Well the blues finally has a home.. Big room, big tone with big Jim King. Session 4.15.06 all day and into the night with the King. Jim ran most of sessions with one take, why because it would be hard to improve on this type of quality.

With Jims harp to we went with his classic Fender tweed amp & Electro-Voice mic. This session filled the room with Blues Power. 4 mics used on his harp, very sweet, very nice..

Lomo 19A19, on the back of the open cab
AKG 414B-ULS, 5″ away from the front of the cab
Shure SM 57, 5″ away from the front of the cab.. And yes we took care of the phase if needed, no need to second guess.
Neumann M249 room mic about 8ft away & 10ft up in the air

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jim kings horn parts recorded verysimple & very surround sound, if you closed your eyes and listed to the playback it felt like he was playing only to you.. 3 mics where used during this session.

Cole ( EMI ) ribbon - directly in front about 1ft away.
Neumann M249 Room far left 8ft up
Lomo 19A19 Room far right 8ft up

Well we just did a very fun drum session on 4-14-06. Jason Lackie engineering. Now like all sessions we change up the mics and placement to fit that session sound & tone. In recording there is never a “standard” way of doing it. We like to change it up to give every album there own vibe. That’s what makes a great recording.

12 mics in all, we captured some great room tones.

Kick- Audix D6
Kick- Mic 4ft back on the floor, Lomo 19A19 ( Russian Made ) large condensor tube mic
Snare top- Shure SM57
Snare top- Neumann KM84 ( with pad )
Snare bottom- Telefunken M16 tube mic
Rack tom- Shennheizer 421
Floor tom- AKG D112
High Hat- KM184
Overhead’s Rode NT2
Room 1- Neumann U87
Room 2- Neumann M249

Not to give a way all the studio tricks we used some really nice pre’s, EQ’s, and classic compressors to give it the high end sound.

This is the year ( 2006 ) for Becki Sue & Her BRD’s, They are up for many awards from the Washington Blues Society and at this time ( Jan to Sept. 2006 ) recording with us.

The foundation of these recording are in many ways is back to the basics of how great music is made. First we start with a very talented band, bass, drums & guitar in the live room, Sax / Harmonica in ISO booth one and Becki singing scratch vocals in the engineering room.

Drums: 8 mic setup, Sennheizers 421’s, Telefunken M16 Tube, Neumann U87 room and some others. Ran him through 4-Focusrite 428, 2- custom NEVE channel strips and a Manley SLAM.

Bass: Stand up five string, we set up two tracks, track one Cole ribbon ( 4038 ) mic at the base of the body and baffled the back of the mic to cut out room noise from the drums. track two was a direct signal from a sansamp bass DI running through a Avalon 737 sp.

Harp & Sax: To get that great blues old school sound simple Ribbon mic in the middle of the live room on the hard wood floors. Just maybe run him through the RCA BA-6A compressor.

Guitar: We used several amps & several mics, Amps used Victoria 2×10 - 1×15? Victoria 35115, modeled after the tweed Fender Pro - Vintage Epiphone. Mics- Vintage C12A, Cole Ribbon - Neumann M249 ( room mic ) running through Pultec EQ, RCA BA6A , NEVE channel strip and some other nice vintage toys to capture that live room sound.

Vocals: Another simple great sound RCA 77DX ribbon mics, BLUE Bottle with the B3 head and the large room. you can also catch a cool photo of us in action in the April edition of Wash. Blues Society “ Bluesletter ” Vol. 18, Number 4 ( front cover photo )