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renting pre's/compressors
| Message Board > Music Chitchat - Heavy > renting pre's/compressors |
| josh@moneyshot User Info... | Anyone know of any stores/studios in town that rent high end pre's/compressors? Anybody out there willing to rent one? I'm looking for UA 6176 (or a 610 and 1176) and an LA-2A to do some tracking with. I don't want to have to go to vancouver to get them. Josh - Wed, 26 Nov 2003 2:05pm | ||
| josh User Info... | if you've got something else that's cool that you'd be into renting out, I might be into that too josh - Wed, 26 Nov 2003 2:10pm | ||
| Fred the Dragon User Info... | Have you tried PAW? - Wed, 26 Nov 2003 2:34pm | ||
| Zippgunn User Info... | To my knowledge nobody in town has stuff of that ilk, at least not to rent, and, before you ask, nor are there any fancy mics or pre-s either. I could be wrong but I've had people ask me this question before and we always seem to come up empty. If you DO find such esoteric gear be prepred to pay a king's ransom for it. Even Van has only a limited amount of such stuff for rent and even if you find people with this stuff for hire be prepared to put up with a heap of attitude as well as premium rates. I call this sort of stuff "magic bullet" gear; some folks seem to think all you have to do is get some of this cool vintage stuff and it will do all the work for you. Wrong. - Wed, 26 Nov 2003 8:20pm | ||
| josh User Info... | what, wait........it won't? - Thu, 27 Nov 2003 4:57am | ||
| Zippgunn User Info... | Well now, I have to ask, why are you looking for this specific stuff? Is it because you've used it before and it worked great, or is it because you read about some hotshot producer guy who "can't work without..." said esoteric gear. I once had a well known producer come into my studio carting a whole lot of cool vintage stuff with him to suppliment my pretty good but not very exciting stuff. You guessed it, a bunch of it didn't work and the stuff that actually did work was extra low tech stuff like distortion boxes plugged into inserts and suchlike. I think L & M's has a Joe meek comp for rent which should be as good as you could possibly need for compression and Focusrite makes a real good outboard EQ. Remember that "vintage" almost always translates into "noisy" and "unreliable". - Thu, 27 Nov 2003 5:20am | ||
| Laprider User Info... | I agree with scott some of this "vintage recording gear" is more hassle then its worth....Joe meek stuff is available at L & M and pretty fine and quiet to boot... Use your ears not anything else....Try inserting an Ibanez tube screamer...its worked wonders for me in place of expensive tube pre's. There are some good pre's around town ie check out Joby Bakers Neve and Manley stuff, but I don"t think he is intersted in renting. Bottom line rely on your ears not magazine articles...Hell drawmar stuff works great and a 1960 still can be found for a fair price,. my few cents worth. - Thu, 27 Nov 2003 7:34am | ||
| Zippgunn User Info... | Put it this way; if I had Neve strips etc. I wouldn't rent them out to anybody. They're just too hard to find and too expensive. - Thu, 27 Nov 2003 10:50am | ||
| Josh User Info... | well, my original question was "do you know of anywhere?", not "what do you think of?". Regardless, I don't know about esoteric, the 610, 1176, and la-2a are industry workhorses, they've been used in thousands of recordings and they have a proven track record and a reputation for a reason. I'm not arguing with the fact that could be a number of $200 tube pres we could find out there that would sound comparable, or even better, but it's a crapshoot, our project is on a timeline, and experimenting with 10 different pieces of gear to find something I like is not something I want to do with my project time. Simple production decision, time vs money. I want classic tube compression,and I'd rather have a known quantity in the signal chain, and be able to focus on the more important things, like performance, amp sounds, mic placement, etc. if I don't like what I'm hearing. Same reason we're going to use our marshall amps instead of experimenting with a bunch of cheaper combos. I'm an electrical engineer, I work for mackie DESIGNING mixing boards and mic pres, so I'm not about to fall for any audiophile smoke and mirrors, I made decisions based on checking out specifications and schematics. We're also going to be using the XDR pre's on a Mackie 1604 for various parts of our recording. Despite how cheap they are, there isn't many pre's that can touch them as far as signal to noise or transparancy, even neve. I can also tell you with certainty that "vintage" almost always translates to "higher quality components" in the tube analog gear world. Analog audio design is a dying art in the engineering world, and there are very few engineers out there today who have the same knowledge of vaccuum tubes amps and audio transformers that engineers 30 years ago did. Anyway, Looks like I'm going to vancouver to get them. - Thu, 27 Nov 2003 1:12pm | ||
| moron User Info... | You are strapped for time but you can afford to go to Vancouver to rent gear? I hope it's your own money you are wasting and not some unknowing band's. Joe Meek's stuff gets consistently high reviews from reliable mags like Sound On Sound and I know from general feedback that FMR's "RNC" compressor is supposed to be awesome. Vintage gear is not known for being reliable as much as having certain sound characteristics. Most of the folks who really like the stuff do so because they grew up using it and so are really familiar with it. If that doesn't describe you it sounds like you are wasting your effort going after the stuff (since you will discover that it is noisy, prone to breakdown and less friendly than current gear). Take the money and time from a trip to Van and spend it on a some rentals from L&M and personal testing. IMHO Cheers - Thu, 27 Nov 2003 1:26pm | ||
| josh User Info... | Yes, never fear. It's my own (well, Moneyshot's) money that I'm "wasting". Although the concern is touching. - Thu, 27 Nov 2003 2:03pm | ||
| Zippgunn User Info... | Sorry if it seems that we're all picking on ya there Josh, it's just I hate to see people go to a lot of effort to rent gear and then find out that it doesn't make that much difference. You are right, the Mackie mic pre-s are awfully good, even compared to things like Neves (They are, apparently, copies of Neves and Lou Reed used nothing but Mackies for a recent record and said the difference wasn't worth the pain in the rear of finding a bunch of Neve strips for rent). And you're right, a lot of this stuff is very high build quality/audio spec; it's just that a lot of it is also quite old and has been out on rental forever. It sounds like you're doing this new record at your own place which, IMO, adds a further wrinkle; recording your own band which adds extra distractions (band politics etc.) so I wish you the best. Just don't take any wooden nickels. Give us a call if you get stuck. - Fri, 28 Nov 2003 7:45am | ||
| josh User Info... | Thanks Scott, I appreciate it. We'll definitely call you if we need to. Always nice to have experience, and a different perspective on your side. We actually did 10 songs of drum tracks at studio one at greenhouse (the ones we did preproduction for at your place). We're tracking the rest ourselves, (with dave from the rod iron haulers donating his home studio for us to do it in, he pretends to be a badass tattooed rocker, but really he's just nice!)and some help from producer Joel Van Dyke from greenhouse, (the smalls, wide mouth mason, colin james)which is what we're renting this gear for. Funny thing is, we're renting the "overpriced" gear and tracking ourselves to avoid paying for more overpriced studio time and being on the clock. Once we're done tracking, Joel is going to be mixing for us. Anyway, new album will be out sometime around march. And Scott, If you go to http://www.newmusiccanada.com/genres/artist.cfm?Band_Id=7315, you can listen to the quick mix we did on two of the new songs we tracked out at your place. Josh - Fri, 28 Nov 2003 9:23am | ||
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