Studio Gear

I have been maintaining studio equipment for over 40 years.  My main speciality was MCI equipment.  I have always admired their design philosophy and sonic performance.  The fact that many of these products are still going when so much other gear less than half the age has been delegated to the skip bin is testament to their quality.

These days in Australia at least, the high end music recording industry is practically dead and I no longer do much work in this area.

In this section, I am sharing some of my experiences about a few random products.

A Warning about Vintage Audio Gear

Some people think that vintage gear is the magic bullet needed to produce a hit record.  It's not.  The song, the performance, the production - anything but the equipment it was recorded on is what makes it good.  A good sounding recording helps.

These days, people pay stupid amounts of money for some revered products such as the Urie 1176 Limiter and Neve 1073 Mic Pre/EQ module.  On the other hand, you can buy vintage consoles, tape recorders and outboard gear for a fraction of what they once cost.  Studio owners have trouble selling large consoles and tape recorders for good reason.

• I have had some owners quietly confess that they have realised that their classic vintage console actually doesn't sound as good as their DAW!
• Large analogue consoles and tape recorders were always high maintenance and expensive to run.
• These days when we are talking about 40+ year old equipment, it is highly unlikely that it is performing anything like it once did.  Many parts are unobtainable.  Major work such as replacing all electrolytic capacitors is mandatory - if you don't do it, they can leak acid, eating away circuit board tracks and eventually destroying the equipment.  Same thing with gear that has batteries soldered onto circuit boards.  Then you've got dirty switches, dirty and worn out pots, dirty connectors and dry joints.  All of this adds up to a fortune to repair (if you can even find someone competent enough to do the job).  And you always run the risk that something vital might fail that cannot be replaced.  Buying stuff from the mid 80s/90s is even more of a risk because as they crammed more electronics into a smaller space, it ran hotter and the lower grade capacitors would often fail in as little as 10 years.  Some units from this era had sealed RAM modules with internal battery backup - obviously the battery eventually dies and even if you can replace the unit, you may never be able to get the thing up and running again without the data (and the company if it still exists will tell you that the product is no longer supported).  Similarly, anything that runs on a floppy, hard disk or requires a specific external computer like an old Mac could leave you in big trouble these days, even if the gear itself is OK.

That low purchase price might not be so attractive after all!