From Humble Home Studio to Massive Audio Career with Colin Liebich | Interview & Studio Tour

… and I was walking down the hallway and the manager said, “Hey, I’m talking to you,” and I said, “I know. It’s ridiculous.” I literally said that. I was just done with work and I knew it in that moment. I went and saw the CEO. I sat down with him and I said, “I got to go. I got to go home.” He’s like, “Well, what do you mean? Like you’re not feeling well? You want Monday off? You want a long weekend?” It’s like, “No, it’s more like one of those I got to go home and come back type of attitude.” So I actually said that to him. He laughed. He goes, “What are you going to do?” I said, “I’m going to go home and make recordings.”

Warren Huart:

Hi everybody, hope you’re doing marvelously well. Sitting with my friend Colin Liebich. How are you?

Colin:

How’s it going, Warren?

Warren:

I’m good.

Colin:

Good to see you, man.

Warren:

We’re at Plastic Dog Recording.

Colin:

Version three.

Warren:

Three. I was about to say two. Three.

Colin:

Yeah.

Warren:

How have you been? You been good?

Colin:

I’ve been amazing. Things are excellent. I’m glad to have you.

Warren:

Yeah, it’s wonderful. But this is super close to where you used to be. You’re not very far.

Colin:

Across the street.

Warren:

Yeah, you can’t get much closer.

Colin:

No, no, no. Jimmy and I decided to team up. He liked what I was doing over there and he invited me here.

Warren:

Wonderful.

Colin:

Here I am.

Warren:

Before we launch into like a shnizelton of gear to talk about, which is always fun. What is it like-

Colin:

Is that a metric figure?

Warren:

Yeah, that’s a metric figure.

Colin:

The shnizelton?

Warren:

The shnizelton, yeah. How does that work having two professionals working at the same time? Do you have set schedules? How do you work it out?

Colin:

No, we didn’t know how it’d work out at first. We kind of talked about it and then we just go to a point where our work flows are more later in the day, at night. He’s more 9:00 to 5:00. It’s just worked out. We work around each other when we need to.

Warren:

That’s great.

Colin:

It’s pretty simple.

Warren:

Is he the married with younger children kind of thing-

Colin:

Yeah.

Warren:

I get it. I get it. So he wants to start early and finish early.

Colin:

Right. So I’m able to come in, start my work, start my day around 6:00 PM sometimes. But if I need day times, if I’m doing strings or I’m doing things that require a day crew, we do it.

Warren:

I know there’s some studios, I mean, New York back in the ’70s, where it was 24 hours a day. They would have to do full changeovers of lock outs.

Colin:

We joke about that because basically we have a desk that we can’t do full recall on. So we have to take pictures, we have to recall things for our next sessions. So what we try to do is make sure if he’s got a week of mixing, he gets his mixing done. If I’m tracking… We’ve kind of designed the desk to handle tracking and mixing at the same time without really screwing much up.

Warren:

But there is a second room over there with another producer?

Colin:

Yes. And then Luis Guerra’s here and he’s, I’d say, more your composer type producer. He’s doing sync work and he’s doing a lot of neat stuff as well. So the three of us kind of… I mean, he’s in that front room, that production suite, but the three of us work really well together and that’s a really nice environment. That’s one thing that we get along, we like each other, there’s…

Warren:

So you’re clearly at Plastic Dog Recording, Version Three, but why is it not Top Tomato?

Colin:

The Top Tomato name, I think it was a market on the East Coast. It was a chain and so-

Warren:

Was it?

Colin:

I believe it was. They opened one out here and now we’re in the middle of it and it’s a music studio. We just like the Top Tomato name.

Warren:

It’s amazing.

Colin:

It’s on the front of the building.

Warren:

Love that.

Colin:

We like the sign. We like every aspect.

Warren:

But I didn’t know this was the studio. So when we’re on that group text and Ching and I were just pulling up outside, I said, “Are you near the Tomato place?” And you’re like, “We are the Tomato place.”

Colin:

Yeah.

Warren:

It’s pretty unique building-

Colin:

I like entering and leaving because people are walking by in the street and they’re like, “Oh, when’s the tomato market opened?” I’m like, “Well, we have some problems with the tomatoes. We won’t be open until next week.”

Warren:

A whole market just for tomatoes.

Colin:

For tomatoes. That’s right. Tomato, tomato, whatever.

Warren:

We just talked about it, Eric and I, we’ve done a bazillion videos and this is the first time we’ve ever actually hang out with anybody with a 5088. Although we have a mutual friend J.J. Blair has one sitting in boxes ready to be put into his new studio.

Colin:

He does. As a matter of fact, he inspired the way we approached this desk. First and foremost, I want to say this about the 5088. It’s got an amazing sound. It’s a very high quality, two bus. The channels are perfection in that they have transformer ins and outs in them. Really, for a modern day sound on a Neve desk, I’d say this is the way to go. Now, when you take what we’ve done to it with the mic pres, of course-

Warren:

And this piece specific, when he says Neve, he means Rupert Neve. He means-

Colin:

Actual Neve. Right. Of course, for those who don’t know, I represent BAE Audio. What I wanted to do was combine the two technologies. So I have 24 BAE Mic Pre’s. Well, I should say 22 with two vintage Neves in the desk. The first 16 flow right through the mixer. Now, that’s important because when we’re tracking, we have all that wonderful special sauce from the Mic Pre’s and their transformers, from the Rupert Neve designs channels, those transformers right in through our Burl Mothership, which I got to say that’s just another sound all in all that complements what’s here.

