Interviews
By Bren Davies, Brian T Silak
Months of email and phone tag pursuit went into the scheduling, rescheduling and subsequent rescheduling of this interview with one of my longtime producer-idols, the incredible (and fabulously friendly) Phil Ramone. Phil is one of those guys whose reputation precedes himself. Since turning his first...
Interviews
I first met Robin Guthrie three years ago. I was playing guitar with Seattle chanteuse Heather Duby and we were opening up for his band...
Interviews
Ross Hogarth is one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. His career spans multiple genres, years, and artists, and his disco...
Interviews
While receiving the Grammy for best hard rock performance, Dave Grohl thanked Nick...
Interviews
I sat down with cousins and co- producers Ben Herson and Daniel Cantor at Daniel's...
Any one of Les Paul's amazing careers would make him remarkable. His wide-ranging excellence (and longevity) make him a legend and a living treasure. He is in the hall of fame for songwriting, invention and rock and roll — and has earned five Grammy awards. Les Paul celebrated his 90th birthday June 2005 at a Carnegie Hall concert, and continues to celebrate with his twice-nightly Monday gigs at the Iridium in NYC. This year he's working on a box set, at least two books, a documentary and new inventions. His new "rock" record, Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played, makes him the oldest artist to debut a record on the Billboard Hot 200 charts. Les is widely hailed as the father of the electric guitar, the originator of multitrack recording and pioneer of many recording techniques that we use today. As a sign of commitment to music making, consider that after a near-fatal car crash in 1948, Les had his right arm pinned in position to cradle and play the guitar, where it remains. At Les' home sits the Octopus and Monster, the first multitrack tape rig, still running. Guitars, amps, loudspeakers and recording gear from the beginning to today surround us — point in any direction, and there is an Ampex tape machine. Across the kitchen counter with a Les Paul guitar and Fender Twin at his knee, our host generously and graciously dispenses enlightenment, anecdotes and popcorn — from 8 pm to 6:30 am for several nights. As Dale Epperson and Elliott Liggett tend to the API console in one of the three home studios, the names of those he has known parade by: Autry, Hendrix, Django, Jeff Beck, Bill Putnam, Sr. These are excerpts from hours of conversation. I wish you could have been there.
What has 22 switches and 18 knobs, is accented with the colors of the rainbow, and is more flexible than a circus acrobat? Give up? The Buzz Audio ARC 1.1 Analog Recording Channel! It's a mic preamp, instrument DI, multiband EQ, and dynamics processor with opto compression and FET limiting-all in...
The two-channel BLUETUBE DP is the successor to the original BLUETUBE mic preamp. Each channel is fully independent and features 48 V phantom power, a 20 dB pad, an 80 Hz high-pass filter, polarity reversal, knobs for gain and tube drive, and VU meters that read from -20 dBu to +6 dBu. As the...
Many years ago, back when my studio WaveLab was called 7n7, I was prowling around our musician's mecca, The Chicago Store, with JD Foster, in search of odd things to augment the Green on Red record we were about to track. JD discovered an odd looking microphone that looked like a mini U 87....
It seems like I'm always raving about Radial's product line. So far, I've purchased and reviewed Radial's Reamping Pack, JDI passive DI, J48 Mk2 phantom- powered DI (Tape Op #49); X-Amp active re-amplifier, and JPC stereo PC-AV DI (#45). All of these products feature the same tough and completely...
When Bag End sent me a three-piece system featuring their new M-6 studio monitors and Infrasub-12 PRO subwoofer, I lugged the heavy boxes over to WMBR Radio (where I used to DJ and engineer live recordings) for my colleagues there to use and test. I had little interest in auditioning these speakers...
By now, many of you are familiar with the MP1 series of mic preamps from OSA (see Tape Op #33). For those of you who are not, these preamps are based around the familiar API 500-series form factor and share the same size and pin-out, making them compatible with existing boards and racks. OSA also...
Dirk Brauner and company have been building handcrafted, boutique tube mics in Germany for a little over a decade. Their USA division has been steadily introducing these wonders to the stateside market with great word-of-mouth success, despite the glut of inexpensive, assembly-line-built...
When I recently set up an editing and production desk in my home office and moved my ADAM P11A powered monitors to the desk, I needed some way of raising the monitors to match ear height and prevent first reflections from the desk surface. Basically, I wanted 8'' high stands with only a slight tilt...
These days, it's important to optimize every link of the audio chain, starting at the source. Often this source is a guitar pickup. Despite the name, the Steel Guitar Black Box is a device that fills a long-time need for studio rats and guitarists of all types. The tube-driven SGBB is intended to...
I'm sure most Tape Op readers know that the summing wars are really heating up. As widely discussed in these pages and at TapeOpCon for the last few years, summing devices, such as the Roll Music Folcrom and the Dangerous Music 2-BUS, have set the stage for the onslaught of devices that allow you...
If there is a hip weird band in your town, it's highly probable that they either have a theremin or are saving up for one. The only instrument that you don't have to touch in order to play, the theremin is experiencing a bizarre surge in popularity, and all around the world, musicians are waving...
The Triwave looks exactly like its name suggests: ludicrous. It's a customizable sound generator housed in a small metal box covered with lots of knobs-anywhere from ten to twenty of them-which stick out on all sides and have labels like "linnet" and "gale." What does it do? Well, the 4ms website...
Giving Z-Vex a run for its money, Austin-based Devi Ever has been creating some of the most unique effect pedals around for just a bit over two years. I recently had a great time trying out a couple of her designs. First up was the aptly-named Truly Beautiful Disaster pedal. Considering what it...
The MXL V6 is a large-diaphragm, solid-state condenser designed to emulate the characteristics of a tube mic-specifically, the MXL V69 (their top-of-the- line tube condenser). In keeping with the MXL tradition of providing solid, workhorse mics at unbelievably affordable price points, the V6 is a...