Here at The Coolest Recording Studio in South London Town – we got a gear problem – no sooner do we find a piece of equipment we like – then we just Have to buy a second unit. You know ……. in case the first goes down.
So – what with all the gear we hand make on site for our artists – our store cupboards runneth over. Maybe it’s time for a yard sale!
One piece of equipment we hold close to our hearts & which we shall never be parted from – is the Pioneer SR101 – all tube (valve) spring reverb unit – as used by Amy Winehouse on her beautiful Back to Black lp to put the shine on her vocals drums & guitars.
You’d think that something built for the hifi market (see the phono sockets at the back) would be too lo fi & mojo like for a recording studio – but it actually sounds clean, rich and beautiful – the space it creates is a pretty wonderful place for vocals, drums guitars & synths etc. Maybe not something you’d run too many elements into in a mix – it’d get muddied up pretty quickly with too many frequencies bouncing around the springs – but for sure it beautifies specific types of audio in ways nothing else can.
We use it all the time as both an audio saturator & as a gorgeous space to place things in.
The saturation from the valves is utterly lovely – so lovely that we’ll turn the reverb down to zero sometimes just to get uncoloured saturation. Then we hit the input hard to get them tubes glowing – sublime on vocals, guitars & drums! Possibly the smoothest saturation ever. Aside from our Supra Saturator of course – that’s the bees knees of saturation devices!
We’ll be showing out a whole bunch of our toys in the coming weeks so stay tuned.
You can see the studio HERE.
