I always try to prepare well before starting a new mix.  I'll start Mixing the Gills EP, "Will the Moon" on Monday next week and will spend 5 days on it.  The addition of an SPL Transient Designer 2 to my analog arsenal will certainly help make the drums sound more awesome than usual, but I'm also going to have a brand new reverb system.  Same plate as before, but new driver and output amps with LOTS of EQ capabilities pre and post for shaping the reverb's tone to suit the mix perfectly... and an ultra low noise floor!  Low noise is always a high priority with my analog gear.  One funny thing about my obsession with ultra low noise...  I own only a few preamps that were not built by me.  They are very high quality name brand preamps, but my Vintech X73i actually has more noise than anything I built for LBA Studios.  If the top shelf name brand gear has more noise than Lightning Boy gear, you can start to get a grasp of the ultra high-level equipment here.  Having the best tools makes my job easier and my work better.  That's why I will continue to build up my analog arsenal well into the future.     

Gills coming back in today for additional recording because I'd like to hear some organ on their tunes.  Production will be done at that point and editing is already done, so we'll soon move on to the Mixing phase.  In other news, Ronan Chris Murphy of Recording Bootcamp finished his review of my Flux Bender EQ.  He shipped it back yesterday so I should have that in my hands by Friday and his video will be up on youtube in a few weeks.  Mixing the Gills EP will start when it arrives.  I also purchased an SPL Transient Designer 2, which will be coming in tomorrow.  This will also be used for Mixing, as I plan to use it to dial in some tighter drum sounds.

If you've been to LBA Studio's, you know about the crazy guitar amp I built.  I added a line input (and line input transformer) to it so I can use it for other purposes.  With the line input, I could re-amp guitar without the need for an external re-amping box, but that's not why I made this mod.  I took out the KT88 power tube and rebiased the amp for a 6L6, which has less power (~42 watts compared to about 25 watts).  I also replaced the 12AX7 preamp tube with a low gain 12BH7 tube (gain factor of 100 compared to gain factor of 16.5).  Why would I want less power, less gain and a line input???  Plate Reverb driver amp on steroids!  That's right, this not a permanent thing, but for mixing I can now quickly and easily repurpose the Gravitone amp as a plate reverb driver amp with a very elaborate EQ and tone shaping interface.  Its now sitting in the control room, connected to the plate reverb.  I'm really looking forward to the impressive tone and ultra low noise of this amp paired with my analog plate reverb.   This next EP is going to be nuts!!! :) 

An SPL Transient Designer 2 is on its way!  I love analog and I definitely love punchy drums.  The TD will definitely deliver super tight punchy drums during the mixing phase.  Almost bought the plug in, but after hearing audio demos of both I really couldn't resist the analog version.  This creates a slight problem, but definitely not a bad one - I ran out of rack space before buying this.  The time has come to add a third rack.  I'm planning to build it right into my desk.  There are some tools I would prefer to have right at my finger tips.  ie. Equalizers :) Go Analog!  

Soon enough my beloved Flux Bender will be back from its review with mix engineer, Ronan Chris Murphy, which will be featured on his youtube channel.  Then I can get to Mixing on a few pending projects.  Meanwhile, as I finished up the editing phase of an EP by the Gills, I thought of some last minute hammond organ parts that could fill out some of the tunes in key locations.  Sounds like the group is interested in doing this, so I'm really hoping we can pull it off.  All we need to do is find a hammond player and there are a couple people in mind.  If it doesn't work out, I might be able to pull it off myself.  There has been a few occasions where I've played the organ on tracks for people.  I'm not an organist and have limited keyboard abilities, although I can certainly find the right notes to make it work.  I always have a backup plan, but hopefully I won't need it.

In other news, I'm designing a stereo mic preamp (channel strip to be exact).  The goal is to make something that outperforms mic preamps in the $2000 price range.  Failure is not an option.  Upon success I plan to make several of these for the studio.  They will not be used solely for recording, but also for Mixing since there is an onboard equalizer.

Finally, the upstairs lounge area is now complete so now its time to start thinking about the next big studio improvement.  This next job will be a massive undertaking both financially and physically, so it may take some time before starting.  I would prefer to keep this one hush-hush till it gets underway.  Think big!