Eight Miles High Analog Recording Project

Budrocket1 · Post by **Budrocket1** » Sat Nov 08, 2014 1:27 pm

Thought you guys would be interested in a recording project I was hired to play on and co-produce here in Nashville this week for a guy who is working on his thesis at London College of Music. It involved recreating 8MH from scratch, using much of the same analog gear and recording environment that The Byrds did back in 1966. We recorded at Fry Pharmacy Studios, which was all analog, onto 8-track tape, and mixed to 3-track, which was the format Columbia mixed to in the 60's, as opposed to 2-track. I got ahold of the original session track sheet, which cleared up some misconceptions. Some rough edges -- we were going for "good enough" rather than "perfect" -- but I think we got pretty close. And in a case of revisionist history, we also recorded The Beatles' "Rain" as it might have sounded had The Byrds did it themselves. Of particular interest was figuring out the signal chain that Roger McGuinn used to get "that sound" on his 12-string (several sounds, actually, depending on the cut or album). I used my 1990 370-12, with a trio of Lollar "Broiler" p/ups, which plays like a dream thanks to the magic of Mark Arnquist. Initial tracking was done through a Fender amp, then compressed with a UA 1176. McGuinn double tracked his parts, and did his solos as overdubs, and for the overdub we tried going D/I through a pair of 1176's, but ended up going back to the amp + 1176 + JangleBox with the treble boost switch on (McGuinn had the components of a Vox Treble Boost built into RIC #2, with an extra toggle switch on the control plate), and that got us really close.

Enjoy, and please feel free to share the link!

https://soundcloud.com/budrocket/sets/t ... igh-analog

doctorwho · Post by **doctorwho** » Sat Nov 08, 2014 3:00 pm

Very cool! Thanks for sharing this with us!

T.A.R. · Post by **T.A.R.** » Sun Nov 09, 2014 10:10 am

Loved it! Thanks for sharing.

LenMinNJ · Post by **LenMinNJ** » Sun Nov 09, 2014 2:01 pm

Sounds like it was a fun project!

gibsonlp · Post by **gibsonlp** » Mon Nov 10, 2014 1:53 am

Awesome project.
Counting down the days until I'll have my own studio

8mileshigher · Post by **8mileshigher** » Mon Nov 10, 2014 2:27 pm

doctorwho wrote:Very cool! Thanks for sharing this with us!

+1 What Gary said !!

Folkie · Post by **Folkie** » Mon Nov 17, 2014 8:56 am

Nice work!

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