Agh. So I took time from watching Dennis Rodman get a piss test on the television to write this post. Your welcome:) Yesterday I did my first sesh at the Old House. It was great. I plan on making this my home base for most of my projects along with doing a little work at home and some other places around town if needed. Old House is everything I could ever want in a studio. It is loaded with inspiring instruments and run by super cool people.
Me on the modded '91 Amek Angela
Dave Lauderbaugh - Songwriter/Arranger/Producer
Dave Lauderbaugh is a producer/songwriter in Charlotte and he came along with me. We arrived at about 10:45. Chris wasn’t going to get there to open up shop untill 11. Dave and I decided to get some breakfast and come back. While trying to leave the studio lot (by way of car) we were attacked by an australian sheep dog. This shit was hilarious. I didn’t want to hit the bastard, but every time I inched forward the dog would bolt in front of the car. Dave hops out of the car with a shotgun and… Nah. We eventually got away, but almost died from laughing so hard. It was like stop-n-go traffic with a big ass dog.
Me and Chris Garges (Manager of Old House/Killer Drummer)
We got some apple turnovers and coffee and came back at 11. Chris Garges was there to let us in. Chris is the manager of Old house, and a badass guy. He will be 2nd engineer on most of my sessions there. He can get around the studio better than anyone, so it is beneficial to have him there as an extra pair of hands and ears.
I didn’t bring any clients in, for the objective of this day was to go through and experiment with the gear, get used to the vibe, and to just have fun.
Track sheet
The first thing we messed around with was drums. This is definitely a “drummers studio”. They have multiple kits, a closet full of snares, and various bells and shakers. Chris is a killer drummer, and I was nice enough to do the playing for us. Having a good drummer way exceeds having good gear. Fortunately we had both.
Chris playing the skins
The mix-match kit we put together
The kit consisted of a custom Noble & Cooley maple 20×17″ kick. A N&C Rack tom from the same kit as the kick along with a badass swirly blue Gretch floor tom from the 60′s. We tried a few snare drums. First a ludwig acrolite. Then a Rogers Powertone Chrome-Over-Brass Snare. We ended up with a Pork Pie Patina Brass Snare. Its a 7×13 snare that has been dipped in acid. Funny thing.. For a metal snare it had a really nice woody crack to it. We used paiste cymbals. Listening to the kit in the room.. Holy moly! It sounded great. The first thing I noticed was how much the toms cut through. The snare sound could crack your teeth. Dave probably lost a tooth in the midst of it all. We started with overheads. I was antsy to try out the Coles 4038 Ribbon mics. I was shocked at the size of these puppies. They were big and heavy. The magnets in the mics had such a powerful magnetic field, and the mics would actually stick to each other. We tossed up a spaced pair and ran them through some Buzz Elixir preamps and a Sontec eq. Wooh! baby. It sounded sweet right off the bat. The imaging was great. It was a very “real” “in the same room” kind of sound. An organic yet clear representation of the kit. The Buzz pre’s were nice and clean but still pretty thick. They added a nice sweetness, yet still let the mics keep their sound.
Noble&Cooley Kick - d12e and Lawson 47fet
Next we moved onto kick drum. I started first with just the lawson 47. I dug the sound of it a lot. It had a good balanced sound. Kick was hard at first because I wasn’t use to the monitoring. I have always used a sub at home. Chris mentioned that I am just going to have to trust that all of that information is there. Next I tried a single AKG D12E.
fooling with the d12e
The d12e has it’s own sound. A nice low end and a sort of “thwack” on the top. I noticed a lot of mid range information. It’s a pretty easy mic to eq and shape into what you want. As you can see up top. I ended up going with both mics. The d12e in the hole along with the lawson 47fet on the skin. Both about 3 inches out lined up.
Both mics ran through Neve 1272 pres and Api 550b EQ. The lawson also hit a distressor (dist 3 med at/rat -2-3db) before hitting the radar. The settings on the api pictured below wasn’t what ended up being used. Those settings are pretty extreme. I ended up being safe and leaving the lawson eq pretty flat, and we did most of the final EQing on the Amek at mixdown. Having the signal just run through the circuit sounded nice.
Both mics hit these.
Api 550b next to the buzz elixirs used on the OHs
The drum sound was done! Done done done. The kit only needed these mics to be honest. The kick was thumpin’ , yet still present. The overheads picked up the cymbals in a sweet manner along with accurately picking up snare and plenty of toms. I ended up with no tom mics. Didn’t need em’. But since I am an addict I wanted to throw a few more things into the mix. I wanted a little more body to the snare so I mic’d the shell with a Beyer M201. I ran it through a Langevin am16 pre then to a distressor. It put a little more meat in the mix and added some nice content to the “ringing” of the snare.
Beyer m201 hypercardioid ->am16 ->distressor
Ok Ok so one last thing on the drums… Room mics! I am a room mic whore. How do you create depth in recordings? Go deep. Off of the live room there are 2 medium size Iso booths. We left the doors open and pealed the rugs back. One room is off of the right of the live room, and the other off of the left.We put two AT4050 mics, in omni, about 2 feet high in both iso rooms. I ran these through Api 512c pres. I was freakin shocked at how great the stereo image was. The snare was right in the middle where I usually keep it. I was blown away. Well that’ll work -Dave
at4050 omni rooms
Patchbay for drums
label maker
Next we moved onto messing around with guitar tones. There’s like 15 or so amps at Old House and being a guitar player I knew that it would be easy for me to get caught up in wanting to try them all! So I stayed tamed and just chose a few to mess around with. The first one I tried was a custom built trainwreck clone. It was sweet. I was running it through an avatar 2×12 cab w/blue alnicos. I didn’t decide to use it in the recording but I liked it a lot. There were also a heap of other amps… Marshalls, vox, airline, fender, mesa, etc etc.
