Insights In Sound 217 – A Tour of the Legendary Les Paul Studio with Engineer Tom Camuso – S22 E7

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0:2727 secondsI’m here with Tom Kamuso in the freshly restored Les Paul Studios. Yep.
0:3535 secondsAnd uh there’s so many stories here. I don’t even really know where to start.
0:4040 secondsBut where I kind of want to start is a little bit of your background because you came into this in such a convoluted
0:4949 secondsway and you’ve done so much incredible work in this place. So, um I guess the
0:5656 secondsfirst question I would have if I were walking in off the street is what qualified you to do this
1:041 minute, 4 secondsUh well, no one asked me to do it was so there really wasn’t a qualification. It was I just started chasing this idea.
1:121 minute, 12 secondsUm so originally I’m from New York. I’m an engineer in New York. I had a studio in New York and during COVID lockdown, so
1:201 minute, 20 secondsI’ll even go back farther with the foundation. The studio is run by the Les Paul Foundation. Les set up the foundation before he died. Um, basically
1:291 minute, 29 secondsto uh keep his music alive and educate the next generation that he wasn’t a guitar, that he actually invented the process and the gear that we use.
1:391 minute, 39 secondsYeah.
1:401 minute, 40 secondsWhen Les passed, all of his recordings were in his house, everything. And there were 33,000 recordings.
1:471 minute, 47 secondsI’ve heard about his house.
1:491 minute, 49 secondsYeah. Yeah. And all the gear was in there. So when he passed all the gear went to museums and the music all um all the reels of tape went to Library of Congress to get digitized.
1:591 minute, 59 secondsSo that was like a decade of you know going working through that system and get getting you know he had so much music to to archive. Um
2:082 minutes, 8 secondsafter that process that’s when I was brought in and it was during 2020 during like COVID lockdown time
2:162 minutes, 16 secondsand they reached out and said can you listen through uh you know what we have have uh transferred and make a Google
2:242 minutes, 24 secondsdoc of what’s there so we know what all this 33,000 stuff you know songs are. How many years did that take?
2:312 minutes, 31 secondsWell I lasted a month and I was out. It was just, you know, all day long. Less than Mary. I love Less and Mary, but all day long of the, you know, I burnt out.
2:412 minutes, 41 secondsSo, um, about a year passed and I was thinking about the stuff that’s in the archive and most of Les’s archive is
2:502 minutes, 50 secondsrecorded tape to tape. So, he records to one tape machine, rewinds it, plays it back, plays along with it, records it to another, rewinds that, plays it back.
2:582 minutes, 58 secondsYeah.
2:592 minutes, 59 secondsSo in the archive um they started seeing that there were uh we call them like
3:063 minutes, 6 secondslike stem trees of songs but basically because he’s going back and forth they’re just mono recordings baked together right
3:133 minutes, 13 secondsbut we start finding you know pieces of songs and then later you come across oh that’s the same song that’s the same that that he got one
3:203 minutes, 20 secondsmore vocal or it’s got you know so wow and basically what we realize is he kept everything he never recorded over anything. So tape was cheap back then.
3:303 minutes, 30 secondsYeah. And [laughter] and so was less apparently because he he was putting the songs in like he would need 2 minutes of tape and he’d go to
3:393 minutes, 39 secondsthe closet, find a reel of tape that had 2 minutes between something and he’d stick it there. [laughter] So basically we had a 33,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.
3:483 minutes, 48 secondsNice. So once uh they had you know the the they had the foundation put everything together and we realized okay
3:563 minutes, 56 secondswe have this this this and this. There were about 200 songs that had the whole stem tree. So
4:044 minutes, 4 secondsagain so you know they bring me in to do it. I I burn out. And about a year later, I’m thinking, well, you know
4:114 minutes, 11 secondswhat? I wonder if you took all those stems and lined them up and flipped every other one out of phase, if you could phase cancel and make a multitrack.
4:204 minutes, 20 secondsOh, and the reason being is if you listen to Les’s mixes, they’re unbelievable. And they’re like the production is incredible.
4:284 minutes, 28 secondsSure. But the quality isn’t the greatest because some of them are 30 40 tape generations old by the time he’s done doing it with no ability to change any of the mix.
4:384 minutes, 38 secondsSo it’s like you’re behind three walls of tissues basically.
4:404 minutes, 40 secondsYeah. And it just keeps, you know, getting crunchier and crunchier and sometimes something’s a little too loud and he often recorded the new thing that
4:484 minutes, 48 secondshe’s putting down a little too loud because I guess his headphones weren’t great and he needed to hear himself. So he actually even eventually starts
4:564 minutes, 56 secondsrecording things in a backwards order where the least important thing starts appearing first because he knows it’s going to fall off the tape by the time he layers everything up.
5:065 minutes, 6 secondsKind of like Jeff Emerick was doing with the Beatles stuff, right? Like track the tambourine first because you know it’s going to Yeah. It’s going to get buried.
5:135 minutes, 13 secondsYeah. So, um, so I have this idea and went back to the foundation and they basically said, “We’ll give you a song
5:215 minutes, 21 secondsand if you know see what you can do with it.” Uhuh.
5:235 minutes, 23 secondsI got it and immediately realized I’m an idiot. It’s never going to work. Because the tape drift was so crazy on these old tape machines. Like sometimes it’s 3
5:325 minutes, 32 secondsseconds longer and the next stem is 2 seconds shorter. It just they were so, you know, in order to
5:385 minutes, 38 secondsphase out it has to be exact like a a duplicate in ProTools. that’ll work.
5:435 minutes, 43 secondsAnd there ain’t no clocks in these things.
5:455 minutes, 45 secondsNo. And so I immediat was like immediately was like, I’m a dummy. I should have known this. Um, but didn’t want to reach right back out and say,
5:535 minutes, 53 secondsoh, sorry I was bothering you about this. It’s not going to work. So, we spent about another year, year and a half trying to crack the code on how to
6:016 minutes, 1 seconddo it. And eventually, um, what we came up with was, um, we got involved with that company Cedar. Mhm.
6:086 minutes, 8 secondsUm, they had this thing called re-speed where it reads the bias line and it corrects the bias line where there’s a
6:166 minutes, 16 secondsworbble and that gets your stuff to play in time. Okay.
6:196 minutes, 19 secondsProblem with Les’s stuff 30 bias lines, you know, like every time he’s going back, it’s printing another bias line. Oh Jesus.
6:266 minutes, 26 secondsSo it just would go crazy and go, I don’t know what you’re asking me to do.
6:306 minutes, 30 secondsSo we worked with them and they figured a way how to, you know, disarm that and manually do it, which is an extremely
6:366 minutes, 36 secondstime consuming process to do each one, but we were able to get that first one in time.
6:426 minutes, 42 secondsUm, still even within one cycle of being locked, it wouldn’t phase because it’s not exact. It would do it for a second and then it would sound like the fader’s coming back up.
6:536 minutes, 53 secondsSo, but at least we were locked, you know? Okay. Proof of concept if nothing else. Yeah.
6:586 minutes, 58 secondsYeah. So then the next thing was um AI and this was you know four or five years
7:047 minutes, 4 secondsago. So it was at the very you know beginning of that stuff really only the Beatles were doing it. Right. Right.
7:117 minutes, 11 secondsSo [clears throat] I just got a bunch of every you know source separation software and started figuring which ones
7:207 minutes, 20 secondswork best on what and ganging things up and coming up with like a cocktail of pre-Quing things. And [laughter] so I
7:277 minutes, 27 secondswas able to finally get it to where it was really pulling things apart really well. And we now because everything was
7:357 minutes, 35 secondslocked, I could go back and on the first um like stem as we call it go, okay, separate these and then the next stem
7:427 minutes, 42 secondsjust take the the newest, you know, element. Okay.
7:467 minutes, 46 secondsAnd that was the idea is you just pull everything the first time it appears and then create a multitrack from that. It sounds like building a wall one pebble at a time.
