The former Big Business guitarist and regular Melvins collaborator has a long history of engineering and/or producing top-tier rock bands - the bathroom in his Sound of Sirens studio is decorated with platinum records honoring his contribution to albums by Foo Fighters and Tool…
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“I’m a sick person,” confesses John Vanderslice.
He’s not wrong.
Vanderslice suffers from a terminal case of G.A.S. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) and it’s spreading...
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It’s not every day we get invited to kick it with producers immortalized in Beastie Boys lyrics. We met up with Paul’s Boutique, Check Your Head, Ill Communication, and Hello Nasty engineer / producer Mario Caldato at his Hollywood home studio to dig through his endless collection of gear, in search of the perfect party rockin’ piece. And we found something...
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Luke Jones’ Custom Vintage Keys sits inside a nondescript industrial building just off the 5 in North Hollywood. A pinkish eggshell door reads, “CVKEYS,” in the kind of stick-on letters you might see on rusted out mailboxes dotted along rural Ohio roads. There’s no other signage. “This is my crazy shop of keyboard horrors,” Jones says, laughing. From where we’re standing, it looks more like the bottom of the rabbit hole and Jones is the Mad Hatter of vintage keyboards...
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“You want people to be comfortable, which is why my studio looks like my bedroom when I was seventeen,” says Joe Barresi.
Despite having nearly every piece of gear under the sun, there is little room for child’s play at Joe’s House of Compression. It’s strictly business. Even the fart mic. We’ll let “Evil” Joe explain...
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We visited the Automator’s San Francisco studio to watch the master at work doing what he does best - make sick beats...
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Palmquist Studios is a treasure trove of vintage gear. “When I collect gear . . . I collect very slowly,” he says. “I like to build up pieces that I know are gonna last and be the sounds that I want and sounds that make my job easier. . . The Warden gets used on a lot of records,” he says. “[On] clean guitars, it keeps them punchy and articulate . . . [and] a little bit of the Grand Orbiter always gives that sense of space . . . [it’s] a nice little bit of je ne sais quoi..."
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We caught up with Deltron 3030 guitarist Taka Tozawa at his rehearsal studio in a former naval base in San Francisco’s Bay View area to drool over his gargantuan collection of vintage Marshall amps and cabinets, including no fewer than three 8x10 cabs, and one “holy-grail” JTM-45... There’s not always room in the van (or trailer, or bus) for multiple Marshall full-stacks, so Taka counts on his Speaker Cranker overdrive to nail those cranked vintage amp tones on rented backline equipment.
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David Catching’s Rancho De La Luna sits atop hallowed ground. The recording studio (which doubles as Catching’s private residence, so keep out!) is the musical oasis from which flows the sandy lifeblood of Southern California’s thriving desert rock scene, giving rise to albums by the likes of Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age, and Eagles of Death Metal. The new sacred texts of rock n’ roll...
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Austin, TX's the Ghost Wolves take us on a guided tour of their righteous tour van, where they have all the necessities for healthy living on the road - an Ozzy Osbourne poster, a box of Franzia, and a trucker stove...
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