Recording - February 2011 - 39

capture the room sound which included bleed from the guitar, bass, and vocals. Depending on the song we would pull these additional sonic elements into the mix. Big and old-school sounding. Vocals—in the room On the vocals Rogers took the exact same approach. Since we were going to have Ty Taylor stand in the same room as the band, the placement and mic choice was critical. We ended up going with the Lawson L47MP tube mic, recorded simultaneously with a Sennheiser MD441 supercardioid mic that Christopher Spahr from Sennheiser sent Ty for the tracking. This gave us the smoothness of a tube mic, hinting at those great recordings from the ’50s and ’60s, along with the bite of the dynamic Sennheiser. Fantastic blend. Rogers ran these through a pair of Neve 1073s and then into ADL 1000s, which are Anthony DeMaria Labs’ take on the LA-2A. Smooth and real. For some songs we kept the live take, on some songs we overdubbed vocals, again going for what was best for the song. The ability to have our singer in the room with the band,

Guitar setup with room mic in the foreground. L to R: Fender Deluxe Reverb, unused VOX, Fender Blues Jr., Custom Fargen, Marshall 4x12” cabinet, Leslie, Sovtek amp for Leslie, Bradshaw rig on flight case. Bass for real Talk about even more commitment! When it came to bass tone, we didn’t use any direct signal, no DI box. Just a mic in front of my amp, with me next to the bass rig, which was, what else...an Ampeg B-15 Vintage Fliptop. Rogers and I had many discussions about bass tone, and how it should feel and fit into each song. I tend to constantly adjust my right-hand attack, digging in or laying smooth, or frequently adjusting the tone and volume depending on what I feel is needed. Again, Rogers knew the best way to capture this was with a Royer ribbon, an R-121 in this case. John Jennings from Royer Labs had suggested mic choice to him for the bass amp, and it was a perfect fit. Since the drums were right next to the amp we were all immediately impressed with the side rejection, but had some pretty serious cymbal bleed on the bass mic. There is another null point on the top of the mic, so Rogers just tilted the top towards the drum set and the cymbals nearly disappeared. He chose the TubeTech MP-1A going into the Tube-Tech CL1B as the best bass signal chain for the sound we were going for. This combination really brought out subtle but extremely directed and confident bass tones. Drumkit—as an instrument On the drums we decided to go for a modified four-mic set up. Rogers used a Royer SF-12 stereo ribbon for the overhead, a Royer R-121 on the bass drum, and a Neumann U87 set in omni mode for the front of the kit. This made up about 80% of our overall sound. We tried different mics on the overheads and the bass drum, but the Royers won out every time. Full, rich, and real which was exactly what drummer Richard Danielson wanted. “I want it to sound like an instrument, a drum kit the way it sounds in the room, not individual elements separated out and brought together artificially in the mix.” We augmented this with a Shure SM57 on snare, a AKG C12 on the rack tom, and a Lawson L47FET on the floor tom. We also had a Crown SASS-P stereo PZM to
RECORDING FEBRUARY 2011

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Recording - February 2011

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