Studio 124

The live area acoustics are specially designed for recording instruments (string quartets, drums, 4 piece brass ensembles) or vocals and the control room is fully equipped with its SSL Matrix desk and state of the art hardware and software (2 x 16Go RAM linked Mac Intel Xeon, ProTools HD3) for film and television recordings. Equipment also includes a selection of "must have" hardware toys (Neve, SSL, API, Chandler Preamps, Compressors & EQ's, Distressors, DBX, etc..), tube, ribbon or transistor mics as well as an array of instruments (electric and acoustic guitars from the 5 continents), vintage amps and  keyboards, not forgetting an extensive library of sounds and plugins."

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NEWS , NEW GEAR !!!!

As you know if you have visited my pages i work in a lot of different areas. So my gear upgrades/additions cover :

- New guitars/string instruments
- New Fx pedals
- New synths
- New recording outboard gear
- New microphones
- New software/plugins
- New Virtual Instruments

September 2011

1. I finally found a Neumann Geffell CMV 563 vintage tube microphone from the 50's with its original power supply in perfect condition : it s often called the U47 from East Germany because it comes with the same M7 large cardioid diaphragm capsule. But it also can be used with another capsule, the M55k, which is omni. I use the M7 mostly for vocals or whenever a real fat tube warm sound is needed, when i have a doubt with the U67 s use. As for the M55k capsule it s fantastic for mellow or boomy acoustic string instruments, it gives a naturel clean sparkling sound without EQ, a good alternative option when i don t use the KM 54 Neumann tube mic.
2. My old WEM tube COPICAT tape echo has been repaired, after a long rest in my basement. New tapes found on the Internet, all the mechanical parts works again and now i can enjoy the real tape echo from the 60's, great fat sound. Perfect for Rockabilly guitar stuff, but not only : it s tube pre-amp stage (that Custom Copicat is the last Copicat model with tubes), fattens any incoming sound and it s really nice with synths sounds as well. Nice natural filtered decay and looping. Reasonable hiss and noise is included of course :-)
3. More API 500 modules : we added 1 512 preamp and 1 527 Compressor in the Sweet 10 Purple rack to now have a pair of API pre's and comp's, for stereo takes and inserts on the SSL Matrix. 2 more empty spaces will be filled soon, with a Al So compressor and a second Neve 1073, then the 500 series rack will be filled :-)
4. Plug-ins : Great new products from World leaders Native Instruments (Retro Machines MK2) and from Hollow Sun Shangri La and Techtron (Steve is a vintage sounds recreations specialist from UK : http://www.hollowsun.com/index.htm). I m a great fan of their products. He particulary did a great job with engineer Dan Wilson to sample the Novachord mythic synth.

July-August 2011

1. 1. A great new guitar : a FENDER STRAT "BONNIE RAITT Signature" from 1995 in mint condition, with the original case, tags and even the unused Fender cable. It has a nice narrow rosewood neck, Texas Special pick ups. It will be a good complement to my original vintage 58 maple neck Strat and my James Trussart custom hybrid Tele neck with Gibson scale/Strat body made of Warmoth parts and Bareknukles "Irish Rour" Rory Gallhager pick ups. This Bonnie Raitt has the exact Fender Strat sound that you can expect, from Stevie Ray to Hendrix or surf. It comes with 0.10 strings and i ll leave it like this. It sounds fantastic
   2. A KORG Micro Preset M500 vintage synth from the late 70's. It s pre-MIDI of course, and is in the ARP Pro Soloist vein. Very user friendly, sounds a lot like the Korg MS 10, with great bass sounds. Orchestral Manoeuvre in the Dark  used this synth a lot
   3. A fantastic new TIMMY Overdrive pedal : made in the USA by Paul Cochrane. Very hard to get, you have to pre-order and it takes 6 months to get.
   4. South Africa , Paris based Adam Wolfaardt is a talented guitarist and also an amp and pedal tech wizzard : he worked on my original Black Pannel vintage 64 FENDER DELUXE REVERB . He set it up back to original, it had been modified a couple of times and with such an amp , often considered as the best guitar tube amp in the world ever, it s best to keep in intact , just replacing the bad parts with recent ones or NOS with the same original specs.
   5. A vintage CALREC CM 1050 C microphone, built in the UK in the 80's. Abbey Road studios still has one, so it shows that even if it s not as famous as Neumann's or AKG's it s in the same pro studio league. It s a condenser mic , not a bright mic so i ll use it for bright sounding instruments with some Neve pre-amps, or with the AL.SO or SSL if i need extra highs without having to EQ  at the take.
   6. My JUNO 106 had suffered on tour with JM Jarre. It s been repaired by world renowned Jean Lou Dierstein, the analog synth repairman and builder d based in Paris who just sold one of his home built Ondes Martenod to Radiohead.
   7. On the computer side i got SNAPPER 2, by AudioEase, a great audio application tool  that allows to read, edit and export samples on the fly. Very useful. I heard about it from L.A composer Deane Ogden.

