Ask JD Foster. From his days playing bass with the likes of Dwight Yoakam, The Silos and Lucinda Williams, to producing and engineering the records of Richard Buckner, Marc Ribot, Eszter Balint,...
A self-described late-bloomer who "didn't even think about" playing music until he was 18, Ken Andrews' recording sensibilities have developed on a parallel track, almost simultaneously, with his...
Roger McGuinn is known to most people as the leader of The Byrds, the folk-rock band from the '60s who fused Bob Dylan and folk music with the rush of jangley rock and roll. He was interested in...
In pro audio circles and throughout the vast realm of the internet, Fletcher is a ubiquitous and highly vocal presence. Always quick with commentary and an endless font of knowledge regarding...
If, by chance, you have not fallen off the face of the earth in the past couple of months, you've probably become familiar with journal of Mixerman, an anonymous diarist on www.prosoundweb.com who has...
Since the early Black Rock Coalition days, Vernon Reid and DJ Logic have gotten together to make music "when no one was looking." Through collaborating on each other's projects, they got the idea...
Buddy Miller lives and records in an old bungalow on a shady street in Nashville, TN. In rooms lined with guitars and stacked floor to ceiling with recording gear, he makes some of the best music...
Mastering. It's kind of like the snake oil of making records. It's that secret elixir that gives your songs sheen, size, and consistency. It brings out the best sound in your recordings, while...
Keith Fullerton Whitman, aka Hrvatski, is a record buying addict who blends experimental drum 'n' bass, academic music and his washer and dryer into some very exciting and listenable music. I was...
I initially encountered David First performing a composition of his microtonal drones called "My Veil Evades Detection; My Veil Defies Exhaustion; My Veil and I Divorce" at an old rec...
Howard Johnston is the co-owner and chief engineer of Different Fur Studio, tucked away in the once ignored, now ultra hip dot-com Inner Mission of San Francisco. In business for over 25 years,...
More often than not, home recording studio owners search for inexpensive, creative ways to turn their bedrooms or living rooms into acoustically stable environments. Home studio owners frequently...
ADK and Marshall Electronics have been selling small- capsule capacitor microphones for the last few years, and I have done a tube modification to a few of them. The performance of the modified...
When I was a kid my mom worked with ceramics. She had a business, out of our home, where she made incense holders, "pencil pots" and other small, hand-made items that sold pretty well in the...
The M-3 is an 8-channel mixer clearly aimed at DAW users as a tube front/back end for those cold, hard computers. Many people seem to have issues with digital mix busses, and the M-3 is one of several...
Ribbon microphones have gained considerable popularity in the past few years. Unfortunately, the fact remains that although the availability of new, inexpensive condenser mics has grown, the...
Well, now the question becomes, "Do I sell my entire guitar rig that I spent years building and lugging around?" After a few moments with the new Line 6 PODXT I was on my way to my favorite pawn shop....
The Ineko is a hand-sized unit packed with 48 effects. Three knobs and three buttons make up the control surface. Available effects are printed on the unit, so you can toss the manual. The effect that...
Ohmygosh. The first time I switched back to "regular" headphones after listening to Ultrasone headphones exclusively for a week, I was completely underwhelmed by the "small" and "constrained" sound of...
I will gleefully hack away at most any instrument in front of me, but I'll always be a drummer at heart. Drums are just the most fun. And after years of moving microphones and flipping phase buttons I...
For years, I've been wanting a dedicated real time analyzer (RTA) in my studio. An RTA is a device that will display the amplitude of frequencies across the audible spectrum, thus allowing the...
About one hundred issues ago (#10, actually), we ran an interview with Dan Rathbun of Polymorph Recording who discussed at length his technique of using crossovers to split signals into two or three...
While Electro-Voice has established a reputation for building reduced proximity-effect dynamic microphones, Shure's sole entry in the field has disappeared from production and also from public...
There are tons of interfaces available for transferring audio to and from your computer, and it can be hard to tell them apart as many of them have similar features. After having used the Mobile I/O...
The digital revolution did not eliminate the need for analog patch bays, nor did it simplify wiring or routing. No matter how modest your rig, a few different flavors of digital and analog...
I've been asking for a high-quality monitoring system like the Dangerous Monitor ever since I started mastering some seven years ago. Many mastering engineers have custom-manufactured desks or...
I'd been keeping my eye on reviews and comments on the M300 for a while after its introduction, as I needed more effects for my increasingly ridiculous mixdown sessions. When T.C. lowered the street...
Focusrite's take on the 8-channel mic preamp, the Platinum Series OctoPre, has everything one would expect in an outboard mic preamp, including good sonic performance, a clean user interface, and a...
I've been waiting for many years for someone to accurately recreate the legendary Telefunken 251 microphone. I've had several conversations wondering why this had never been done, with of course no...
The BX8's are low-cost, self-powered monitors with an 8'' woofer and a 1'' silk-dome tweeter. Each monitor has two 65 watt amplifiers, one per driver. The rear panel features four switches (Acoustic...
By now, most of us have seen the products made by Zachary Vex of the Z.Vex Company. Z.Vex pedals are incredibly cool in both design and function. Every time I go to the good music store here in...
It seems that control surfaces for use with digital audio workstations are the current darling of the hardware industry. There's a good reason for this-they give your computer a tactile, mouseless...
My brother and I recently built a "real" recording studio to replace my home studio. As a cost-savings measure, we chose not to float the floors; but we did spend the big bucks on well-built walls,...
Now that writable and rewritable DVD's are all the rage right now, not a lot of excitement can be drummed up for new and decidedly better CD-R/RW recorders. However, Yamaha has pulled a neat trick...
The MXL V69 Mogami Edition is the latest in a parade of low-priced tube condenser mics on the market today. MXL's parent company, Marshall Electronics, has been the North American distributor for...
I borrowed a friend's Josephson C42's and am having a hard time returning them. I like a small-diaphragm mic with extended, smooth highs and good detail, full midrange, and lows without any boom or...
It's the functionality of this console that makes it so special. The original 02R was a groundbreaking digital console that came to market at a price point that was hard to pass up. It was this...
This record came out a few years ago but since Spin Art has been totally lame about sending us promo CDs I had to wait 'til I bought it to do a review. Jason is a great pop songwriter (John and Andy...
Craig Gurwich has been a long-time Tape Op subscriber, and it's great to get a CD in the mail and recognize his name as the creator. This CD is a dreamy delight, tracked on his 8-track 1/2", and...
Chris Knox was interviewed some time ago in Tape Op, and along with his partner Alec Bathgate has been the Tall Dwarfs for many years now. This album began on Chris' 1/2" Tascam 8-track but ended up...
Sam Coomes of Quasi is the Blues Goblins. One original song appears among severely frantic, disturbed takes on classic blues tunes by artists like Muddy Waters and Leadbelly. Sam played all the...
Kevin Friedman is a Portland-based guitarist of note, having been in many interesting local bands. This is his solo alias, recorded on a Roland VS880 Expanded with an Ensoniq ASRX, Kawai K-1 synth and...
I must admit to being a closet prog rock fan. I saw King Crimson when I was 18 (Discipline tour!) at a tiny club, and again in the mid '90s. Trey was playing his crazy Warr guitar on that tour and...
One time Tape Op writer and manager of MinerStreet/CycleSound studio in Philadelphia, Brian McTear is also a musician, having played in Marinernine and Mazarin among others. So what does he do when...
Ostensibly 4-track cassette recordings from 1987 that were "restored" in 2001, this is CVB's reworking of the classic cocaine-fueled Fleetwood Mac album - song by song! Some of it is funny, some is...