7:567 minutes, 56 secondsYeah. So, it’s super time consuming. I mean, it takes, you know, wow, you know, probably 50 hours to get one song to the point where you’re like,
8:048 minutes, 4 seconds”Okay, I’m ready to mix this.” Right. Right.
8:078 minutes, 7 secondsAnd we had 200 to do. So, um, so I got that first one done and then when I did, I was able to then, you know, use all
8:158 minutes, 15 secondsthe the restoring softwares, clean up the pops and and then remix it using a multi-track where I could, you know,
8:248 minutes, 24 secondscompress the bass separately and EQ everything separately and makes make it stereo. Les never had stereo mixes.
8:318 minutes, 31 secondsAnd I’m sure just the sonics of the stuff was probably horrendously bad, right?
8:358 minutes, 35 secondsYeah. Because of of the, you know, the process.
8:388 minutes, 38 secondsYeah. So when I was able to do it, then I went back and played it for them. And then they was were like, “Okay, this is great.” Because now, you know, the
8:468 minutes, 46 secondsfoundation less set it up so keep the music alive and educate. It was hard to do because, you know, he’s not here to make new music. So you can put it on the
8:558 minutes, 55 secondsstreaming services, but it doesn’t stream very well because it’s mono and it’s a little crunchy and everyone listens on earbuds and
9:039 minutes, 3 secondsdistortion right into your brain is is a hard listen. So this sort of opens it up. It clears everything up. Gives you
9:119 minutes, 11 secondssome space and you know, you know, we’re using his chambers, you know, just getting [clears throat] things to to really sound robust and nice.
9:199 minutes, 19 secondsSo um it sort of checked the the box for keeping the music, you know, moving forward.
9:269 minutes, 26 secondsOnce that we, you know, sort of came up with this process of how to do it, the foundation was like, okay, well, let’s do everything. put out an archival box
9:359 minutes, 35 secondswhere you have his original monos remastered and then, you know, maybe two more
9:429 minutes, 42 secondsrecords of all of these new uh, you know, restored stereo mixes of the same songs.
9:509 minutes, 50 secondsSounds like about 50 years worth of work right there. [laughter] Yeah. Believe it or not, I haven’t gotten that far into it because we’ve spent the last 5 years getting to this point.
9:599 minutes, 59 secondsI believe it. Yeah. I mean, just the process of figuring out how the hell are we going to do this that conceptualizing it all? It’s like Yeah. And it I’m impressed, man.
10:0710 minutes, 7 secondsAnd again, it was really more of a, you know, you know, in the spirit of less, how do I figure this out, you know, cuz
10:1510 minutes, 15 secondsthey weren’t, you know, hiring me to do this. So, it wasn’t until I figured it out that the foundation got interested.
10:2210 minutes, 22 secondsAnd when they heard it, they were like, “Well, let’s restore all the gear. We’ll pull it out of the museums, restore it all, do an archival box of everything, mix it
10:3110 minutes, 31 secondson his equipment because again, it’s all about keeping him alive, keeping his name in the press, and what’s a better story than restoring his
10:4010 minutes, 40 secondscatalog, restoring his equipment, which is all, you know, the most groundbreaking equipment.
10:4510 minutes, 45 secondsYeah. And that’s another question I’m going to have, but go ahead. Sorry.
10:4810 minutes, 48 secondsYeah. So, we restored it all. That was another year.
10:5010 minutes, 50 secondsUhhuh. And then, you know, the thought is, what do you do with it now that it’s restored? When you’re done doing this, do you put it back in the museum and let
10:5710 minutes, 57 secondsit die again or, you know, in that check the next box of educate people about I’m not a guitar. I I invented this stuff.
11:0611 minutes, 6 secondsSo then the idea was let’s set it up and, you know, do classes, teach kids about the history of recording. I mean,
11:1511 minutes, 15 secondsless is really a big part of the evolution of everything.
11:1911 minutes, 19 secondsSure. teach them about signal flow. I mean, that’s Yeah, this is a a working class in that right in front of us here.
11:2711 minutes, 27 secondsYeah. So, um so the idea was set it up because we needed to set it up anyway to mix his archive on it.
11:3311 minutes, 33 secondsUh do education with it, bring in new artists, bring in, you know, famous people who would want to come in and use
11:4011 minutes, 40 secondsit. And again, it generates press, keeps Les’s name alive and Yeah. and keeps, you know, the the whole foundation, the purpose of it moving forward.
11:5011 minutes, 50 secondsSo that’s why I want to talk about the gear.
11:5311 minutes, 53 secondsI’m qualified to do this. I’m just the only one dumb enough to chase it.
11:5711 minutes, 57 seconds[laughter]
11:5811 minutes, 58 secondsTouche.
11:5911 minutes, 59 secondsYeah. Yeah. I mean, wow. What a thing to what a thing to latch on to, dude. I mean, that’s like, you know, the whole idea of you just accepting that challenge.
12:0812 minutes, 8 secondsYeah.
12:0812 minutes, 8 secondsYou know, that’s that’s brilliant in itself. Uh, now I want to ask about this because you start getting into this stuff and I
12:1612 minutes, 16 secondsfrom what I know about Les, first of all, I I’ve heard many many stories that his entire house was kind of a rat’s
12:2312 minutes, 23 secondsnest of just all sorts of like don’t go down in the basement kind of stuff filled with gear everywhere. Tape machines in his bedroom. I mean it he was he lived it.
12:3212 minutes, 32 secondsYeah. So you get this this console or that eight track.
12:3912 minutes, 39 secondsHow do you even figure out what components to use? I mean, a lot of this stuff has got to be completely obsolete.
12:4412 minutes, 44 secondsYeah. And and I didn’t restore it. I put together the team, these guys um in Brooklyn, Thump Recording did did all the restoration. Oh, I know those guys. Okay.
12:5212 minutes, 52 secondsAnd they’re great. They did the tape machine, the console. Um and really, so the original thing was don’t change
13:0113 minutes, 1 secondanything. Don’t touch any. I mean, that was half of these relays have got to be completely corroded. you would think, but everything worked really
13:0813 minutes, 8 secondsreally. I mean, there were like little pieces of plastic that had disintegrated and they would like 3D print them and put them back exactly the same way,
13:1713 minutes, 17 secondsbut pretty much everything worked. I mean, you know, little things here and there, but I see two mismatched bake light knobs here. No, that’s how they’re supposed to be.
13:2613 minutes, 26 secondsReally? Were they because of the masters?
13:2813 minutes, 28 secondsYeah, these are your buses and these are So, that was his color scheme was black and brown.
13:3213 minutes, 32 secondsYeah, that’s how you know what what you’re doing. That’s just elegant as all hell. Yeah.
13:3613 minutes, 36 secondsSo, everything was really here. Um, it really just was take it apart, clean it, and put it back together.
13:4313 minutes, 43 secondsI’m I’m really impressed with the longevity of some of the components. I mean, I’m just thinking with all of these like magnetic relays and all of
13:5013 minutes, 50 secondsthis other stuff. I mean, if anything was dead, we would replace it with new old stock or, you know, just finding the the part in something else.
13:5913 minutes, 59 secondsBut everything is exactly how it was.
14:0114 minutes, 1 secondAnd even like so the EQs were something we we didn’t get into restoring because the thought was they’re they’re made
14:0914 minutes, 9 secondswith these like carbon resistors which if they get moisture in them it changes the values and you can’t get them
14:1614 minutes, 16 secondsanywhere. And we didn’t want to change anything. So we’re like just leave them and we’ll figure it out when we get there. And we um recently got to that to
14:2614 minutes, 26 secondsyou know because we’re up here and everything’s running and I was like now it’s time to just sort of get an audio precision and see what these are really doing.
14:3414 minutes, 34 secondsAnd we did that recently and they are all dead on. They’re exactly what they’re supposed to be. Wow.
14:4014 minutes, 40 secondsYou know 70 years ago they made these carbon resistors so well that no moisture has gotten into them. Damn.
14:4514 minutes, 45 secondsSo they’re perfect and every single, you know, position works.