You really have perfection. I mean, I love the sound. When we’re tracking even your raw recording, it’s like, “Whoa, it sounds like a record.” It’s really the combination of BAE Audio and Rupert Neve designs coming together in one desk.

Warren:

Lovely.

Colin:

Then on the sides, I mean, we’ve also loaded the room up with quite a bit of outboard gear which really helps as well. Now, one of the other things to talk about is how to mix with it. As far as a mixing tool, it’s a fully analog desk. So when you’re mixing, oh my gosh, what a sound. You’re coming back through the same gear. So what we do is we’ve established a hierarchy. Where all the compressors live, what channels they live on, what we put through each channel remains the same for the most part. Therefore all we’re really recalling is the settings on the EQs and the settings on the compressors, which is kind of easy to do with a modern day phone. So again, we come back through on the mix and you’re basically like the old days, coming back from tape back to the desk going to the two bus.

We’ve just really worked out a workflow that’s super cool. I’ll say this, J.J. Blair, when we were discussing this and talking about the Mic Pre’s and how the desk would be used, I was talking specifically about the fader section. He said, “Oh, it’s real cool. What you do is you set up 16 ghost faders to just control your mix so that your actual faders and pro tools that are controlling your tracks have nothing to do with controlling the mix.” Then Jimmy and I have been perfecting this. We’ve really got it down to a science whereas before I was very sluggish about it and it was tough to wrap my head around. Now, I kind of love it and it’s really easy to go to. Every single one of my mixes now contains the fader positions for the first 16 and the analog mix on the desk.

Warren:

The thing that I’ve been hearing from everybody, J.J., you, I keep hearing this. It’s about the mix bus. Now, why is this a big deal for those of you who aren’t console users? Well, when you got a shnizelton, which we know is a metric-

Colin:

Measurement.

Warren:

… measurement of tracks, what can happen is that can basically cause a log jam. It can hit the master bass and everything just folds in and instead of sounding big, wide, and analog and deep and lovely that everybody talks about, it ends up sounding small. This has been just… Everybody I know has used this, has just said it’s the biggest, widest, fattest-

Colin:

Well, then you have an insert on the master bus. So that’s our Spectra Sonics compressors are running on that insert. So when you really take what’s really going on in the desk as you just mentioned, I have 24 channels coming into the desk used different ways. Another thing too is I got three Bricastis on the effects ends and returns and I have a pair of Moog delays.

Warren:

Oh, yeah, I was going to ask you about those. They’re over here.

Colin:

Yeah.

Warren:

Whipping quickly over here, so tell me about these. I haven’t used those yet.

Colin:

Well, Moog made these a while back and I don’t believe they’re even being made anymore.

Warren:

Oh, really?

Colin:

But they are fantastic as far as delays. We use them on the first bus. I can’t get enough of them. You can do anything you can do with the delay, but because Moog made it, they have their own special sauce they put into it. This was something Jimmy has always used. I love them. So that’s basically our effects for delays.

Warren:

That’s amazing.

Colin:

Yeah, and then the other three effects, as I said, I have three different Bricasti machines running at all times. We each have presets for our reverbs that we can bank and call up. I can’t say enough about the quality of Bricasti and how it sounds on the mix. Then, as you can see with the monitoring section, Ocean Way. Just the name alone, I think those who know Ocean Way know Allen Sides’ history with Ocean Way, what he did at the studios, the speaker company. These are our mains. This is what we listen back on after we’ve mixed.

Warren:

We listened back earlier. They sound phenomenal. Yeah. I can’t be more impressed by a speaker company. The Amphions here in the middle.

Colin:

Yeah, I track on the Amphions. The Amphions are pretty wild. They’re a really true flat response monitor. I know people love NS10s. This is a monitor that if you like NS10s, you’re going to track on these or you’re going to mix on these. We also mix on them. They just are a flat response true monitor. So the things, the drawbacks with the old NS10s, you might have. When it comes to a pair of One18s, with a sub, oh my gosh. Your mix is… It’s just I use them for the same reasons, but then there’s 100 reasons why I like them better just because of the sound quality that comes out of them. I’m seeing them everywhere now too, which is another thing. Tried it between the two. When I go from the Amphion to the Ocean Ways, it’s a very similar culture.

There’s a pair of ATC 25s. We all know ATC. Then again, another highly ranked monitor company. So when we have people who come in, they’re used to ATCs, they want to hear the mix on the ATC, we can definitely oblige them. But a funny thing that’s happened lately is more people now are monitoring on the Ocean Ways. They really like to hear them on the Ocean. It’s like I have friends calling me, say, “Hey, can I come over and put something up on the Ocean Ways and see what they sound like?”

Warren:

It does sound pretty phenomenal.

Colin:

Yeah. Or, “Can I come over and hear my mix on the Amphion One18s?” It’s like buy a pair. They’re great monitors. So we’re blessed.

Warren:

So how much are those Amphions?

Colin:

I believe they’re right around $3000 for a pair with the amp.

Warren:

Great.

