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FAQ Friday: Vocals, Vintage Gear, and Training Your Ears

Warren Huart

Hi everybody, hope you’re doing marvellously well. We’re big, bad, and back in black for another FAQ Friday.

This week’s questions dive into three areas that come up constantly in the studio and in the comments:

  1. My go-to vocal processing chain
  2. Cheap vs expensive gear, is there really a difference?
  3. How to train your ears to hear more detail

Let’s jump in.

What’s Your Go-To Vocal Processing Chain?

The honest answer?

I don’t really have one.

I just finished mixing David Bennett’s upcoming album, which features multiple singers across different songs. Even with the same singer on two different tracks, I approached the EQ and compression slightly differently. Why? Because the song dictates the treatment.

If I’ve recorded the vocal myself, I’ll usually compress on the way in. That means I’m not fighting dynamics later unless the arrangement is incredibly dense. Once I’m mixing, I tend to reach for tools I know inside out.

Here are the ones I come back to again and again:

I owned an SSL 4000 console for nearly 20 years, so that sound is in my DNA. The high end is smooth and musical. I’ll often:

That “de-ess, brighten, de-ess” approach creates a halo of air around the vocal while keeping harsh upper mids under control. You’re letting the shimmer through while taming the bite.

If I want ultra-air, something like the Massive Passive-style air bands can help. However, most of the time, R-Comp, R-Vox, and SSL-style EQs get me exactly where I need to go.

There is no magic chain. There is only context.

Cheap vs Expensive Gear: Is There Really a Difference?

This is a big one.

Let’s take the classic 1073 example.

A true high-end clone like the BAE Audio 1073 is built with extraordinary care, often using premium components and transformers faithful to the originals by Neve.

Then you have lookalikes. Same colour. Similar knobs. Very different internals.

We once did a shootout between five different 1073-style units, from vintage to boutique to entry-level. When we nulled them against each other, the differences were not subtle.

The more expensive units tended to have:

However, here’s the important part.

Is the difference massive? No. Is it there? Yes. Is it worth 3x the price? That depends entirely on you.

I always think of it like cars. A £70,000 Jaguar gets you extremely close to a £750,000 Ferrari in performance terms. The last few percent costs exponentially more.

That’s how audio gear works.

Two key factors matter:

1. Reliability

If I’m spending serious money, I want something that lasts decades. The original Neves are still in service today. That longevity is part of the value.

2. Sonic Character

A 1073 has a sound. It’s full. The high end is silky. The midrange is beautiful. I love it on snares and kicks. On vocals, I usually track flat, maybe high-pass if the room is noisy, and shape the rest in the mix.

However, inexpensive gear can absolutely win.

I’ve used a 1970s Yamaha acoustic on major records that beat out beautiful vintage Gibsons and Martins when we actually put a mic in front of them. A beaten-up Ludwig Supraphonic I bought for £150 has been on more albums than most boutique snares.

The point?

If it inspires you and sounds great, use it.

Don’t let gear snobbery stop you from making music. We should be encouraging creativity, especially now when AI is threatening to replace real human expression. The tool matters. The music matters more.

How Do You Train Your Ears?

Short answer?

Work. Work. And work some more.

There are fantastic ear-training tools that help you identify frequencies, and they’re fun. However, you don’t need to know the difference between 3.1 and 3.2 kHz to make great records.

You need to:

Reference tracks are incredibly important. When I mix, I almost always have something to compare against. It might be something I mixed years ago to get back into that headspace, or a commercial track in the same genre with similar energy.

Trust your ears.

If a frequency spike annoys you, deal with it. If it doesn’t annoy you, even if you see it on an analyser, maybe it’s fine.

Remember this: Ray Davies was in his late teens and early twenties when he wrote songs like:

These were young musicians creating timeless music without the benefit of modern plugins, analysers, or infinite tutorials. Just ears, instincts, and hard work.

I’ve worked on nearly 3,000 released songs. The people I know who are massively successful did not get there because of ear-training apps. They got there by doing the work.

There are no shortcuts.

Use the educational tools if you enjoy them. Add them to your process. However, never replace real-world mixing and recording experience with theory alone.

Final Thoughts

Whether we’re talking about:

It always comes back to the same thing.

Make music. Trust your instincts. Put in the hours.

If you’ve got a £4,000 mic pre, fantastic. If you’ve got a budget interface and a pair of Sony 7506s, fantastic. The album I just mixed was entirely in the box, mostly on headphones.

What matters is the result.

Thanks for watching and reading. Leave your questions below for the next FAQ Friday.

Have a marvellous time recording and mixing.

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