14:5014 minutes, 50 secondsJust blows me away, man. just the whole idea of this stuff and and and the tape machine too.
14:5514 minutes, 55 secondsUh the tape machine. Yeah, they again transports and stuff completely taken apart. This needed a little more work like you know with rubber stuff that needed to be replaced.
15:0515 minutes, 5 secondsBut for the most part, yeah, they took it apart, they fixed it or, you know, went through it, put it back together, and it works.
15:1215 minutes, 12 secondsYou know, it it’s so funny, man, because you know, um so my first gig in a studio was at Cherokee Studios.
15:1815 minutes, 18 secondsSure. So I came up working on uh four of the only of of only 14 Trident A ranges ever made.
15:2615 minutes, 26 secondsIt’s the first console I started working on.
15:2815 minutes, 28 secondsThere you go. So you understand and you know those capacitors need to be replaced on a regular basis. Um there’s so much stuff that
15:3615 minutes, 36 secondsum now I’m I’m betting that less might have been a little bit better with this, but like for example half the stuff on the A ranges was never even documented.
15:4415 minutes, 44 secondsI had a conversation with Malcolm Taft at one point and he admitted to me that he put this stuff together, had no idea what he was doing. They went back and
15:5215 minutes, 52 secondshad to reverse engineer things in order to just create the schematics for this stuff and every single console had a different schematic.
16:0016 minutesAnd I mean, I’m I’m guessing that a lot of this was the same for you guys.
16:0416 minutes, 4 secondsYou’re kind of hunting around without a road map, right?
16:0616 minutes, 6 secondsWell, we had a schematic. It wasn’t complete but enough to you know and then we had the console so you know so uh and
16:1416 minutes, 14 secondsalso the original schematic less had changed things so there were like [laughter] lots of things that were different from the schematic.
16:2116 minutes, 21 secondsUm so we have that and then we redrew an entirely new schematic you know to what it is now because again we didn’t want to change anything. Uhhuh.
16:2916 minutes, 29 secondsSo Wow. But I mean just the process itself that must have been several years worth of just
16:3616 minutes, 36 secondsYeah. It was three guys, sometimes five, um, 10 months straight working on it.
16:4116 minutes, 41 secondsWow. And so in the meantime, while they’re restoring all this stuff, you’re wrestling with the tracks.
16:4616 minutes, 46 secondsI’m now once we figured out how to do the first one, I I think I’ve done 105 so far. I got about another 95 to go.
16:5416 minutes, 54 secondsBut that was Paul expert. That’s what I was doing in that period.
16:5816 minutes, 58 secondsYeah, I know a lot. [laughter] Yeah, cuz I mean I remember when I was here the first time you were showing us how you basically managed to get some of those tracks to align.
17:0617 minutes, 6 secondsYeah. Yeah.
17:0717 minutes, 7 secondsAnd that holy dude. Yeah. It’s really It’s a a very laborious process, but but the results are great. And using
17:1617 minutes, 16 secondsthat Cedra software is like, you know, it’s got its own proprietary computer we had to buy just to run this one application.
17:2317 minutes, 23 secondsOh man. Um, so we’re doing it at the highest level possible of of of, you know, doing this time compression and expansion kind of kind of stuff.
17:3217 minutes, 32 secondsI think what amazes me and what I’m really impressed with is how I mean, we we always knew that Les was way ahead of
17:4017 minutes, 40 secondshis time in that sense. But the proof of it is how now you’re in front of all this stuff and you’re able to restore it.
17:4917 minutes, 49 secondsYeah. It basically still worked. Wow. It just really needed a tuneup.
17:5417 minutes, 54 seconds[laughter]
17:5517 minutes, 55 secondsI don’t know, man. I mean, that’s the idea to me that this old gear, you know, it’s it’s like trying to restore a
18:0318 minutes, 3 secondsModel T or something, you know, and the fact that it’s still that the integrity of this circuitry is still there to the
18:1118 minutes, 11 secondspoint where now, have you you’ve actually done recordings in here?
18:1418 minutes, 14 secondsOh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. that we’re we use the lathe, um the console, the tape machine, the sound on sound machine,
18:2218 minutes, 22 secondsthat’s a reproduction. We have the original, but it’s really the holy grail and there’s no benefit to recording to it.
18:2918 minutes, 29 secondsIt’s really about the idea and what it what it you know, how it changed everything. Sure.
18:3418 minutes, 34 secondsSo, we didn’t want to mess with the original one. We don’t want to use it and beat it up. It really it’s in a museum now and, you know, it’s it’s
18:4118 minutes, 41 secondsreally precious. So there’s really no advantage like sonically to do a record there. You’d just be doing it to say you did it that way.
18:5118 minutes, 51 secondsUm it’s really more of the idea that sparks the you know that you you can really make a machine to do this. Yeah.
18:5918 minutes, 59 secondsSo what we did because it’s really great to when we do classes to let the students go through the process and really show it. So, we built a replica
19:0719 minutes, 7 secondsso that we can use it and kind of beat it up a little bit. And the the the original is behind glass.
19:1419 minutes, 14 secondsYou know, the the whole education thing to me is really I mean, obviously that’s what this is about, you know, spreading his
19:2219 minutes, 22 secondslegacy and stuff like that. Um, do you have any kind of a background in education? I mean is this a new thing for you as well to be
19:2919 minutes, 29 secondsI didn’t even finish high school
19:3119 minutes, 31 seconds[laughter]
19:3219 minutes, 32 secondsso yeah it’s it’s all new to me but I was so into it and you know and then through the process of doing this I just
19:4019 minutes, 40 secondslearned so much about less and even like every day I learn something someone will come in and say say something and I I never knew that so there’s so much to
19:4819 minutes, 48 secondsless that it’s almost like you can’t possibly learn everything so you know I just sort of kept doing it and then I was the only one who knew how
19:5719 minutes, 57 secondsto use the console. So, I was the only one who could explain how it worked.
20:0020 minutesAnd I’ve done it now since I since the first time you’ve been here over a year ago. Yeah. I’ve I’ve, you know, learned so much that
20:0820 minutes, 8 secondshalf of what I was saying then I’ve corrected because I’m like, “Oh, it’s so much deeper than I even thought.” And now I know the origins of everything.
20:1720 minutes, 17 secondsAnd Right.
20:1720 minutes, 17 secondsIt’s like one of these, you know, things. The deeper you dig, the more you can you can there’s it’s endless of what you can, you know, find out about less.
20:2620 minutes, 26 secondsYeah. Well, and not just about less, but I think you know what really is valuable here in my view is
20:3320 minutes, 33 secondsless definitely was a pioneer. There’s no question about it. But what you’re doing is you’re teaching.
20:4020 minutes, 40 secondsYou know, one of the things that less understood that I think is overlooked in audio education these days is the why.
20:5120 minutes, 51 secondsRight? It’s like everybody’s teaching you how to run this stuff, you know, how to run ProTools, how to use a compressor, all that stuff. And that’s
20:5820 minutes, 58 secondsgreat, but we all get wrapped around the axle of gear, you know, and what I think less understood in the way he designed his
21:0721 minutes, 7 secondsgear was, what am I doing this for? I’m doing this because I want to make music, right? I’m doing this because I want to create art. And so what you’re teaching
21:1621 minutes, 16 secondshere, I think has so much of a tie into the creative process, which to me is like that’s what this is all about.
21:2521 minutes, 25 secondsThat’s what it should be all about.
21:2621 minutes, 26 secondsYeah. I mean, the underlying tone of everything we teach is the, you know, the limitation is what breeds the creativity. Yeah.
21:3421 minutes, 34 secondsAnd when Les was doing it, you couldn’t do, you know, especially with the sound on sound machine, it’s destructive. it it overdubs on top of the same piece of
21:4321 minutes, 43 secondstape, right? So, if you make a mistake, you have to do the whole song over again.
21:4721 minutes, 47 secondsWe don’t have command Z here. You know, the octopus doesn’t punch in if unless you have a mile of space between where you want to punch it in. Right. Right.