Colin:

Yeah. I think as far as the modern… let’s say in the bedroom or if you want accuracy, these are the place definitely to go. If you want to accessorize and that, a Flex 25 subtone, it makes a lot of sense. There’s a lot of great mixers. Rob Kinelski, shoot. I wish I could list them all that are using them.

Warren:

Let’s do a little left to right and try and cover a bit more of the gear now we’ve done the monitors. So a G10. We love that.

Colin:

Yeah, the G10’s surgical. I mean, this is a piece of gear if you really want to cut into something with surgery and change a track or record a track. That’s a great tool. There’s a couple of MA5s.

Warren:

I haven’t used the MA5s.

Colin:

Oh, they’re pretty wild.

Warren:

What’s their sole characteristic? I have six 312s.

Colin:

It’s its own thing.

Warren:

Yeah?

Colin:

It really is its own thing. If I had to explain it, I’d say it’s kind of API and Neve had a little baby called MA5.

Warren:

What do you favoring it of?

Colin:

A lot of top end on them. They’re very unique that they have a lot of overheard.

Warren:

Is there a-

Colin:

Or head droop.

Warren:

Is there a design that they’re based on or close to or…

Colin:

No, I mean, the MA5s are their own design. That’s what makes them unique is they’re not based on anything else except the designer’s, Avedis’s, brain child. They’re highly regarded. The 312s, our BAE 312s. At BAE, we’ve always been proud of the 312, but one of the main things with this is if you really want that API experience, these are the original circuits from the cards that went in the old desks in the ’70s. I can’t get enough of them. I use them all the time tracking for various reasons.

Warren:

You use them all on guitars.

Colin:

Yeah. You use it on guitar-

Warren:

And bass.

Colin:

… and on kick drums. Right. You use them on bass. Next to that, I have a BAE 1073D. It’s the 500 series, 73 module. I always like to point out, the same care goes into a 73D that goes into one of our 73 modules. I mean, here’s one here. The same cards are in this that are in that that are in a vintage Neve unit. They’re all interchangeable parts. I love to talk about that when it comes to BAE, the fact that we can interchange all the innards with the vintage ones is amazing. People get it. They can tell by the sound.

The 10DCF, it’s really another really cool BAE. I don’t want to go on too much about BAE, but the thing with this compressor is it kind of has some of the bones of a 2254, yet some of the ergonomics or the user friendliness of a 33609 or 2264. So it has some presets that we’re familiar with in the Neve world, but really these came out on their own and became really musical in their own right. I love that the DCFs, the F is for filter. So you have filters-

Warren:

That’s a big deal that-

Colin:

Yeah, so you’re not, especially on the low end, you’re not letting it control your compression.

Warren:

I feel like if there’s one compression, a world of benefit to the most from the filter, it was these. Because the thing about the Neve for me at least, and everybody has different experiences, mine was it was like, “Yeah, I love this sponginess of a Neve compressor,” but it was always that low end driving it so dramatically because they have so much inherent, beautiful, low end. As soon as you put a filter on it, I remember trying, “Okay, ah, this is what I’ve always wanted.”

Colin:

Exactly. And there is a pair of 2254s over here. Well, we’ll talk about those. But on the drum bus, I love the 2254s, but the 10DCFs, if you really… I mean, let’s face it. Who in their right mind these days when it comes to vintage gears, some of the prices have gone through the roof. If I were to-

Warren:

Sure. Very silly.

Colin:

If I were limited in my… or I didn’t have 2254s, I could only go for a couple of compressors, it would hands down be DCFs because I could use them on the two bus, I could use them all over the place.

Warren:

As silly as it sounds and as obvious as it sounds, this kind of technology was always we were capable of doing this, but records made during the ’70s, nobody went that low. Vinyl couldn’t take-

Colin:

No, it couldn’t handle it.

Warren:

It couldn’t handle it. I know it seems so silly to think about now, but this vintage equipment, yes, it’s fat and warm, but there wasn’t the control on the low end that we need now with systems that… I mean, try listening through this. The low end is phenomenal.

Colin:

Well, and when you do look back and you think about things like a Fairchild 670, it was made for cutting vinyl. The low end is in a specific position just so the vinyl could be cut and as a compressor, it took care of what was going out to be cut as the length it’s cutting. A lot of people don’t think about it that way, that some of these pieces of gear were made specifically for cutting vinyl and keeping the low end at bay.

Warren:

Absolutely. So what have you got? You got a remote control for a TC. What TC is that?

Colin:

That’s a phase meter.

Warren:

Oh, it’s just a phase meter.

Colin:

Phase meter, yeah. And it’s not running at the moment because we don’t have a signal going through it, but this is just a straight phase meter. I can do a few different things with it. It has a couple of settings that I really like. If I want to change it, I can look at a radar view. The EQ portion is a lot of fun, the scope. Because if I have something radical, I can visually see it right off the bat what’s going on in Hertz.

Warren:

You’ve got it on an insert? Where is it coming out?

Colin:

No, it’s ESEBU. Right off my Burl Mothership.

Warren:

Oh, wow.

