Week 2 Making Shangri La

Mark outside the studio with his Teisco Spectrum 5

We are having a week off (16th Feb) and Mark and I are back in the UK. I shall of course resume the diary when we return next Monday.

‘Waynes world.. Waynes world’

Here’s a couple of shots of Chuck Ainlay in the control room

Some of you have asked why Glenn Saggers (Mark’s guitar tech.) isn’t in any of the pics. That’s because he’s back home looking after his new arrival, a lovely baby girl.

Four beautiful Altec M11 mics

me on the Hammond

Mark putting down a Ramirez pass

Richard ‘working’ a National square-neck tri-cone steel with a big fat AEA 44 mic (and an AT4051)

does this mic make me sound fat?

dinner
clockwise from the left
Chad, me, Beej, Pete, Chuck, Miriam, MK, Richard, Glenn & Jim.Chuck actually took this photo and was subsequently ‘Photoshopped’ in

longboard….

time for a gear check.

Mic pre’s and compressors

Chuck’s Nuendo rack fully loaded with Mytec converters, Nuendo interfaces, 2 PC’s and sans-drives etc.

The Fairchild compressors

In response to many questions we’ve had asking why we use Analog tape AND digital HD recording……..All the drums, bass, guitars are recorded onto two 2″ Studer A800 tape machines fitted with 16 track headblocks.We transfer to Nuendo once the initial take is decided upon. All the overdubs/editing/mixing is done in Nuendo until the final stage when the old analog tape is used to playback the original drums/bass (whatever benefits from the analog sound) assuming no edits are involved, which they usually aren’t.
Because we utilize 96k with high quality (Mytek) converters, the integrity and PUNCH of the 2″ analog is retained.
Think of the analog machine as a cool plug-in. It’s all to do with harmonic distortion and transients!