21:5521 minutes, 55 secondsSo, it’s really all about, you know, thinking about what you want to do, working it out in your head. When he was overdubbing with the lathe, the very
22:0422 minutes, 4 secondsfirst song he does is Lover, which if you’ve ever heard the song, it’s insane.
22:0922 minutes, 9 secondsThere’s 50 tracks of him playing double time, halftime, and octaves. And he’s doing [clears throat] it by changing the
22:1722 minutes, 17 secondsbelts from 33 to 45, which isn’t an octave. So then he’s tuning his guitar to weird tunings to make up the difference. Oh my god.
22:2522 minutes, 25 secondsAnd he’s he’s doing it 50 times. And this is the first song released with overdubs. So like the you know, the way his mind worked, he was always, you
22:3422 minutes, 34 secondsknow, 10 steps ahead of, you know, everything. Yeah. Even with the um the sound on sound, it’s destructive. So
22:4322 minutes, 43 secondswhen he does a song like How High the Moon, he does it in three parts and edits the tape together. That right there, that’s that’s tribute to the
22:5122 minutes, 51 secondspower of limits, you know, and it’s tribute to the idea of thinking this stuff through ahead of time, committing to certain decisions, you know, and
23:0023 minutesman, that to me, that’s so much more important than, you know, do I have the right plugin for something, you know?
23:0823 minutes, 8 secondsAnd that’s what I really love about this is, man, what you’re teaching is the idea of this is where we came from. this is what started this stuff, you know.
23:1723 minutes, 17 secondsAnd man, I love that because that that speaks more that that speaks more than any piece of gear you could ever
23:2523 minutes, 25 secondsrestore or come up with or anything like that because that’s the origin, you know, that’s ground zero right there for this stuff.
23:3323 minutes, 33 secondsYeah. And I love that, man.
23:3423 minutes, 34 secondsAnd he never was satisfied. He always pushed and pushed and pushed. Um, most guys when you would get to the sound on sound machine and you’re having hit
23:4223 minutes, 42 secondsafter hit would go, I figured it out and just sit back and enjoy it and right on, you know, right on to the next thing.
23:5023 minutes, 50 secondsYeah.
23:5123 minutes, 51 secondsAnd just keep how can I get what’s in my head, you know, onto tape in a better way.
23:5623 minutes, 56 secondsYeah. Especially the fact that he’s basically a guitar player, you know? I mean, yes, of course, he was so much more, but he wasn’t like, “Oh,
24:0324 minutes, 3 secondsnow I can overdub a synth, and now I can overdub strings.” And, you know, it was all about how do I get my music done, right? Right. Exactly.
24:0924 minutes, 9 secondsThe gear doesn’t exist. I will build it, but I’m hearing it in my head, and I need to to record it.
24:1424 minutes, 14 secondsYeah. And basically, I got this I got this guitar that I also kind of half invented, you know, it’s like, you know, oh, I don’t want to use an acoustic guitar, you know, I want to I want to
24:2224 minutes, 22 secondselectrify it. So all of these things compiled together to basically help him create the sounds he heard in his head. Yeah.
24:3024 minutes, 30 secondsAnd that is just I mean if you think about it from that perspective, that’s when you really realize just what the hell this guy was doing and how many
24:3924 minutes, 39 secondslight years ahead he was of anybody who was doing anything at that point.
24:4524 minutes, 45 secondsbecause you know I mean really that’s one of the things that I’ve I’ve always been fascinated by is as the technology
24:5224 minutes, 52 secondshas evolved it’s changed the creative process right like you know before we had overdubbing everything had to be
24:5924 minutes, 59 secondslive before we had recording the only experience of music was it was it was ethereal it was like you were there or you didn’t hear it right
25:0825 minutes, 8 secondsthen we had the idea of recording it to tape that’s great you know now you could actually put mics in front of an orchestra or a big band and you could
25:1625 minutes, 16 secondshear them later on, right? But then when you started getting into the idea of overdubbing, that’s when everything changes because you can start rethinking
25:2425 minutes, 24 secondsthe arrangements, you know, and I think I mean to our detriment to a certain extent because if you think about it, like now we have the ability to change
25:3325 minutes, 33 secondsand fix and you know, you end up having musicians that come into the studio and they never really bring their agame because they know they can fix it.
25:4025 minutes, 40 secondsYou know, another playlist, another playlist, another playlist. Exactly. Exactly.
25:4525 minutes, 45 secondsDid we get everything we need, you know, and then we’ll edit it all together, right? And that’s and then you end up with, you know, so much stuff that you have no idea what you have, you know, and you’re editing blindly in a way.
25:5625 minutes, 56 secondsBecome punch drunk because you’ve heard so many different you don’t you lose perspective.
25:5925 minutes, 59 secondsSo, so the whole idea of like, you know, now we we’ve we’re so spoiled for
26:0726 minutes, 7 secondstechnology and I think that’s really changed the game. And so for you to back up like that to his
26:1426 minutes, 14 secondscreative beginnings, it’s not just about showing what a genius the guy was. I mean, that’s great, you know, and I’m
26:2226 minutes, 22 secondsI’m happy that we get to get to be exposed to that, but man, the guy was doing what we really want to do as
26:3126 minutes, 31 secondscreatives. He was thinking all this stuff through. He was planning it out.
26:3426 minutes, 34 secondsHe was doing stuff that I think was just so amazing in terms of like what do I want to hear, you know? What do I hear in my head?
26:4426 minutes, 44 secondsAnd that man, I mean, the fact that you’re able to to bring that out to students, I think, is more valuable than than all of this.
26:5226 minutes, 52 secondsYeah. I mean, a lot of students that come in go, I didn’t even realize Les Paul was a guy. I just thought it was like
27:0027 minutesI thought he was a guitar. I just thought it was like a word like stratacastaster, you know. [laughter] They don’t think, oh, oh, that was a
27:0727 minutes, 7 secondsguy, Les Paul. I get it, you know. So, and really we don’t do do much, you know, talking about the guitar here.
27:1527 minutes, 15 secondsThis is really about the other side because everyone knows about the guitars. I mean, you could read about that all day long. Yeah. But very few
27:2227 minutes, 22 secondspeople realize how much he contributed to the process of how everyone records now, man. You know, and when students
27:3027 minutes, 30 secondscome in, they see this and they’re like, I don’t know what this is. You know, it looks like it’s from World War World War, right? There’s no faders
27:3727 minutes, 37 secondsand they’re completely not they’re disconnected. And then once you start showing them and it works exactly how their DAW works, like it’s no different
27:4427 minutes, 44 secondsthan ProTools. The way it’s laid out is the same way we do it today. And then all of a sudden, they’re like, “Oh, this is cool. I Oh, I get this. I know
27:5327 minutes, 53 secondsexactly how this works.” So, does it also teach them about subtractive EQ? No, they keep adding plugins and plugins on time. [laughter]
28:0228 minutes, 2 secondsBut it is funny. They come in and see like the LA2s and go, “Oh, I didn’t realize that was a real thing.” Because they have the plugin and they just assume the plugin was the thing.
28:1028 minutes, 10 secondsYeah. Yeah. You go, “No, all everything you’re using is based on everything you’re using is a picture of the real thing.” Exactly. Yeah.
28:1828 minutes, 18 secondsWow. But I, you know, I I think for you that must really be sort of a this must have been kind of life-changing for you,
28:2528 minutes, 25 secondsnot just taking on this project, but then being able to impart this knowledge and sort of almost involuntarily becoming an educator.
28:3428 minutes, 34 secondsYeah. Yeah. It’s it’s be, you know, I never would have thought I’d be doing it, but it’s it’s fun because the reaction from people and the reverence
28:4228 minutes, 42 secondsfor less and how, you know, he’s sort of become like the Thomas Edison of music, like he’s, you know, he’s or like the the uh Steve Jobs or, you know, whatever
28:5128 minutes, 51 secondsyour your your decade is, but you know, he’s he’s now becoming like this iconic
28:5828 minutes, 58 secondscool guy, and he was a cool guy. So, you know, yeah, that’s we talked about his bad sense of humor, too, you know.