Colin:

Yeah. It’s really cool. Then I have an old school one, phase meter, up top. They work together. This has just a lot more functions. When I’m mixing, I always make a joke to people. I say, “If you go visit your mixer and there’s not a phase meter, got to run.” You got to know what’s going on with the phase, what’s going on with the width. How it’s being perceived by the meter is important to me. Plus it’s a great meter for what my output is. What am I handing to my mastering engineer? It makes a lot of sense because these days, a lot of people deliver mixes very hot because they don’t come from the world of what you’re supposed to be at or an idea of where you might be on the VU meter. They don’t really have one because they’re doing it in the box.

Warren:

I like this. I also like this idea of a digital, independent function because all my consoles… Well, my phase meter is actually being repaired. It has been repaired for about four years now, hasn’t it, Eric? Whole other discussion. Every day, we get somebody going, “How come your phase meter’s missing?” And this has been missing for about… But this idea of coming off digitally and having something independent like this is really smart. So you’ve got that on your print bus on the-

Colin:

Yeah, I mean, here. I’ll enable it for a second. So now what we’re looking at is the scope and it shows you everything from 31 Hertz up to 16K. So that’s one setting. Then I can go in here and I can actually look at the phase. It has my meter there to show me what’s going on with the phase. Just as this guy is doing the same thing. So now I can see the width of it. I can see what’s on the left, what’s on the right, what’s going on. But also importantly, I have LU up here. I can see what the average loudness units are.

Warren:

Nice.

Colin:

So when I’m looking at a mix, I just make sure it’s in the right place where I want to deliver it for mastering those types of things.

Warren:

Well, the nice thing is this is running all the time. You’re not having to open up a plug in and check. It’s just there. You can get used to working and just looking at it.

Colin:

Yeah, I just create a track that has two sounds. One to that meter, one to this meter. It comes right off the Mothership and it’s perfect. So when you set up a drum kit, just want to see what it’s up to.

Warren:

Manly. Your dreams have a sound.

Colin:

Yeah, Vanna did this for me a long time ago. When I first started out, I was in a bedroom studio. It was only nine years ago. But this was one of the first pieces of gear I bought. This is one of my favorite compressors as well. When I’m recording a piano, when I’m recording a bass sometimes. There’s so many different things I run through this. Vocals. I mean, it’s endless. The sound of the Vari MU, if you haven’t played with one, you should. I know you know the piece of gear well. It’s just such a tasty piece, just like our 10DCFs. They have their own personalities. This is one I just like… We use it all the time. It’s in constant use.

Warren:

It’s pretty much a staple, especially… I like them on guitars. Two buses. Every mastering engineer I’ve ever met has one.

Colin:

Yeah, yeah. I think Vanna said to me at one point, “Get the mastering version. It’s detented.” I’m like, “Yeah, I like the way it sweeps around.” The same with my Massive Passive. I don’t need the detents. I like it the way it is. But I think only because that was the first thing I had, the first decent compressor I ever had. But this is kind of like memory row for everybody. You have your Vari MU. This is 1176. It’s either version B or C. It’s an early version. Just had it recapped. It sounds superb. A couple of DBX 160s. I have some 165As that I love bringing in. I love it. There’s a Retro Sta-Level. Tasty, tasty piece. Our two bus compressors are a pair of Spectra Sonics.

Warren:

Great company, all of those guys.

Colin:

The model, 610s. Those are amazing. There is a little carcass over here turned around. That’s an actual Gates Sta-Level that’s going to go out for repair. Beautiful piece. Then starting at the top, we have… Wow, so that’s actually a Fairchild that has a blank faceplate that I refer to as the [Bock 00:32:28] child because David Bock put it together from Fairchild parts. It’s an amazing piece of gear. Again, like the Retro and the Fairchild, those kind of sit on the vocal compression chains when we want to go them.

Warren:

And you got some Cliff Maag stuff.

Colin:

The Magnum K. If you want a compression parallel EQ, it’s out of this world. The guys at Maag do an amazing job with the Magnum Ks. They take some getting used to only because the intricacies. One of the things that hit me too right off the bat that I loved was the input attenuation. That was the smartest thing because you always have people delivering you tracks and they’re way off the charts sometimes. So what I can do on the attenuation is I can dial it back. When they’re way too hot, having those attenuators is always key. So if I get a vocal, I got to mix something and the vocal’s recorded really hot, I can just pull the attenuation down.

Warren:

Yeah, I love Maag stuff. Family run business. Family run, just sweetest people on the planet. Love them.

Colin:

Cliff came to this technology through recording. That’s one of the things, like I love gear based on the fact that there’s a real recording engineer who had a need and he created it for himself. In doing so, I was at his home in Utah and he took me through it, why he made it the way he made it. Then just the fact that you can have just one compressor here, just at 2500, just to control that vocal. Like really smart stuff. So here’s your compressor, here’s your parallel EQ. Then you have this wonderful little compressor just in here that just handles the vocal. So when you sum it all up and stick it together, with an output that’s incredible, you just have a very versatile compressor EQ that does a lot of cool stuff, especially with vocals.

Warren:

Absolutely wonderful.

Colin:

I love having a pair. Those guys are so good to me. I love having the pair because I can put them on just about anything and make it sound better. Of course, what the Maag EQ is well known for is the air and the air on these goes up to 40K. So you can really push some air into it. Can’t say enough. Okay, I like gear. It’s obvious. I just love gear. What I’ve done though, is a couple people have come in here and said over the years, “Wow, you have a perfect amount of the right gear instead of a bunch of everything that isn’t getting used.” So that’s how I look at it.

