For the past month or so, I’ve been helping my friend, Goh Nakamura, work on some stuff for his next album. Bear in mind that Goh and I are probably at the opposite ends of the musical spectrum. These days, my world is pretty much software and he’s an old school singer/songwriter troubadour, but we both have a bad case of gear lust. We set up a home studio rig in a living room at Goh’s place and I brought in a variety of Mics and Mic Pres and a Valve Compressor, and a couple of EQs so that we could capture a really nice sound of Goh’s singing and guitar playing. We eventually got the right sound after a bit of toying with sound treatment along with some Tube Traps.

Last week, Tim Bulkley was in town from New York for some gigs, and we ended up tracking Tim on several songs at Open Path Studio in San Jose. Since we had access to some nice vintage gear, including our REDD.47 pres, and a modified Altec (Len Page specs) I decided to see if we could get that ‘ringo’ sound on Tim’s drums. We ran a U47 FET on the kick, and a U87 on the mono overhead through the pre’s and managed to dial up a nice vintage mono drum sound.

As a backup, Lee, Open Path’s engineer, setup a standard stereo overhead and close mic setup to have some options down the road. We managed to knock out 6 tracks that day. The tracks are currently stewing and I haven’t had the chance to listen to them closely yet, but the initial rough mixes are starting to sound pretty good.

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