29:0429 minutes, 4 secondsYeah. [laughter] But everyone who comes in here, you know, everyone has like such respect for him and are so blown
29:1129 minutes, 11 secondsaway by by all the equipment that it’s kind of fun to watch it and it never really gets old. Every day, you know, you see people’s minds being blown by
29:1929 minutes, 19 secondswhat’s in the room. So when you get people who are coming in to to to see this, what’s your biggest challenge in
29:2729 minutes, 27 secondsterms of just like introducing this concept to them?
29:3029 minutes, 30 secondsEveryone thinks it’s a museum. That’s the biggest thing. And and no matter how many times I say it’s not a museum, it’s the Les Paul recording studio.
29:3929 minutes, 39 secondsEverything works. We use the gear. We educate, but we also, you know, invite bands in to record. Anyone can come book
29:4729 minutes, 47 secondsthe room if they want to. So it’s like we that’s the hardest thing is to go it’s not a museum like it’s not like the
29:5529 minutes, 55 secondslights are just on to show we’re using it every day.
29:5929 minutes, 59 secondsSo and that’s really a big mindblower for people because they’re like you know how are you using this stuff? Uhhuh. We’re using it in mono mostly.
30:0730 minutes, 7 seconds[laughter]
30:0830 minutes, 8 secondsWell and that’s another that’s another interesting concept right there because you know especially now we’re we’re going to multi- channelannel on everything and all that stuff. It’s like
30:1630 minutes, 16 secondsback to mono, you know, okay, it’s a Phil Spectre kind of thing, but at the same time, it’s like, man, that’s where all this came from, right?
30:2430 minutes, 24 secondsAnd it does work in stereo. Less never used it in that way. Um, it’s not designed. There’s no pan pots. Um, if
30:3230 minutes, 32 secondsyou record to the tape machine, you are stuck in mono. Okay.
30:3630 minutes, 36 secondsUm, until you mix. And I mean, actually, you’re still stuck in mono till you mix.
30:4030 minutes, 40 secondsThere’s no way unless you dump it to ProTools. Um, the way I’m doing the box set, I’m using the because I’m mixing on
30:4830 minutes, 48 secondsthe console, I’m using it in stereo pairs. So, I could do Oh, that’s interesting.
30:5230 minutes, 52 secondsYeah, I can do my panning and ProTools and like and there’s not much to Les’s stuff. It’s usually a guitar bass and vocal.
31:0031 minutesUm, so I could do stereo pair of guitars, stereo background vocals, mono bass, mono lead vocal, and you know, if
31:0931 minutes, 9 secondsthere’s drums, stereo drums. So, I work in in, you know, usually either three stereos and two monos or four stereos or still pretty simple.
31:1731 minutes, 17 secondsYeah, super simple, but the EQs, like I said, are amazing.
31:2131 minutes, 21 secondsUm, very simple. Um, but the way they work is insane. Um, there were no stacked pots at the time. So, the way
31:2931 minutes, 29 secondsthey figured out how to do multiple frequencies with one knob is again like you’ll never see anyone else any console [laughter] with an EQ like it. Uh-huh.
31:3831 minutes, 38 secondsUm, they’re doing it in such a a crazy way, but it works and it’s all just thinking, you know, what the technology
31:4731 minutes, 47 secondswas. There’s also like I mean there’s some some weird things because of the time and some super cool things. Um,
31:5431 minutes, 54 secondsyou’ve get there’s where were no buffer amps. So audio goes everywhere. It’s not like now where you can say audio is moving that way. Oh.
32:0232 minutes, 2 secondsSo on the buses you get 4 dB of bleed across if you’re So there’s three buses.
32:0732 minutes, 7 secondsSo you have to be creative with it. If if some you know you put your stuff in buckets if you don’t want any and it does it’s
32:1532 minutes, 15 secondsnot like it bleeds to the channel. It’s anywhere in the console will be 4 dB on bus A. You’re getting it on every on every channel.
32:2232 minutes, 22 secondsSo it’s not really multi-track in that sense. I mean it is but it’s kind of like it’s all one track.
32:2732 minutes, 27 secondsWell, no. I mean it’s so minute. I mean it’s it’s way down.
32:3132 minutes, 31 secondsOkay. So you can isolate stuff and Yeah. You just go to a different bus and now it’s completely separate. So you would always have you like if you’re
32:3832 minutes, 38 secondsdoing uh three guitars or something or whatever, right?
32:4232 minutes, 42 secondsBleed was never an issue for less because it was he was always just adding like you know he wasn’t like changing stuff and and you know Yeah.
32:5032 minutes, 50 secondsSo depending on how you put it, you can have totally isolated stuff. It’s just again you have to think about what
32:5832 minutes, 58 secondsyou’re doing. You can’t just go bus it boom here there. There’s there’s there’s, you know, uh issues with just what was available
33:0633 minutes, 6 secondsat the time and but again, it’s like it’s so far down you barely notice it and if you just if you don’t want it, you just put
33:1533 minutes, 15 secondswhatever is going to onto a different bus. That’s crazy.
33:1833 minutes, 18 secondsBut there’s that. But then there’s these super cool things like he’s got machine control which you don’t see until SSL does it 30 years later. And it’s because
33:2733 minutes, 27 secondshe’s the producer, the artist, the engineer. He’s doing everything right from here. So he built the console so he could do everything right from here.
33:3633 minutes, 36 secondsThere’s actually no record button on the tape machine. It’s only in the console.
33:4133 minutes, 41 secondsSo the records are in the console. You can’t assign anything to the tape machine without the console. They don’t work without each other. the console was
33:4933 minutes, 49 secondsbuilt [clears throat] for the tape machine because sure you have to realize in the timeline um and I could go through exactly how it all comes to be but
33:5833 minutes, 58 secondsAmpex is building the tape machine with less consulting and less realizes a mixer is no longer going to work.
34:0534 minutes, 5 secondsI need something with a monitor return section and that’s really what makes this the first multitrack console. Okay,
34:1234 minutes, 12 secondseverything before is essentially a mixer just because of this. And that’s his monitor return, which allows him to hear playback and have control of each
34:2034 minutes, 20 secondstrack’s playback while he still has all his mics set up for input because he might have eight mics set up recording
34:2734 minutes, 27 secondsdrums, but still needs to hear the playback of the guitar and the vocal and things he’s put on different tracks.
34:3334 minutes, 33 secondsNow, what about, dare I say it, the concept of what later became simal sync?
34:4034 minutes, 40 secondsThe I mean, like being able, you know, listening back off the off the record head, stuff like that. I mean, wasn’t there issue with timing and stuff?
34:4934 minutes, 49 secondsWell, well, that’s the first machine with a sync head, so it has like a cell sync or, you know, Right. That’s what I meant. Yeah.
34:5734 minutes, 57 secondsYeah. So, so you know, that’s really what makes this a super cool thing. It’s the first time they were, you know, the the first multittrack.
35:0535 minutes, 5 secondsAnd again, that that’s like he he had to have been laying awake at night thinking, okay, how am I going to do this? Because Yeah. And, you know, he was working on
35:1235 minutes, 12 secondsthis at the same time knowing that he had to keep up because jeez, he needed it.
35:1735 minutes, 17 secondsBut again, and and also like I I get into like, you know, the technology at the time, Ampex is building the tape
35:2435 minutes, 24 secondsmachine and, you know, they are still figuring it out. So, like even though it’s eight tracks, you can only put three in record at a time. If
35:3335 minutes, 33 secondsyou put four in, it melts the erase head. So, that’s why they put the um the the record enables in the console
35:4135 minutes, 41 secondsbecause they set it up in a way you only could put three in so you don’t make a mistake. Wow.
35:4735 minutes, 47 secondsSo, just another one of these, you know, figuring it out and then by the time they start manufacturing these, they figured it out. Um, right. But for him, it was kind of
35:5535 minutes, 55 secondsirrelevant because he was recording everything kind of solo in a way, right?