Warren:

And the Manley Massive Passive?

Colin:

Well, that’s a cool one because I don’t know if you read the bottom of it…

Warren:

Yeah. Made in Chino, not China for Colin.

Colin:

Yeah. Again, Vanna was generous when it came to labeling it for me. Surgical piece of gear. This on our two bus a lot. It’s also on… Whatever you want to do with a Massive Passive. Stereo EQ. I can’t. It stands on its own. I couldn’t do it justice. You know what a Massive Passive does and how well they’re revered. Shoot, I go in studios sometimes and I see four of them in a row and they’re putting it on just about everything. They are beautiful. It’s another tool that I wouldn’t want to be without. Just like the 2254s that just came in. Those are-

Warren:

You got those recently?

Colin:

Yeah. Yeah, those are something else. I mean, I’ve just been enjoying them on just about everything. But I just did a drum track with them on the two bus. It’s a very, very nice feeling. But you’re right, going back, it is that old 2254 thick, fat, not a lot of top end. It has a one specific thing it does really well.

Warren:

I can personally never use them on a mix bus. I could never make them work.

Colin:

Yeah, I see that.

Warren:

But I know many people that love them on a mix bus. But not me.

Colin:

Well, I like them on a drum bus.

Warren:

Okay, that makes sense, especially a bright drum kit. They probably do wonders.

Colin:

Yeah, I like them on a drum bus. I like the Tube-Techs. The Tube-Techs do all sorts of wild stuff.

Warren:

Oh, they’re incredible. Yeah.

Colin:

Yeah. I mean, on vocals when you’re mixing, bringing a Tube-Tech in doesn’t… That’s frequent.

Warren:

Are those loudness monitors actually inline referencing or are they…

Colin:

Yeah, those are… Well, I don’t have them plugged in at the moment, but those will come off the two bus as well so we’ll be able to look at the Dorroughs on the two bus. That’s pretty common.

Warren:

So underneath the Tube-Tech, of course, you got the Burl Mothership.

Colin:

Yeah, wow. Mothership. Here’s my feeling about Motherships, I’ve tried just about every converter out there. Most of the big names. Burl for me is more an instrument than a converter and this I cannot say about other converters. I can only say it about Burl. What I mean by that is depending how I hit them depends what they do for me. Now, I have represented here pretty much most of their new and their original units and the cards. So if I hit them hard, I get a sound of them from hitting them hard. If I hit them, if I want something super clean, everyone has this thought that, or this misconception, that Burls are only colored. That’s not true. When you’re tracking, if you just hit them normally, they don’t add any color. They’re just a crystal clear, super high-end converter.

I really kind of rethought my whole converter situation once I got the Mothership. I took a lot of converters that I had known and loved and kept in my rack and they went out of my rack because I just didn’t need them anymore and I didn’t find myself using them. I added a second Mothership because they came out with an eight channel input. I wanted to try that. Then they came out with a four channel output that has transformers on it. That’s the BDA4. Those are remarkable cards. I use them on all my prints. You can actually hear the difference because what those transformers do is they don’t color it, they open up the headroom and the dynamics. So not that the other… The regular ones, the BDA8s are great too. That’s what my mixes run through to the desk, my print goes to the BDA4s, hits some transformers, and that becomes my two bus.

Warren:

Wonderful.

Colin:

Yeah, so it’s kind of like over the years of learning about converters, learning about Mic Pre’s and all those things, this is representational of the sounds I wanted when I’m tracking music.

Warren:

Let’s check out the live room.

Colin:

Well, you mentioned instruments. There’s instruments kind of laying around everywhere.

Warren:

Good.

Colin:

We primarily like Latch Lake stands. As you’ve heard about Latch Lake, there’s reasons for it that I can’t deny when the audio test kitchen guys were working at Plastic Dog, they loved the fact that I had a bunch of them. They even asked if they could borrow some and take them over to the other locations. What we got up right now is kind of fascinating. That’s a vintage M49. There’s a vintage U- 47. That one is now 70 years old. I think it was made in 1950. Then there’s a Wunder 47. But the mic cabinet, we have some mics. I’d say we have about 85 mics that we pick and choose from.

Warren:

Beautiful.

Colin:

Anything from vintage 414s-

Warren:

Where’s your mic cabinet?

Colin:

That’s in the other room. Sitting in this room though, here’s a mic that there’s only one of in the world over there in the corner. That’s a Mojave MA-300 Stereo. You know I’m well connected to Mojave as well as a partner. This is a new endeavor for me and one of the first things I started recording with was a stereo mic. I’ve been using it on cellos. The MA-300 by itself is a very, very cool tube mic. I’ll put it up against NAU-67 or some of the tube mics I own that are vintage. The MA-300’s fantastic. The stereo version, I hope this prototype is something we move forward with because on stringed instruments, holy crap. It’s amazing. Of course, that’s sitting in front of our Hammond. Got to have a Hammond B3 A-100. That’s always fun. An assortment of amazing amps are hidden back there. There’s a B15, there’s a B18 flip top. It’s an old Magnetone. Old Fenders. We got a few amps.

Warren:

What’s this over here?

Colin:

That’s a B18. I’ve never seen a double stack.

Warren:

Nor have I.

