I finished mixing the last project to be completed in the house and we immediately set to tearing things down. As of today we are 2 weeks into our transition to the new studios and probably 2 weeks from being up and running again. We have all been working long exhausting days doing everything from building and re-wiring cable to painting and caulking. We have a great team here and have also been lucky to have a lot of help from friends outside of the studio team. I hope we will continue to be so lucky as we near the finish line.
The 1608 gets torn down. We bought this console when we first moved into the house, 3 years ago, with the plan of moving it into studio 1, but then API introduced the 2448.
Packing things up feels pretty good after all this time, but the next few weeks will be a lot of work.
Getting the Burl Motherships configured for the two studios. Studio 1 will be 32 in 32 out and studio 2 will be 24 in 24 out.
John from Brett Acoustics working on fabric in control room 1.
Laying out the frames for the clouds in the iso booths.
We had the alley alongside the studio, and the parking for the church next door resurfaced as a thank you for letting us use their parking occasionally during construction and dealing with all the disruption.
I have a good friend who has access to all kinds of advanced cutting machinery and in addition to some metal logo plates in the studio he cut one for the front gate.
Moving the guitars from the house to the new instrument room was a big job full of multiple trips up and down the narrow old staircase of the house and the new metal staircase in the storage room.
A few days before Brett Acoustics left the site they started setting the credenzas and building the desks for the consoles.
Tony Brett using the laser to plot hanging locations for the cloud in control room 2.
Clouds being hung in the studio 1 isolation booths.
The cloud in control room 2 going up. This cloud is similar to the cloud in tracking room 2 except instead of using four foot lengths of the grid metal, the plans call for 3 foot lengths. Tony had to cut and re-rivot all of the cross pieces from four foot to three.
Maren Belnap, one of our engineers, wiring a cat 6 patchbay in machine room 2.
The time finally arrived to open the crate that had been sitting in the truck for weeks since the Brett Acoustics crew arrived, revealing our new API 2448.
Setting the custom made desk for the 2448.
Maren, Ryan King, Thom Canova and Tony Brett working in control room 1.
The 1608 on its way out of the house to be crated and taken back east.
Months ago we ordered a custom leather couch for studio 1 and when it arrived Ryan had to jump on and try it out.
Ryan and Maren took on the job of organizing and arranging our new mic cabinet.
Assembling the beautiful custom made desk for our Daking 1112 console.
Jed Jones, another of our engineers, begins putting the Daking back together.
We added a center producers desk to the console, but we had to lose one of the buckets that used to house 8 compressors in order for the console to still fit in the room. This means we have to consolidate the master meters to one panel instead of 2, hence the cardboard mockup.
The Daking is such a great sounding console, but its former frame and trim left something to be desired. Brett Acoustics did an amazing job with the new desk.
Years ago when I toured Manifold Recording in North Carolina I noticed they had a cart to store their mic stands, so I stole their great idea and made one myself.
The finished microphone cabinet.
The time finally arrived to head down to the storage unit and bring things back, beginning with the ATC monitors, still in crates that have yet to be opened.
This Argosy desk has been in our storage unit and will now be in the house control room to be used by our friends who will be renting the space.
In addition to the ATCs, on our first trip to the storage unit we brought back one of our EMT 140s. These things are so incredibly heavy and burdensome to move but its hard to argue once you have the chance to hear them in a mix.
On our second trip we picked up the 2nd 140 and both are now ready to be wired up. We need to figure out some isolation system for them to sit on, but for now Im just happy to have them back.