35:5935 minutes, 59 secondsYeah. So, I mean, again, he’s, you know, putting three tracks into him probably was like, why would you ever need four, [laughter] you know?
36:0836 minutes, 8 secondsSo, Well, yeah, cuz he probably had like what, one or two mics on a drums kit, if that.
36:1236 minutes, 12 secondsYeah. And, you know, and also again, he was such a great player that it wasn’t like, you know, he just put it in, play it, and nail it, you know, go back, add
36:2036 minutes, 20 secondsMary’s vocal, go back, add, you know, whatever, right? and she would do the same thing.
36:2436 minutes, 24 secondsI mean, she was such a great singer, she would just like, “Okay, I’m gonna sing the third.” Arguably one of the best singers ever. Yeah.
36:3136 minutes, 31 secondsSadly, kind of lost to history because in the shadow of less, there was always so much to talk about with Les that it was like, “Okay, let’s go, you know,
36:4036 minutes, 40 secondstell us about the crazy machine you’re you’re doing this with.” And the production of the music and all and you know, the fact that Mary’s the first
36:4836 minutes, 48 secondsperson to double her voice, right? And not only is she like fantastic, but to hear because no, you
36:5536 minutes, 55 secondsknow, no one can double as well as you can double yourself. So to hear someone that good doubling herself and the harmonies she would do were incredible.
37:0337 minutes, 3 secondsNot just the harmonies, but the phrasing and the nuance and everything, how she got that so tight all the time, that’s that’s a rare talent, too, man.
37:1137 minutes, 11 secondsYeah. And a lot of people don’t realize she’s playing rhythm guitar on almost every recording.
37:1637 minutes, 16 secondsOh, that’s right. Yeah. And and after, you know, years of going through Les’s stuff under a microscope, I still can’t tell the
37:2437 minutes, 24 secondsdifference. The only way I know is by reading the track sheet. She’s that good, you know.
37:2837 minutes, 28 secondsSo, there’s track sheets on things. The documentation was really good.
37:3237 minutes, 32 secondsAnd not only was it really good, he typed them. Wow.
37:3637 minutes, 36 secondsSo, and every EQ change on things, he notated everything. It it’s interesting, you know, if you think about his
37:4337 minutes, 43 secondspersonality because as we said, I mean, as a technical as a technician, so to
37:5037 minutes, 50 secondsspeak, he was, if anything, just haphazard as all hell, you know, it was like there was stuff that was just thrown together. There was, you know,
37:5937 minutes, 59 secondscabling and like that. I mean, he was very not careless, but just like he was moving at such a rate of speed, just trying to keep up with what he’s hearing.
38:0738 minutes, 7 secondsRight. Right. But yet he was smart enough to know to document all this stuff.
38:1238 minutes, 12 secondsYeah, that stuff. I mean, the console was built um by Ray Norma with less. Ray
38:1938 minutes, 19 secondsNorma um everyone knows from he’s the guy who built the Fairchild compressor, right?
38:2438 minutes, 24 secondsAnd he built this console at the same time he was building the 660. So I always say, you know, when you got him, Les found him when his brain was just at peak, you know, operating.
38:3538 minutes, 35 secondsSo like you couldn’t find a more brilliant guy to build this and the way the the uh mic pres are built very much
38:4338 minutes, 43 secondslike the way he would you know do the staging on the for the the you know for the amps for the um for the 660 and 670
38:5338 minutes, 53 secondsall the same tubes. So it’s very much a Fairchild tube console oneoff you know Fairchild tube console right
39:0139 minutes, 1 seconddesigned by less. So, it’s like literally the best of everything you can you can put together. And the console is super unique. It it’s sounds incredible
39:1039 minutes, 10 secondsand like nothing else. It’s not like an Eve. It’s not like an API. It’s not like, you know, anything. You could chain every mic pre together and it’ll
39:1939 minutes, 19 secondsnever distort it. You’ll tear the speakers, the the cones will will fly off the the the the [laughter] box
39:2639 minutes, 26 secondsbefore it distorts. just it’s got it’s very much the characteristic of that very smooth and you know deep and warm
39:3639 minutes, 36 secondslike the qualities you’d find in a Fairchild compressor but the mic pre version of it if you could imagine.
39:4239 minutes, 42 secondsYeah. Well, it it and it makes sense because I mean going back to that era, everything had its own characteristic
39:4839 minutes, 48 secondssound anyway, you know, but to put it in a console like that, man. I mean, I just marvel at how
39:5839 minutes, 58 secondshow many things he considered that I think none of us would have really had the the presence of mind to go, okay, I
40:0640 minutes, 6 secondsneed to do that. I mean, he was so simultaneously leftrained and rightrained, and that’s the part that fascinates me.
40:1440 minutes, 14 secondsAnd and even the features are completely nutty and unique. Um, he always recorded direct into the console. In fact, he
40:2140 minutes, 21 secondsdisabled the first mic pre. If you slide back, I can show you. He hardwired his guitar right to channel one. Oh, I love it.
40:3040 minutes, 30 secondsYeah. So he would it would just hang out the front of the console and he’d plug in and channel one is always just guitar. Wow.
40:3740 minutes, 37 secondsYou can’t even it doesn’t even work in mic anymore.
40:4040 minutes, 40 secondsSo and then because he’s doing that he uh he puts uh vibr in the console.
40:4740 minutes, 47 secondsSo he’s got two channels in the console.
40:4940 minutes, 49 seconds[laughter]
40:5040 minutes, 50 secondsHe puts the vary speed in the console. Oh my god.
40:5340 minutes, 53 secondsSo he can do it like again he was the the producer, the engineer, the artist.
40:5840 minutes, 58 secondsHe did everything from right here. And even the carpentry, I got to say, I mean, this is so this is so like 1940s, 1950s.
41:0641 minutes, 6 secondsThis is the this is the the the desk it came in. Yeah. I mean, for Micah.
41:1141 minutes, 11 secondsYeah. [laughter] You know, I mean, all of this stuff I think is so so wellthought out.
41:1841 minutes, 18 secondsYeah. you know, and that just I like I said, that just blows my mind that he had the ability to really zoom in, zoom
41:2741 minutes, 27 secondsout like that and think about all this stuff just to do what he had in his head musically, you know, because the musical stuff,
41:3541 minutes, 35 secondsman, that’s like the ability to play guitar that way. Yeah.
41:4041 minutes, 40 secondsThat’s something that’s like, you know, that’s a different skill completely. But then to be able to think like, okay, I want to have three guitar parts and I want to do this. How am I going to do
41:4841 minutes, 48 secondsthat? And then to think and then to extend that to how am I going to create something that will allow me to capture that.
41:5541 minutes, 55 secondsYeah, man. The workflow here is just and what’s amazing about his playing is in the archive with all of those
42:0242 minutes, 2 secondsrecordings. You’d find, you know, every song from How High the Moon to, you know, sitting on top of the world. He
42:0942 minutes, 9 secondsdid 50 different versions of things, never the same. always like a jazzier one or this one has a little like
42:1742 minutes, 17 secondsit was, you know, like for most people, you learn a song and that’s the way you play it, right? You know, it just burned in and you just play it the same way every time. But
42:2642 minutes, 26 secondsevery time he would play the song, it would be like a new interpretation of it. It just sort of like would flow through him and whatever in the moment was how he was feeling is how that would be the how the song is.
42:3642 minutes, 36 secondsWow.
42:3742 minutes, 37 secondsSo there’s a lot of like you listen to different versions and you go, “Oh, wow.
42:4042 minutes, 40 secondsthat’s like a more of like a a country kind of vibe or you know or jazzy kind of thing or you know so so the so the archives of all this stuff
42:4942 minutes, 49 secondsthat I assume are going to be released at some point right yeah we’re working on it you’re going to have multiple versions of different songs and stuff then Yep. Yep. And then
42:5842 minutes, 58 secondsanother thing which which is cool that we because once we were able to break the songs into multi-tracks and
43:0543 minutes, 5 secondsagain less was the only guy who could overdub so he overdubbed. He would go crazy with the overdubs. A lot of the songs are like [laughter] threepart
43:1243 minutes, 12 secondsharmony on the vocal from the first word. The guitars are three-part harmony. Like it’s just And again, it it lends to more of the crunchiness of of the process.