Colin:

I acquired this and of course, as far as a bass amp, the B15 over there or the antique B18, they’re both really tasty.

Warren:

Very nice and tasty.

Colin:

Mic in front of it with the DI on another channel. Everything you could want in a bass.

Warren:

Wonderful.

Colin:

There’s a prototype, UK Sound 1073, sounds amazing. There’s a lot of 1073s on the market. What we did with UK Sound was we wanted to take the same know how from the BAE 1073 and put it into a product that basically everybody could afford. It’s a lot less expensive because it’s not handmade and I don’t know if I ever took you through it, Warren. We’ve just changed a few things. We changed the transformers, we used a different set of switches, we’ve made a single PCB board. That way there we can kind of… And we put the power supply inside and we can get it into a affordable price range of about $1500.

Warren:

It’s a DMP.

Colin:

Oh, yeah. DMP is my go-to DI for bass.

Warren:

Then a couple of nice… Some nice Tape action.

Colin:

Yeah, there’s a Chorus Echo. I think we have two of the Tape Echos in the building, the Fulltones.

Warren:

Yeah, those are wonderful.

Colin:

Yeah, the Chorus Echo, the Roland, that vintage piece of gear is amazing.

Warren:

MPC.

Colin:

Yeah. That’s one of Jimmy’s go-to things.

Warren:

This is an Esquire.

Colin:

Yes. There’s a lot of vintage instruments. This is about half the collection. There was probably no point in putting out another vintage acoustic that I have. There’s Rickenbacker basses, ’60s Fenders. Just about ever little goody one needs in the studio to make a sound that’s… Here’s a Rhodes just sitting, waiting to be used. That will eventually go in the live room.

Warren:

There’s a Hummingbird.

Colin:

Yeah. Straight from… It’s how it’s done.

Warren:

Yeah, wonderful. Gretsch.

Colin:

Yeah, yeah. We have plenty of Les Pauls, plenty of goodies like that. More amps. We kind of have them everywhere. There’s a Fender Super Six. I love this on keyboards. You plug any of the old keyboards into the Fender Super Six, think of it as a twin with six speakers instead of-

Warren:

Gee!

Colin:

… four.

Warren:

Hallelujah.

Colin:

Marshall Plexi. I think every studio needs a Plexi. Deville.

Warren:

Oh, the Hiwatt.

Colin:

Hiwatt. Yeah.

Warren:

I didn’t see that when I looked down there.

Colin:

I love… My Hiwatt, if you had to take away all my amps and leave me with one, probably be that Hiwatt.

Warren:

It’s gorgeous looking.

Colin:

It’d be a fight between the vintage Hiwatt and the Plexi.

Warren:

Well, I have one of those, but I don’t have the Hiwatt, so I’ll take this. Yeah, there’s a Yamaha sitting there that we do all our piano work on. Is it C5?

Colin:

No, it’s a C3.

Warren:

It’s only a three?

Colin:

It’s only a three and it’s… It’s 40 years old. Well, now it’s 43. ’77.

Warren:

Oh, man.

Colin:

Yeah. And that is where a lot of mics are.

Warren:

Okay, I’m going to let Eric squeeze past me so we can have a look in there.

Colin:

So aside from this huge pile, there’s another huge pile. The workhorse mics that are usually right here, Mojaves, MA-300s, MA-301s, 301 FETs, 201 FETs. Lot of use on drum kits. Great mics for all around, all purpose drum kit mics. There might be six Royer 121s and 122s, combination of both. 251. Another 47, a Bock E195. I love this Bock mic. It’s really cool. David and I got together, he had an idea, so he took his normal FET 47 and we put the 507 capsule in it. So I call it the FET 507. I think there’s only two of these in existence. Really, really cool mic. It’s got the elliptical capsule from its 507. There is a 507 underneath it. There is KM 84s, KM 184s, Sheps. Kind of who’s who of classics, if you might say.

Warren:

Rather nice. What’s in the drawers?

Colin:

All kinds of goodies. There’s pedals, there’s mic clips, there’s all the things you need to make a nice recording. We just kind of have them a bit organized actually, which is unusual. But, I mean, the 47, the 48s, all the go-to mics. It’s amazing for me because I started this nine years ago.

Warren:

So what was the journey then? In nine years.

Colin:

Well, like everybody else, I started out in a bedroom. Oh, drums. There’s’ all the drums that we use. So all kinds of vintage kits. It’s also a Yamaha custom maple that I record on a lot. Snare drums kind of poking out everywhere. Yeah, a little amp room. We set up amps in here or whatever we like. Isolate it, record it.

Warren:

So tell us, nine years ago, so what happened nine years ago?

Colin:

I was working in a job, totally unrelated career. I walked into work one day.

Warren:

What unrelated career?

Colin:

More of investment things. And I walked in and I saw this sea of apprentices and I thought, “Wow, I really can’t stand these people.” It was a Friday. Just any other day of the week. I went in my office and my manager came in and he started yapping at me. I was like, “You know what? I really can’t stand this guy.” I just got up and walked past him out into the hallway. It wasn’t planned. I didn’t… I was walking down the hallway and the manager said, “Hey, I’m talking to you,” and I said, “I know. It’s ridiculous.” I literally said that. I was just done with work and I knew it in that moment.