Me grabbin' some info on the OldHouse custom built amps
3 Old House Custom amps
In the end I decided to run two amps simultaneously. A Top Hat Club Royale 2×12 combo and an Old House Custom “redhead” amp. The redhead is sort of a 2-channel British thing. The tophat was like a more modern sounding AC30 and the redhad had kind of a cool boxy low-gain sound. The two combined into a nice swampy sounding get-up. Signal chain is as follows: Tophat ->md441->API312 / Redhead->royer r121->neve1272
I also took one of those AT4050s we had set up for drums and used it as a guitar room mic. I put it on the other side of the live room with the door open.
Guitar Rig
If I had more time I would have spent a little more time on guitars. But since I knew it was my weak spot, I tried to focus less on it. The guitar I used was a White/gold Les Paul Studio. The amps were split with a Little Labs STD (Scorpios edition).
Me and Chris comparing some different comps
Next thing we did was bass. I didn’t really get any pictures of this part (sorry bassists). I used an old 70s p-bass that was sort of a nicotine/yellow color. It was beastly. Probably the most solid feeling instruments that I have ever played. We ran it through the DI of the API 512c and then into a Purple MC76 comp before hitting the radar. The 512 really held the low-end together. It was tight and smooth. The MC76 leveled it out nicely and added some brightness to it.
Stock photo of Purple MC76
So now we had all of the basic tracking pretty much completed. We moved onto a few little overdubs. I wanted to mess around with some instruments that I don’t get to play on an everyday occasion. I added a little glockenspiel part along with an organ part. The glock was a vintage set that sounded really really pretty. We mic’d it with a Coles 4038 going through the Buzz Elixir. The mic was about 3-4 ft. above. It sounded very shimmery (am I allowed to use that word?)
Glock 9 homie
For the organ Chris just pulled the leslie into the live room and I picked a mic already set up to use. The organ itself is an old Hammond 2 tier organ (c-3) from the 60′s. It has two start engines on it and has trouble starting up in the cold. That adds some character for sure. We used the Lawson fet47 about 10 ft away from the leslie. The mic was about 2 feet off of the ground. I love the leslie. Man that thing sounds thunderous.
Thunder puss
Hammond C-3
By this time it was getting dark, so I wanted to move onto doing a little mix down. By the way if you are wondering what we were working on….. Nothing. Chris laid down a beat, and I just noodled little riffs over it just for fun. I grouped the drums and did a little pre-mix. We put a Summit DCL-200 Stereo Tube Limiter on the drum bus to fatten it up. Next we ran an aux send to a Klark Technik DN-780 Reverb. Dave toggled through the settings and I picked out a plate verb I wanted to use. I returned it to a stereo track and fed the snare to it. It widened up the snare a good bit. Next we did some major eqing to the kick drum mics using the Amek pres. Took a while to get em to sit right but in the end they sounded awesome. Lastly I ran the room mics through the OldHouse LA2A clones and crushed em’ to hell. It brightened up in a pretty pleasing way.
Patchin' away
Reverb unit that we used for the snare
Next we pulled up the bass. I inserted a distressor on it just to give it a little more thickness. We made another aux send to an Effectron II delay. Made a short mono delay to feed a little bass to. That’s sort of a normal thing I like to do for slower bass parts.
Delay used on the bass
After the bass and drums were happenin’ I put all the guitars to a group. There was some funky mid range stuff going on so we patched a Sontec EQ on the group. The Sontec cleared it up for the most part. The Sontecs truly are beautiful.For the most part they are transparent, but have a sweet high end. You can also get really surgical if needed. We added a little top to the guitars because the high end was a tad dull.
Patchbay at mixdown
Dave w/ a Rubber Ducky James Brown
I didn’t mess much with the glock or the organ. I just threw ‘em up in the mix and panned ‘em around until Dave smiled. Lastly we patched a few things into the 2-bus to sort of “finalize” the mix. The first thing it hit was a Gyraf SSL buss compressor clone. Holy crap. This thing instantly tightened up the whole mix and held it together. I will really have to try hard not to overuse that puppy. We then patched in another Sontec EQ. Added some top and Chris came in a shelved off some of the low end stuff that wasn’t necessary. That was it. We burned it. Listened to it. Word 
Radar 24 system
So It was my first official time using a Radar System. They sound awesome. This will def take a few more days of messing around to get fast with it. There are a lot of little shortcuts and hot keys. I have been so use to using a computer/DAW. I really like the work flow of this thing tho! Pros: sounds really good. Very stable. Lack of editing (means the artist has to play good and there is less manipulation). Cons: 24 channel track count (not too big of a deal). Lack of editing (can be good or bad, that’s why I put it in both pros and cons).
One final shot of the Amek. This thing sounds very pretty.
Overall we had a great time. I look forward to bringing my clients here. I know they will love it.
Hope you enjoyed my first post. Stay tuned. Daniel Grimmett 704-905-8035
