TONY CASTLES! by Kyle

So, a couple weeks ago, the latest project from Famous Class records came to the headroom. Tony Castles! They wanted to record 2 songs for a 7 inch on 2 inch tape.

Gabby, the drummer wanted a really punchy, dry retro sound. so we ended up using most of our 60's slingerland champagne kit. I used the U87 as an overhead and moved it around to a few different places. I finally decided to point it low and straight at the snare drum. The kick drum started out problematic. I wanted a sound that was fat and punchy, after trying an AT 4050, a Shure beta 57, an AKG d112, all of them sounded weak. I finally tried the Royer 121 ribbon mic on a whim, and it ended up sounded full, but lacked punch. In the end, I decided to track the kick drum with both the beta 57 and the royer.

The bass was recorded through an Acoustic bass amp through an Acoustic 2 by 15 cab. Paul turned the tone down on his bass and we blended the signal of a Shure 57 pointed at the center of the speaker cone, and an Oktava condensor off center on the other speaker cone through bussing the sound workshop.

We tracked bass, drums and scratch guitar live for vibe with a click, and did the final guitar sound afterwards in order to focus on getting the right sound.

For guitar, we split the signal between the orange AD 30 through the mesa 2 x 12, and the ampeg rocket. I mic'd the orange with 2 57's, and the ampeg with a sennheiser 609 (which is very similar to the 57). In addition I put the royer 121 out into the garage. This provided a guitar tone with a lot of depth. There was width from the stereo orange, grit and character from the ampeg, and the room mic in the garage gave the sound a sense of space.

We tracked Vox, and then we tracked keyboard through the leslie, as well as some rhodes electric piano. Before the band left, we decided to re-amp a few things. We sent some vocal harmonies through the leslie, and we sent the kick drum and snare drum through the tiny ampeg mic'ing it with the sennheiser 609 with a lot of compression and distortion from the Empirical Labs Distressor for a really trashy blown out sound! In the end we were all really excited about the sounds we came up with! I'll be sure to post a mixed track asap

Kyle