New Studio save me from myself

[gardenside]

We are in the process of building a new recording home. We were in our old facitily about 2 yrs. running the old PTHD/Rosetta in a space we converted from an old furniture store/warehouse. It was our first out of the house studio and we learned a lot and even made a living. We were approached by investors to build a new facility that's going to be part of a larger complex with a soundstage and theatre.
Our new studio is going to be built on 6,200sq/ft. We are goin to do at least two (Big room/small room(s)/control room combos). I personally like the idea of Vintage Vs. Digital for the rooms, i.e. vintage console/2" machines/EMT's/Reverb Chamber in one AWS900/Sonoma,Radar,PT,/and Massive Storage in the other. I guess I'm looking for opinions on consoles for the "vintage" room. I've been lucky enough to get up to Tiny Telephone, (the idea for the "vintage" room is kinda-tiny-telephone-on-steroids) and there BBC Neve sounded great, but thats the only experience I've had on a board like that. Is there a console you've worked on in the past that was your favorite. Why was it your fav?, sound/ergonomics/workflow?

Any other insights would be great. The site is a parking lot now so we can do just about anything we can think of,..oh yes, there will be reverb chambers underneath.

Matt[/u]

[surf's up]

.oh yes, there will be reverb chambers underneath.

Matt[/u]

thats awesome. it sounds great to be able to truly build your environment from scratch and tailor it to your needs. i think the vintage room idea is great and reverb chambers....you really are sparing no expense!

[sonicmook56]

How much are you planing to get for a day? As much as I love old equipment, I think that a vintage room would be hard to book, and expensive to build if you dont already own the equipment. From my experience, busy working sound engineers who move from room to room wont give a fuck about an EMT. I have 5 badass hotrod 140f's here, yet the plugin is always chosen because it is more predictable.... As for a vintage console, maintance on it will be ongoing. Parts are hard to find, techs are expesive.. Think about downtime, lost vibe, lost money.

Im not trying to change your mind, just some stuff to think about.. Unless you know and love the equipment and your clients do too, I think it might be a bad idea from a buisness prespective.

You can get a Neve VR for pretty cheap now. Its still modern with recall and automation. It can be configured to do surround projects and has good routing choices for soundstage applications.

Just my 2 cents.[/code]

[gardenside]

thanks sonic that's exactly what I was hoping for.

We're building for $4-600/day not including engineer or tape. I don't have anything I'm sold on, and your points on maint and vibe-killers are well taken. This place is being built, in large part, for other engineers and their projects. Whereas our old studio there where three partners who shared desk duty. So, I'm trying to get a feel for what top shelf engineers like to see when they walk into a place.

[cgarges]

Here's a great thread from a long time ago. There are a few like this in the archives.

http://messageboard.tapeop.com/viewtopic.php?t=21675

If you really want to appeal to people to bring business to you (which is smart, in my opinion), don't make any excuses. I'm amazed at how many times studio owners ask me what I'd want to bring business to them and then make excuses or argue about my answers.

For instance, a well laid-out and extensive patchbay will ALWAYS be more improtant to me than how many Neve mic pres a studio has. A studio with a piano will get gigs from me that other studios won't, no matter how many 1176s are in the rack. A room that's designed well and sounds predictable outside the studio will make me and my clients much happier than the presence of a U47 or a pool table.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[???????]

speaking as someone who comes from the "potential client" end of things and not as a studio owner or professional engineer, I know that there are certain things I would need before I would book a studio, not that I'm extremely qualified to really answer anything.

A good, well-maintained grand piano is important. Keep it in tune. I know an engineer who has had to refund money from a session because the piano wasn't in tune and a large client with lots of money had to throw out an entire session as a result. Ended up being an expensive waste of time for all concerned. People who book studios because of their piano are picky about piano sound and their tuning.

I know it's dumb, but plenty of music stands.

Good microphones transfer the sound from sound into electricity. This is very important.

Good monitors turn the electricity back into sound. This is also very important, especially for a visiting engineer. A few (or more than a few) sets of the more common monitors so that most can listen on what they're used to is enticing. Most would rather have what they're familiar with than some esoteric thing, even if the esoteric thing is supposedly better.

Also, the thing the person above said is true about many clients wanting to record the "modern, convenient way" but I do know that there are plenty of people who insist on analog and will choose a studio based upon that. Also, if you are passionate about analog then by all means go for it. It's important to care personally about any business venture. You don't want to have all of yr excitement drained out just because of concerns about the bottom line. If you do anything and do it well, there will be a market for it.

I'd just say that as a musician who has a lot of that kind of gear, it's always better to buy "blue chip" stuff that you will keep forever. Resisting the urge to buy the newest thing will mean that the stuff you DO invest in will hold its value better should the project fold and you have to unload it.

Just my uninformed 2 cents.

[cgarges]

I know an engineer who has had to refund money from a session because the piano wasn't in tune and a large client with lots of money had to throw out an entire session as a result. Ended up being an expensive waste of time for all concerned. People who book studios because of their piano are picky about piano sound and their tuning.

Probably half the studios I work in that have pianos charge a fee to have the piano tuned before a session. That's not uncommon at all. In fact, I see places that don't charge the fee, but keep their pianos in good shape as smart, but also as extending a very big courtesy to their clients. In either case, I think it's irresponsible on the part of the producer/artist/piano player/whoever's in charge to not ask about this before the session. I just can't feel sorry for somebody in the position you described.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[gardenside]

Thanks Chris and Brad. Yeah we made the mistake of sexy over practical in our last studio and realized after a couple months. Any other practical or sexy opinions welcome.
m

[???????]

I know an engineer who has had to refund money from a session because the piano wasn't in tune and a large client with lots of money had to throw out an entire session as a result. Ended up being an expensive waste of time for all concerned. People who book studios because of their piano are picky about piano sound and their tuning.

Probably half the studios I work in that have pianos charge a fee to have the piano tuned before a session. That's not uncommon at all. In fact, I see places that don't charge the fee, but keep their pianos in good shape as smart, but also as extending a very big courtesy to their clients. In either case, I think it's irresponsible on the part of the producer/artist/piano player/whoever's in charge to not ask about this before the session. I just can't feel sorry for somebody in the position you described.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

You're right. I neglected to mention that they requested that the piano be tuned before the session and the engineer said "no problem." Then he didn't get it tuned.

I heard this story both from people involved in the session and later the engineer himself. Funny there were two radically different spins on it but the story came out to be the same