43:2243 minutes, 22 secondsYeah.
43:2343 minutes, 23 secondsUm so in the process of doing this, we started realizing when you strip it down to just one guitar and one vocal, you
43:3043 minutes, 30 secondshear the song completely different because you’re not constantly focused on the production.
43:3543 minutes, 35 secondsOh yeah, sure. you know, and and I think a little bit of how great they were gets lost in the production because you’re so blown away
43:4443 minutes, 44 secondsby what he’s doing, you’re just going, “Oh my god, this guy and what she’s singing and what he’s playing.” But when you strip it down to just one guitar and
43:5243 minutes, 52 secondsone vocal, you go, “Oh my god, these guys are, you know, the greatest musicians ever.” Oh, he was a phenomenal guitar player.
44:0044 minutesAnd you listen to the song and not you don’t focus on them so much. you fall into it like, you know, a different piece of music. So,
44:0844 minutes, 8 secondsthat’s going to be another uh release we’re going to do is what we’re calling the first takes where you have all these songs that are just stripped down and
44:1744 minutes, 17 secondsthey it just changes the whole way you hear the song and they’re they’re incredible, man. Incredible versions of the songs. Uhhuh.
44:2444 minutes, 24 secondsSo, wow. That this is this is really this is obviously going to be like a lifetime project for you.
44:3044 minutes, 30 secondsYeah. I mean, it’s every day it gets busier here. So, it’s really starting to, you know, the more these kind of podcasts and press we do, the more
44:3844 minutes, 38 secondspeople keep reaching out and more people want to come in and use it. So, it’s it’s been great.
44:4344 minutes, 43 secondsAnd and yet, you’re still working in New York, too, right?
44:4644 minutes, 46 secondsI do. I go back. I’m been going back every two months. So, I go two months here, two months there, two months here. So, I still have a studio in Brooklyn.
44:5344 minutes, 53 secondsAnd, you know, so it’s been it’s been busy.
44:5744 minutes, 57 secondsUhhuh. Yeah. I guess. So, are you um do you plan on training anybody else to work in here?
45:0545 minutes, 5 secondsUh I mean, if it keeps going as it’s going, we’re going to have to. Yeah.
45:0945 minutes, 9 secondsSo, I’m going to die. [laughter] Well, or you’re going to have to give up your studio in New York. One or the other. Yeah. One or the other. Yeah. Yeah.
45:1645 minutes, 16 secondsSo, but I mean it’s it’s the weather is better out here.
45:2045 minutes, 20 secondsThat this is true. And we’re both native New Yorkers. So, yeah, I I feel you, man. You know, it’s like Yeah. It’s it’s
45:2745 minutes, 27 secondsthere’s something hard to give up about living in New York at the same time, you know. I I definitely get that, too.
45:3345 minutes, 33 secondsPizza, bagels, chopped cheese, right? Exactly. You know, come on.
45:3845 minutes, 38 secondsSeriously. You know, you can’t get a decent pastrami out here, you know?
45:4145 minutes, 41 seconds[laughter]
45:4245 minutes, 42 secondsBut but at the same time, man, there must be sort of a fascinating role to being like the only guy that’s got the keys to to this thing, you know, and really knows how to run it.
45:5245 minutes, 52 secondsYeah. And it’s very, you know, it’s a lot when you’re, especially when you’re doing sessions and working the tape machine is really a twoman job. You
46:0046 minutesknow, everything is sort of it’s got its quirks and it’s like, you know, Yeah.
46:0546 minutes, 5 secondsBut but again, it was designed for less to do it all himself. So, it is possible.
46:1046 minutes, 10 secondsSo, it’s just less, you know, was operating at a higher level than most human beings. So, what he was doing as one person is really tough for anyone to do.
46:1846 minutes, 18 secondsRight. Exactly. So you are bringing in schools, you are bringing in classes, you’re bringing in artists to record here and everything. Yep.
46:2646 minutes, 26 secondsWhat’s uh what’s the future look like for this place?
46:2946 minutes, 29 secondsMore of the same. I mean the beauty of it is no matter what happens in the music business, what technology we have when you know if it’s robots making
46:3746 minutes, 37 secondsmusic 20 years from now, which looks like that’s where we’re headed, I can bring a whole room of robots in here and I can always show this is where it
46:4646 minutes, 46 secondsstarts and now we’re all robots. So, oh my god.
46:5046 minutes, 50 secondsBut, you know, it that’s the beauty of it is it really is this room from, you know, the lathe he did the first overdub on to the sound on sound to the first
46:5846 minutes, 58 secondsmultittrack, the first multitrack console, it really tells the whole story of the origins of recording. And no
47:0647 minutes, 6 secondsmatter what happens, we can always keep bringing people in and say whatever we’re doing now, it all started with Les Paul.
47:1347 minutes, 13 secondsWow, that’s amazing. Well, we’re going to we’re going to take a camera and just kind of walk around the room a little bit. Get get a little bit of a tour of
47:2247 minutes, 22 secondssome of the stuff, too. So, the console we’ve talked about a little bit already, but um do you want to tell me anything interesting about it?
47:3047 minutes, 30 secondsSure. Well, one of the cool things and we were we were talking about was how the EQs work.
47:3447 minutes, 34 secondsUhhuh. And it’s really interesting because so at the top you have a high frequency cut off or a low pass and
47:4347 minutes, 43 secondsbasically goes from 1k all the way around to to 15. So that’s your top position is is you know just add a shelf
47:5047 minutes, 50 secondsin any frequency you [laughter] want really. Um and then so you have a high frequency and a low frequency a cut and
47:5747 minutes, 57 secondsboost and these are just your cut and boost and this is your uh selection for frequency. And this is really crazy
48:0548 minutes, 5 secondsbecause there were no like stacked pots at the time. So they figured out how to do it with one pot. And basically if you
48:1348 minutes, 13 secondsgo so you have two frequencies on your low end, 80 and 200. And then on your high end you have 2K, 3K, 5K, 8K, and
48:2148 minutes, 21 seconds10K. So if you go to the left, every setting is 200. If you go to the right,
48:3048 minutes, 30 secondsevery setting is 80. No matter what setting you’re in, doesn’t matter. And the reason is because if you want to use your high-end, that’s
48:3848 minutes, 38 secondsthe inside number. It’s 2K, 3K, 5K, 8K, 10K. Oh, sure. Same thing on the other side. Uhhuh.
48:4448 minutes, 44 secondsBut if you want to use both at the same time, you select your like if you want to do 5K and cut two, you know, 200, you
48:5248 minutes, 52 secondsgo to this side. If you want to, you know, do 5K but cut 80, you go to 5K on this side.
48:5948 minutes, 59 secondsWow. So, it’s just a super clever way to make it all work on one pot.
49:0449 minutes, 4 secondsIt is. It is. I mean, conceptually speaking, it’s like again, you know, this guy was from another planet. Seriously.
49:1149 minutes, 11 secondsYeah. I’ve never seen another EQ that works like that. Yeah.
49:1449 minutes, 14 secondsAnd basically, it’s an eight channel three bus console. Um, so the black knobs are your four through eight. These
49:2249 minutes, 22 secondsare your three buses, A, B, and C. And so say if you had uh you know like your first three channels are drums and you
49:2949 minutes, 29 secondswill put them on A. Your your second or your fourth channel you put on B is say bass. And then everything else are vocals and you can put them all to bus
49:3849 minutes, 38 secondsC. So your three tracks here going to bus one. There’s your bus level. That’s bus one. And whatever button you pick,
49:4749 minutes, 47 secondsif you want it on track three, it goes to track three. Wow. Your bass is on B, that’s your B bus.
49:5349 minutes, 53 secondsyou want it on two, three, whatever you want. Um, you just select and that’s where it goes. And the same for C. So, basically, you know how we do it today.
