THE STUDIO & EQUIPMENT
The studio has been designed to offer a great sounding and inspiring workspace. Construction and audio specialists worked with Ben to create a studio that has plenty of natural daylight and fresh air ventilation, but is acoustically isolated and flexible enough to allow the room’s acoustics to be tailored to individual requirements. Made from 80% reclaimed materials the studio has a warm, light and natural feel that is a pleasure to spend time in.
Hardware
iMac G5 16GB - 2.7Ghz Intel Core i5 - Logic Pro 9 or Logic X
Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 2nd gen. interface
TL Audio stereo valve compressor
2 x ART valve preamps
Alesis Samplepad Pro
Nektar 5 Octave MIDI controller
Monitoring
Pioneer RM05 nearfield monitors - See the Sound on Sound reviews, they’re great!
Event Alpine nearfield monitors - Great for getting an idea of how a mix translates to mono and lower quality systems.
Sennheiser HD 600 headphones - Very high quality open back design for hours of comfortable tracking or mixing.
Sennheiser HD 25 & HD 201 headphones
Samson S-Phone headphone distribution amp - Combined with the excellent signal routing capability that comes with Logic and the 18i20 it is possible to get 6 customisable headphone mixes meaning each performer can exactly hear what they want.
Microphones
2 x Aston Spirit
Sennheiser MK4
Avantone ribbon mic
Oktava MK-012 matched pair
Rode NT1A with K47 capsule mod
Rode NT2 - 2000
SE1A
Superlux
AKG D112
2 x AKG C 430
3 x AKG D 40
Plugins, instruments and FX
Waves Gold Collection - A well rounded collection of industry standard plugins to suit all tasks.
Waves SSL E Channel - Top notch analogue channel strip emulation.
Waves J37 - Modelled on Abbey Road's classic tape machine to add some analogue warmth, tape saturation or weird fx to your tracks.
Waves Inphase - Phase alignment is often overlooked in home studios which can have a serious impact on a mix
Waves Tony Maserati Signature Series bass and drums channels strips.
Melodyne 5 - Incredibly flexible and sensitive pitch adjustment and tone shaping software for tuning things up or creating weird and wonderful harmonies and effects.
Pianoteq 5 - Truly fantastic piano emulation.
FXpansion BFD3 - If you haven’t got a drum kit, drummer or need to do some drum replacement then this is incredibly realistic and easy to use.
Loads of other plugins from Tokyo Dawn, Stillwell, TDR Labs and more.
Logic has a fantastic selection of Synths and instruments from the EXS24 sampler and beyond. I’ve added to this collection with some great instruments.
Behringer Virtualizer Pro rack mounted stereo multi fx.
Instruments and Amps
Takamine T450SM SB - Bruce Springsteen among others plays one of these.
Squire Jagmaster - Sought after Japanese model only made for two years in the mid nineties.
Tokai Thunderbird bass.
Juketone 10W hardwired Fender Tweed clone.
A large collection of excellent guitar and bass pedals
E-Bow
Yamaha Digital Piano (let me know if you want to use this so I can get it over from the house!)
Glockenspiel
Clarinet
Omnichord (Google it, it’s awesome)
Bamboo Xylophone
Bean can one string diddley bow