Being in the right place at the right time is sort of a mantra in the recording world — and a serendipitous moment that we all may hope for. Ken Scott has literally been in the right place a...
Tommy Guerrero may be best known as one of the members of the infamous Bones Brigade skate team from the '80s. A lot less people know that he has been playing music for as long as he's been...
A few years ago, I was at the winter NAMM show, the insane dog and pony show of musical madness that it is. If you've never been, it's hard to imagine the spectacle of it all; death metalers...
Amsterdam is one of my favorite cities in the world — plus some great music comes from there, like The Ex and Solex. While visiting there a while back, I asked Elisabeth of Solex who was...
Elizabeth Sharp records twisted bits of rhythm and melody under the name Ill Ease. After stints behind the drums in New Radiant Storm King and on bass in Skinner Pilot, Sharp decided to go solo and...
So you say you know Kurt Bloch, guitarist/songwriter for the seminal '90s mega-pop band the Fastbacks. And maybe you know his involvement as the "junior" member of the Young Fresh Fellows. But did...
In an anonymous garage on a residential street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn sits Excello Recording. It's been there for 13 years, long before the parade of hipsters crossed the BQE. It's an enigmatic...
Jay McKnight is the founder and operator of MRL — Magnetic Refer- ence Laboratory. If you've ever owned and maintained an analog tape deck you know MRL as one of the few sources for...
Polarity reversal, whether it's via a console, mic pre or plug-in, is not simply a way to check phase relationships between two sources. It can also be a helpful tool in the studio. Headphone...
I just hit the ninth anniversary of signing the lease on my studio space today, and I'm in the planning stages for moving into a new building (courtesy of my landlord-to-be, Hamptone). Reflecting...
The Tubelink2 is an interesting two-channel variable- MU tube limiter. It is a Class-A/B design with custom transformers on both the input and output and a complement of readily-available tubes...
Every January, I attend the NAMM show with John Baccigaluppi and Larry Crane, and we spend days walking like zombies through giant rooms full of instrument and gear manufacturers. Pretty much...
Fellow gear reviewer Eric Tischler sent me this helpful tool. It's a key fob with a 1/4'' plug and four LED's, one for power and three for -32, -22, and -16 dBu signal level. You plug it into a jack,...
Face it. You need a drum machine. Whether it's for something as simple as generating a decent click for a drummer, working out song arrangements, or even for full-blown drum and percussion tracks, the...
The GML 2032 is a single-channel preamp/equalizer that draws from the designs of the GML 8300 mic preamp series and the GML 8200 equalizer, adds a high-impedance instrument input on the front panel,...
While many excellent, low-cost, nearfield monitors have appeared on the market lately, studio subwoofers in our budget range that can accurately reproduce sound in the sub-80 Hz regime have been hard...
This was one of the neatest things I saw at last fall's AES show, but after Wes Dooley was nice enough to give me one, it was lost in shipping coming back from the show. So, after seeing him at NAMM,...
This affordable little box will hook up your turntable to your computer's USB port, thus allowing you to transfer vinyl LP's to digital. If this doesn't answer all those emails I've received asking...
The TM-1 is a tube-based signal-processing device hand-made in California and housed in a heavy, yellow, Hammond-style case. It has five comfortable knobs and five jacks and runs on an AC power...
Accusound® Silver Studio Pro cable features silver- plated copper strands, unique winding techniques, and a black, braided nylon jacket. It's made in the USA and comes with a lifetime warranty. Do...
My brother John has been recording music as long as I have (since the early '80s), but while I ventured into professional engineering, John's always been more of a musician than an engineer. With that...
This is a very cool DVD produced by and available from audioMIDI.com. Bob Moog (in his last public appearance), Tom Oberheim, and Dave Smith (of Sequential Circuits and Evolver fame) are the featured...
I've been trying to find more synths and modular synths to put into my studio, partially to play them as instruments of course, but also for all the possibilities of using them as audio processors for...
After last year's AES show, this was the one plug-in I was really excited to hear. We have one of the hardware Chandler TG 12413 limiters in the studio, and it has quickly become a favorite amongst...
It's difficult to pigeonhole the API 2500 compressor for a specific purpose. In fact, it has found broad acceptance in mixing and mastering suites alike. In most part, this is due to the broad...
This is one of the first mics resulting from the collaboration between Electro-Voice and Blue Microphones. It's a medium-diaphragm (14 mm) condenser microphone in a beautiful and very functional form...
Although most engineers tend to relegate multiband- processing to mastering or final mixing, I find myself using multi-band or frequency-selective processing on individual tracks all the time. For...
My first thought upon powering up these compact nearfields was, "Wow, these sound much bigger than they look!" After spending some time tracking and mixing through them, I'd have to say they give much...
During one of my Recording Workshops a few years ago, while I was talking about using an RTA (Real Time Analyzer) to check mixes, a student piped in that there was a free plug-in online. So we...
My wants and needs in an audio interface today are very specific. I work solo 90% of the time, so I rarely ever need more than two analog inputs; these have to be XLR with phantom power. I want as...
