The most important pieces of gear I have are my ears and experience. Over the last twelve years I have acquired a lot of wisdom on where songs are and where they need to go. This then dictates what gear to use or more importantly what not to use. But I also love gear.

I mainly work with analog gear. I do finishing touches with digital. 

Lynx Hilo Mastering Grade Convertors 

Custom cables from Grimm and Mogami

Monitoring: Barefoot and Genelec

Metering: Vintage Dorrough Loudness Monitor and Bettermaker Digital Meters

Outboard Analog:

Pultec EQP-1A3 Stereo Pair EQ Vintage with original 1960s transformers, NOS, and API Gain Stage.

API 2164 Amps racked up from Mastering Labs studios from the Sax Brothers console (1970’s) Used on Steely Dan Aja, Pink Floyd, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan and many other hit records.

Manley Massive Passive Stereo Equalizer Original Hardwired Silverface with NOS Tubes.

Tube Tech LCA 2B Compressor/Limiter

Urei 1176 Peak Limiter, Blackface, Matching Pair

Bettermaker Mastering Limiter

Overstayer MAS Mastering Edition

Stam SA4000 with 4 VCA Chips

Black Lion AM/CHA 1 Mastering EQ with Vintage Cinemag Transformers and modded power supply.

Elysia Xpressor Class A Stereo Compressor

Vintage CBS FM Volumax Multi-Band 4110 modded for higher headroom for max loudness.

Vintage Shure M63 EQ, modded (Pultec Style)

Vintage Loft Limiter

Vintage Aphex Exciter

Vintage Yamaha Stereo EQ

A bunch of other old quirky gear, tube boxes, and saturators for all the indie or coloring vibes that are needed.

Every project is different. I pick gear based on what will serve the project the best. I also can rent any piece of gear you could want as I live five minutes from Black Bird Gear Rentals if there is something specific you want.     

I’ve built a number of mastering rooms over the years. Some for myself and some for others. What I have learned is that a room needs to sound correct to the person working in it. We all hear a little different and each room requires its own design and system.

My current room is my favorite room.

I left a commercial space a few years ago and moved my operation back home. I gutted a decent size bedroom and rebuilt it from floor to ceiling. Then, I added my curtain wall design which has been used in over twenty studios now.

Behind that curtain in the above picture is about four or five feet of space to control the sound where it builds up the most - right behind the monitors.

It has a variety of material and mass as well as air space to keep everything playing nice with each other.

The end result is a very flat and consistent room. I have had bigger spaces and smaller spaces, I have worked in more expensive spaces and cheaper spaces. I have had more expensive monitors and cheaper monitors. What I have learned is that unless you build the whole room as a system and understand that everything in a room, including you, changes the sound, you get very inconsistent results.

Less has often been more for me in my career.

If it sounds good… it’s good.