Behind the scenes... Audio production of new vid

This is a Lightning Boy Audio product commercial, which was recorded at the studio last week using just 5 microphones total.  I produced the audio.  Bryan Wray did the video production.  Sean McVay performed on it.  Sean composed a rough idea of the song the night before the session.  When he arrived we spent about 6-7hrs recording the song (audio and video).  The next day I did the editing, re-amping of bass, mixing, and mastering all in a 7 hour stretch.  Its the quickest I ever saw an entire production go from idea to completion.  

Guitars and bass ran through the Lightning Boy II pedal.  If it wasn't obvious from the video, Sean played all the instruments.  He brought one guitar (the sparkly one) and his amp head (modded vintage Fender twin-reverb-ish).  We used both of those for the rhythm guitar parts.  The rest of the instruments and amps used were LBA's.  The Rhythm guitar part was tracked with his guitar and amp head, as I said, but using my 4x12 cab with Weber Legacy ceramic speakers.  I had a single Royer 121 on the cab.  We had the CH2 Sidecar Module connected to the Lightning Boy II for the Rhythm guitar.  When the drums kick in all the knobs are turned up 100% on both the CH2 and the Lightning Boy II.  I Then asked Sean to use my modded SG for the lead parts because it has a coil tap switch for the neck pickup (Duncan Pearly Gates).  Single coil for the lead into my crazy monster amp head which powered a Celestion Alnico Blue 1x12 open back cab.  Vintage Shure SM57 Unidyne III on the cab.  For the lead part I had Sean disconnect the CH2 and use the Lightning Boy II on its own because it gives you a more raw sound with a touch more gain.  He had the knob set max.  Drums were recorded on the house kit out in the entry hall, which has never been done before - although, I have always wanted to do that.  Just 2 microphones on drums.  Pearlman TM-1 vacuum tube large condenser mic in omni for overheads/room.  EV 868 on kick.  Bass guitar was recorded direct with the LBII & CH2 and reamped later through the Ampeg B-15-N with a Sennheiser 421.  The bass track starts off with the Lightning Boy II bypassed.  The pedal is turned on during the bass solo section so you can get an idea of what it does to the sound of the bass. 

​I used the Lightning Boy Audio Trinity channel strip to record almost all the sources.  I recorded bass DI through the Trinity, but the re-amped mic went through an A-designs Pacifica.  The Drum room mic was the Trinity preamp.  The kick was the Pacifica.  Guitars were all tracked through the Trinity.  For lead guitar I turned on the "turbo" switch on Trinity.  That gives a slight bit of extra balls to the sound.

Mixing was done entirely with analog gear and mixed on the LBA Trinity vacuum tube mixing board. I put a slight bit of plate reverb on the lead guitar using LBA's stereo analog plate reverb.  I ran the lead guitar through the LBA Big Boy vacuum tube optical compressor to smooth out the bite a little bit in the tone of the guitar.  Rhythm guitars went through the Flux Bender for some EQ.  Lead guitar had no EQ.  I have another mono tube EQ I built ages ago called the TEQ-1, which is what the Flux Bender is based on.  I sent the kick drum through that EQ and then to an Aphex analog gate.  The bass had no EQ, but was a mix between the DI track and the Amplified track.  I blended those to get the best balance of tone I could muster.  I sent the overhead drum track through another passive EQ I built called the Arque Equalizer.  That EQ is a crazy beast.  I had an stereo SSL style bus compressor strapped to the output of the tube mixer in parallel for a little 1dB mix bus parallel compression.  All in all I'd say the mixing was fairly simplistic.  

Mastering was done using 2 plug-ins (Massey L2007 Limiter x2) and the LBA Flux Bender Equalizer.  I'm not exactly sure if I used that same stereo bus compressor after the Flux Bender.  I often do that when Mastering for a dB or two of limiting from that.  It was probably connected.  That's it!