Glass House Studios

This is where all the recordings for Gippytummy and Moc where done. We would like to offer this service to other bands in the Toronto area in the future. Hope so anyway.

The idea of having a home studio started about 1990 when we bought a Fostex 280 protable multi-track. This unit was a 4-tracker with an integrated 4 channel mixer and it included 4 extra input channels to allow for extra sources at mixdown. Well as you can guess, after years of abuse the unit lost its luster. The recordings we did got pretty good, but as the unit aged, the recording quality got worse. You can learn from our mistake, keep your porta-studios clean, inside and out. They should last longer.

Well, it came time to upgrade, so we looked around and decided that if we where to get into this studio thing, we'd have to do it in a big way to make it worth while. We picked the analog alternative, ADAT. Lots of studios seem to be using these, and lots of musicians are using them as well. PRIMUS did thier last album on ADAT's in thier home, and the CURE album ,Wild Mode Swings, was also done on ADATS. All sound pretty good. So, we got one of them and plan to add more in the future. Maybe two more for 24 tracks.

Now, as you can guess, we needed to find a mixer to go with the recorder. At first we used what we could, like the old Fostex 280, a borrowed mixer from a friend, and renting. We wanted an 8-bus unit and the market is at the moment full of great project studio 8-bus mixers. At the time, we had choices like SoundTracs, Spirit, and Tascam, but we bought a Mackie 24x8. The Mackie is missing a few things I'd like (a phase switch), but its build quality is like no other in it's class. Not to mention it sounds pretty good, and gives you a fully parametric Hi-Mid Range EQ. I was also looking at the Spirit stuff, and if I had to do it again, that new Spirit Ghost console looks mighty interesting.

We use Mission 761's as monitors. They where my speakers for my stereo, but they work great as monitors. I chose these because I am MOST familiar with thier sound. I mean I know what music sounds like on them, so getting a mix close to a reference CD works great for me. We power these with a Rotel 30watt integrated amp. Again, it is an inexpensive audiophile amp (high current design), and surprisingly good for the $300 we paid for it. We mix down to a Tascam DA-20 and also have a Yamaha KX-650 cassette deck, a three-head deck with dual capstans. Other monitoring tools we use are AKG-240's, Sennheiser HD-540 Ref 2's, and a pair of Koss headphones. Other equipment in the rack; Alesis Midiverb 4, Alesis 3630 compressor, Lexicon LXP-5, Aphex 2channel auto compressor, DBX 166 2channel comp, and Alesis D4 Drum module.