I went and saw the CEO and I sat down with him. I said, “I got to go. I got to go home.” He’s like, “What do you mean? You’re not feeling well? You want Monday off? You want a long weekend?” It’s like, no, it’s more like one of those I got to go home and come back type of attitude. So I actually said that to him. He laughed. He goes, “What are you going to do?” I said, “I’m going to go home and make recordings.” That’s exactly what I said. He laughed at me. He said, “You think that’ll pay the bills?” I said, “Not on your life, but I got to go. I need a break.”

Warren:

But you’d been in music before.

Colin:

Yeah, I worked various jobs in management and things like that and different parts of the music industry without a doubt. It was one of those things. When I was a kid, no one sat down and said, “You could be a music producer.” Why not? I didn’t think about it. I come from a family of people who made gear in a sense, or a science who was… My dad’s physics degree was in molecular physics, acoustics. So he was very involved in acoustical things back in the ’60s and ’70s. So I don’t know. I just one day changed things. I literally went home and my girlfriend was like, “What are you doing?” I said, “Well, I’m going to make music I think.” That was nine years ago.

I had a bedroom I converted into a home studio. So definitely like your audience of people who subscribe, I started the same exact way. I had one mic. I had a U87. I got it from Guitar Center. I had a sales guy there. Got me my Vari MU. I just started adding things. The first two decent Mic Pre’s that I had were BAE 1084s. Pair of them. They’re in the desk right now, the black pair. I don’t know. I just kept making music in that spare bedroom and people were like, “Wow, that sounds really good. Why aren’t you doing this professionally?” Well, I kind of am because I’m not doing anything. I’m not working. That boss of mine said, “Well, you’ve had good year,” and I said, “I had a few good years.” I was fortunate enough that I could buy a decent microphone, a decent Manley compressor, and whatnot.

The first thing I really started doing a lot of was commercials. That work came to me very easily through a friend and I did a bunch of them. Next thing you know, I rented my first commercial space. So actually, this is version four if I count the bedroom. So I was in my first commercial space for about a year. Needed more space, so I went to the first place you were, across the street. Then I came here. It’s all been uphill. Everyone says to you, “You’re in the studio business, that’s crazy.” It’s like no it isn’t. We’re doing well. Then my gear endeavors are doing well. I think it’s because I love doing it. That-

Warren:

I understand.

Colin:

It just turned into something profitable on so many different levels. Versus when your job and I’m just showing up every day doing my thing. It’s like I couldn’t stand going there.

Warren:

I also think doing multiple things, which I understand, within what you love means you’re not hanging your hat up on one thing.

Colin:

Correct!

Warren:

You’re not going, “I just made a record. I wonder if it’s going to sell.”

Colin:

Right. Well, and the other thing too was because of my association with BAE and getting involved with BAE almost nine years ago now, it kind of opened the door where I could call a person like you and say, “Hey, how’d you mic that drum in that session you were doing?” It gave me access to people I normally wouldn’t of had access to. I wasn’t shy about what I didn’t know. I was frequently asking questions to people on how they got a sound or, “Hey, I got to do this drum session.” I used to be deathly afraid of drum sessions because I knew least about that instrument than any. I just would take it on the drummer. I’d just say, “Okay, whatever the drummer thinks he should tune it as, that’s what it should be.” Then a friend said, “No. You got to set your drum set. Don’t let them take advantage of you.” So then I started learning about drums, like far into drum stuff.

Warren:

You mean on your 15 section of a snare going ping, ping.

Colin:

Exactly.

Warren:

Sorry. Sorry, drums.

Colin:

Then learning how to mic the drum kit-

Warren:

Just joking.

Colin:

… I was afraid of it. So then I started asking every producer I met how do I do that? How do you do it? How do you mic a snare?

Warren:

Hey, it’s another reason why I started doing this channel. I mean, I’ve sat in room with Bob Clearmountain for a day. I think we literally were with Bob Clearmountain for about eight or nine hours. Where else in the world are you going to get to hang out with Bob Clearmountain for eight or nine hours and talk about recording and mixing?

Colin:

Recently someone asked me, they said, “How on earth did you get that snare sound?” I said, “Well, somebody who’s brilliant in Nashville told me to take a 414, put it in Figure eight, and point it at the side of the snare drum so one side gets the top, one side gets the bottom.” That was Michael Hansen. Now, his discography is all these great Nashville records. Look them up. Amazing stuff. I couldn’t remember who told me. Only recently this year at AES, I told him the story, he goes, “That was me, you idiot! I told you to do that.” But that’s how I learned everything I learned, it was some modification of what someone told me. When I had that piano delivered, I didn’t know how to mic a piano. So I thought, “Okay, I could go online and look at how people mic pianos,” but really what I started doing was I just started putting mics up around a piano. I’m at this end, I’m at that end. Which mics I used. I tried all kinds of different mics. I spent literally days.

Warren:

You got a stereo Mojave. That’ll probably be just over the top.

