI with his new "Type-2" circuit design, and shrink it down to fit into one...

Gear Reviews

SRH840 headphones

by SRH840 headphones  |  reviewed by Brandon Miller

Shure just launched its first line of headphones aimed specifically at music-making applications -the SRH series. The idea's been to fill a growing demand for pro-level gear by an audience that's breaking from the norm. Improvements in the performance of software and the chaos of the music industry...

Gear Reviews

Studio One Pro 1.0.2

by Studio One Pro 1.0.2

My primary music DAW is now Studio One Pro. When I first saw the advertisement for it, I thought, "That looks cool, but not cool enough to spend the time learning a new DAW. My DAW's working fine." I am really glad that Tape Op gave me the opportunity to review it, because I don't think I would've...

Gear Reviews

TT/DB25 patchbay & cabling

by TT/DB25 patchbay & cabling  |  reviewed by Allen Farmelo

With ubiquitous products like Digidesign's converters (now Avid) having adopted the balanced 8-channel DB25 connector as standard, these jacks have found their way onto all kinds of pro gear. There are two standard pin-outs for DB25 wiring: Yamaha, which is typical for digital connections; and the...

Gear Reviews

UAD-2 Powered Plug-Ins

by UAD-2 Powered Plug-Ins  |  reviewed by Neil Mclellan

When I recently wiped the system disk of my primary music computer to replace Windows XP Pro with Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, I installed only the applications that I knew I'd be using regularly. Similarly, I didn't bother adding any plug-ins or accessories that I didn't find essential to my own...