May/June 2011

 3 new items in my studio racks :

1. A new SWEET 10 PURPLE space rack to house API 500 style modules made by Purple in replacement of the 6 spaces of Brent Averill that started to be a little limited in terms of space.
2. A new Neve 1073 preamp to fit in
3. A double AL.SO preamp made by studio wizzard Olivier Bolling also in the API 500 format.

All pics can be found in the Photo Gallery under "Studio 124" - click on the "New Gear" tab.

Desk : SSL Matrix
Monitors : Dynaudio BM15, Avantone MixCube, Roland micro monitors MA-20
Computers : Mac 8 core + Mac 2 core linked via ViennaPro Server, MacBook Pro Intel lap top, PowerBook G4, Mac G3, Mac 9500
Displays : 24" displays x 3
Interfaces : Digidesign 192 I/O interfaces, Sync and Midi, MBox, Digi002, Mini MBox2
DAW : ProTools 9 HD3, Digital Performer 7, Live 8, Cubase 5, Nuendo 5
Virtual Instruments :  Native Instruments, East West, Garritan, Motu, Spectrasonics, UVI, Vienna, reFx, YellowTools, Cinesamples….
TDM + VST, RTAS, AU Plugins:  Waves platinum + Signature series, Autotune Evo, Melodyne DNA, Sugarbytes, SoundToys…

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Outboard gear : XLogic Rack SSL, Purple Series 500 Sweet 10 rack.
Preamps : Chandler "Abbey Road" TG2 stereo, Neve 8108 AocAudio stereo, API 512 x 2, Joe Meek VC1, AEA stereo, SSL X-Rack VHD stereo, Dual Al.So preamp MP2, Neve 1073.
EQ : SSL X-Rack E Series EQ modules, Chandler Little Devil (X2), Neve 8108 stereo, SSL stereo EQ module,
Compressors : SSL Stereo Bus compressor serie G, DBX 160 stereo, Joe Meek VC1, API527 x 2, Distressor stereo, SPL DynaMaxx stereo, DBX 118, Orban Parasound stereo limiter
Reverb, Filters & Delays : Roland, Lexicon, Korg, Line 6, Alesis, Sherman Filter2, Roland tape Space Echo, WEM Custom Copicat tape echo, Drawmer dual gate, Korg Kaoss pads...
Mics : Neumann U67 tube, Neumann KM 54 tube, Neumann-Gefell CMV 563 tube with M7 and M55k capsules, Neumann U87 "ORTF" (pair), Schoeps "ORTF" (pair), AKG C414 EB, AKG 451E, Elecrtrovoice RE20, Sennheiser MD 409 U3, Shure SM57, Shure SM58, Beyer ribbon MD 160, AEA ribbon R84, Calrec MC 1050 C.

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Instruments :
Synths : MiniMoog, Prophet 600, Juno 106, Korg M500 Micro Preset, Electribes, Virus, Korg R3, Micro Korg, RaveOlution 309, Korg Prophecy, DX7, various Roland….
Samplers : Akai S1000, EMU E4XT,
Guitar Amps : Vox AC30, Fender Princeton 1962, Fender Deluxe reverb 1964, Mesa Boogie 1975, Mesa Studio22, Hughes & Keltner, Magnatone, Polytone.
Guitars and various string instruments : All sorts of guitars from 5 continents : Fenders, Gibsons, Martin, Lag, Takamine, Dobros, National Lap Steel, Pedal Steel, Banjos, Ukulele, Oud, instruments from Asia , Mandolin, 12 string, Classical, Fender bass,imbri……
PedalBoards : POD X3 Live, 2 custom pedal boards with an assortment of Fulltone, Xotic, Keeley, Timmy, Subdecay, Pigtronix, VoodooLab, ZVex, Boss, Digitech, TC, Dunlop, Ibanez, SanSamp, Lehle, Hughes & Keltner, Vox, Line6, Matchless, Roger Linn, ElectroHamonix, Roland, Foxx, D.W.Fearn DI box…..