Colin:

Oh, that, the Mojave mics-

Warren:

Stick it under the piano and-

Colin:

… one of the reasons things became so easy with me with Mojave and later becoming a partner was I was just always talking to Dusty about getting mics because I loved Mojave mics. You’re right, that’s stereo Mojave on the piano was enough. You’re done. So I had to learn how to mic guitar cabinets. Yes, I knew everyone online was using a Royer and 57. 121 and a 57. So I tried variations of that. Then I’d go do some BAE event and I was talking to Vance Powell. I said, “Vance, how do you record on a guitar cabinet,” and he said, “Oh, real simple. A 57 and I put a U67 upside down on top of it and put them in phase.” It’s like, “Huh, that must be an amazing sound.” Then I started doing that kind of stuff. And you know how it goes. But I am not afraid to learn anything from anybody. I don’t care who they are.

Warren:

I agree.

Colin:

There are students who come up to me and ask me questions when I’m talking about BAE and then they tell me something they’re doing. I’m like, “Wow. What an amazing idea.” It’s what we do. I mean, if you’re-

Warren:

Always be learning, yeah.

Colin:

Yeah, always. Because this is an industry where I think if you get… We were talking about this earlier. If you get stuck in your ways and say, “No, you’re precious,” and it can be that or that, I don’t think that works. Because how many times do you go into a studio to go to work and they only have a limited number of mics and you got to make something sound good?

Warren:

Also I think when you first start out, you’re open to stuff because you don’t know what’s right. So we listen to all these albums, like we were talking about earlier, like albums that we grew up were made by kids, that we grow up considering and are still considered to be the greatest albums because they come in with this mentality of like, “I don’t know.”

Do you know what Tim Palmer said to me the other day? I haven’t said this on video before. He goes, “I used to love the time,” because he was producing like Robert Plant records at 24. He’s like, “I got paid to go in and learn how to use equipment. So I just come in and go, ‘That’s the setup, wonder how this works.” It’s like the thing was just he got hired because he had creativity and something that Robert Plant wanted, but when he came into… He didn’t know every single essence at 24 years old of every piece of equipment and yet those records sound phenomenal.

Colin:

I got to quote Bill Smith. I don’t know if you know Bill. He’s an engineer. He’s been in LA for a long time, out of New York. I was in an event and I heard someone ask this guy behind me a question, “How do you do this? Or how do you mic that? Or blah blah blah.” He goes, “Well, I don’t use an EQ. I just move the mic and get the sound that I want.” I remember turning around and saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, tell me more about this.” It was like nine years ago. He goes, “Well, it’s simple. You just move the mic and you kind of is your EQ.” I said, “Wow, can I come and watch you do this and learn more about it?” He said, “No. I’ll come to your studio. I’m not going to show you on my junk. I’ll show you on your own junk.”

That’s how I got to know Bill Smith. He actually came over and that’s what he did. But it’s that whole thing you’re saying about… Then he went on and told amazing stories about how they’d show up to do a gig and there were no mics. Maybe he had a bag of 57s and one large condenser mic and they’d have to make a real record. That’s the kind of stuff that’s magic to me.

I learned at that point there’s two types of engineers. There’s the ones who say everything they did was intentional in 1972. Because I remember I asked this guy once, I said, “That drum sound was pretty kind of hardcore, wasn’t it?” Let’s face it, it wasn’t that sophisticated. It wasn’t that great, that dead drum sound in the early ’70s. “Oh, no, no. That’s exactly the way we planned it. That’s the sound we wanted.” Then someone next to this guy said, “No, it wasn’t. You didn’t know what you were doing.” Because no one had any experience. George Martin’s book, All You Need is Ears, that’s what he talks about. They had no experience and they were making these great records.

Warren:

Yeah. They were making it up as they went.

Colin:

Yeah! And that’s kind of what I did and I still do. Shoot, I can’t tell you how many times I’m in the middle of a recording, there’s the vocalist, the bass player, the drummer, everyone’s there and I’m thinking, “Oh my God, they’re buying this?” Because I’ll be just at wits end with what mics I’m using and whatnot and I’m just like, “Wow, they’re trusting me,” and I’m like, “When are they going to figure it out? I’m just figuring it out.” I feel like that every time and then I heard somebody who I really admire, another producer, say the same thing and he’s been doing it for years. He said, “Oh, yeah, I just… Some days I don’t know what I’m doing and it sounds great.”

Warren:

Everybody I work with says that.

Colin:

Yeah.

Warren:

All the people I admire say that. I think that’s wonderful.

Colin:

Yeah, and that’s how I feel on a regular basis when recording.

Warren:

Good.

Colin:

I feel like it’s not going right, it’s going to sound like shit, and what can I do to fix it? Then I hear it at the end and I go, “Wow.”

Warren:

To sort of wrap up, I remember doing this Brent Fischer session. We were texting about it-

Colin:

I love Brent. He’s such a sweetheart.

Warren:

Such a sweetheart. At the end of the session, we sat down and I interviewed him. I was like, “Thanks for having us down. How do you think it went?” He goes, “It was great.” He goes, “It was great. I learned so much.”

Colin:

Exactly! Every recording I learn something.

Warren:

Thank you so much.

Colin:

Thanks for coming.

Warren:

Appreciate it.

Colin:

I’m really glad you stopped by.

Warren:

Thank you. Been a long time coming. Please as ever, leave a bunch of comments. If you’ve made it this far to the end of the video, please leave a bunch of comments and questions below. Have a marvelous time recording and mixing and there’ll be… Do you have a website?

Colin:

Yeah.

Warren:

All right. There’ll be links to the website. All of them. All the websites, down below.