50:0250 minutes, 2 secondsUm, the talk back is just a shore microphone that he screwed into the into the console cuz there was no need to
50:1050 minutes, 10 secondsbuild one. Microphones existed. Just screw it in, keep working. Wow. Also, he had momentary and latch.
50:1950 minutes, 19 secondsAnd he’s got the the vibr in built in.
50:2450 minutes, 24 secondsThese are the tape returns or the I’m in the monitor. Yeah, the monitor return section.
50:2850 minutes, 28 secondsHe’s got four more mic pres over here that are passive that all go down to one bus.
50:3450 minutes, 34 secondsEverything’s got echo returns or echo sends.
50:3850 minutes, 38 secondsUm the echo return because there were no plates. They were just chambers essentially another mic preq. So he basically had a chamber somewhere.
50:4650 minutes, 46 secondsHe had a chamber built into the side of the house.
50:4850 minutes, 48 secondsOf course he did. [laughter] So but you can use that as another mic pre. You know it’s just so you really
50:5550 minutes, 55 secondscould get 13 pres out of this or um 12 and a DI because he wired channel one
51:0251 minutes, 2 secondsright to his guitar plug. So it doesn’t work in mic anymore.
51:0651 minutes, 6 secondsNice. You were telling me earlier about the patchbay.
51:0951 minutes, 9 secondsYeah. And the patchbay, like you know, again, a three bus mono console and pretty extensive patching. He he
51:1851 minutes, 18 secondsbasically thought of every possible thing you could ever want to do. Uhhuh.
51:2351 minutes, 23 secondsEven things that weren’t even there were no need for them. like he had there’s no way to to direct out into anything that
51:3051 minutes, 30 secondshe had. He still wired it for direct outs which now 60 years later um are fantastic because you can come right out
51:3851 minutes, 38 secondsof the console right to ProTools and like I always say if you go through the console you go in are recording to um
51:4551 minutes, 45 secondsthe tape machine which he called the octopus um you’re time traveling to 57 you know it’s an Apex 300. Yeah.
51:5451 minutes, 54 secondsUm, if you record the console to the lathe, you’re time traveling to the 40s.
52:0052 minutesIf you record the console direct out to ProTools, it’s the greatest sounding console you’ve ever recorded. The most
52:0752 minutes, 7 secondshi-fi sound. I mean, you could make a, you know, the any record today could be made on this console. And if you’re
52:1652 minutes, 16 secondsgoing direct out into ProTools, you would have no idea it’s being made on the first multitrack console. You could, you know, clearly less knew that ProTools was coming.
52:2552 minutes, 25 secondsYeah. I mean, in fact, the last record he made, he made on ProTools. Wow. I love that.
52:3052 minutes, 30 secondsIt was an MBOX on a laptop. Not the greatest version of ProTools, but he actually, you know, he got to ProTools.
52:3752 minutes, 37 secondsIt’s pretty phenomenal if you think about it. What What must he have been thinking? You know, I mean, he all he cared about was chasing what the next thing was.
52:4652 minutes, 46 secondsSo, you know, a lot of what we do with restoring this is all in the spirit of lesson. And we sort of teach that it’s like we’re not trying to say, “Hey, we can do anything better.” It’s really if
52:5552 minutes, 55 secondsless was here, he’d be sitting right next to me yelling at me going, “Let’s try this. [laughter] Let’s, you know, let’s see, you know, let’s do Atmos.
53:0253 minutes, 2 secondsLet’s, you know.” Yeah.
53:0453 minutes, 4 secondsSo, let’s look at the octopus.
53:0653 minutes, 6 secondsYeah. That’s another Speaking of which, it’s kind of funny is on the uh console, you’ve got mic and line, and the line is octed for octopus.
53:1353 minutes, 13 secondsOf course, it is. [laughter] So, [clears throat] so this is the octopus. And let me crank it on for you.
53:2353 minutes, 23 secondsUm, again, um, built by Ampex, but the whole thing was like inspired by Les and
53:3253 minutes, 32 secondsthe like knowing what he was trying to do with the sound on sound and repurposing their their um sync head that they’re using for data and, you
53:4153 minutes, 41 secondsknow, try in and going, “Oh, we see what this guy’s going after and we can repurpose this.” So, you know, they reached out to Les and then that’s where
53:5053 minutes, 50 secondsit all really starts going. And so while they’re doing this, he’s building the console so so that when it gets delivered, it can it can can go. And he
53:5953 minutes, 59 secondssent it back several times to of course tweaked. Of course. Yeah.
54:0354 minutes, 3 secondsIt didn’t work to the to his standard when he first got it. So it went back and forth a few times.
54:0954 minutes, 9 secondsSo these are the record enables basically, huh?
54:1154 minutes, 11 secondsNo, these actually don’t do anything really.
54:1454 minutes, 14 secondsNo, because he wanted them in the console. So they So you can’t really even operate this machine without the console. It doesn’t even have a record button.
54:2254 minutes, 22 secondsWow. Yeah. It needs the console. That’s incredible.
54:2654 minutes, 26 secondsAnd again, it was like it’s, you know, being the first thing. It’s so far ahead of everything else. They didn’t know what they needed for the console. They
54:3454 minutes, 34 secondswere really, you know, going, “What do we need to make this work?” And Les would tell them and he would be building this and then he’d keep sending the tape
54:4154 minutes, 41 secondsmachine back and going, “No, do it again.” And yeah, but um but yeah, they finally got it and it works. That’s just amazing.
54:5154 minutes, 51 secondsYeah. And it sounds amazing. Uhhuh.
54:5354 minutes, 53 secondsI mean, it it’s it’s, you know, again, there’s not really any punching. You’ve got to know what you’re doing to do it, and you got to be able to perform. But
55:0255 minutes, 2 secondsthat counts out half the musicians we know, right?
55:0455 minutes, 4 secondsYeah. But if you can nail it, it’ll sound good. Uhhuh.
55:0755 minutes, 7 secondsBut uh but it really all starts with the lathe.
55:0955 minutes, 9 secondsYeah. Let’s talk about the lathe next because that’s that that was not here the last time I was here.
55:1455 minutes, 14 secondsYeah. So, this we just uh restored recently and I can show you how it works because it’s it’s it’s nutty.
55:2355 minutes, 23 secondsUm, so the way this goes, you get your platter spinning. This is your motor.
55:3055 minutes, 30 secondsThe motor spins the platter. The platter moves a belt that turns this shaft, which then has another belt, which turns
55:3855 minutes, 38 secondsthis threaded rod. Um, it’s all calibrated to 33 and a3 where you know everything’s spinning at the right
55:4655 minutes, 46 secondsspeed. And when you put this arm down, it then locks into the threaded rod and advances the cutter head at the perfect
55:5455 minutes, 54 secondsspeed. This is a thermostat. Heats the the stylus up so it can cut the vinyl.
56:0156 minutes, 1 secondAnd this is a vacuum to suck up all the the shavings which are
56:0756 minutes, 7 secondscalled swarf. And that’s this. So, it looks blue once it comes off, but that’s the shavings from from the record. Yeah.
56:1556 minutes, 15 secondsSo, again, it’s it’s it seems nutty that this could work, but it does.
56:2056 minutes, 20 secondsUm, so this is 1947 that he’s doing this. It’s mono. Um, and
56:2956 minutes, 29 secondsand what’s interesting is, so everyone’s heard about that first lathe that he built, right? and he, you know, famously did it
56:3556 minutes, 35 secondswith a Cadillac flywheel and a pairing knife. Um, [laughter] so this machine is an Arcturus lathe
56:4456 minutes, 44 secondswhich was built by um a the company Arturus which was owned by uh Groucho Marks who was a friend of Lesus. And if
56:5356 minutes, 53 secondsyou look it’s like a a break drama on there for for for the bottom. So, I’m pretty sure that, you know, this is
57:0257 minutes, 2 secondsinspired by Les’s first lathe. Um, just perfected. So, and Les and Groucho were friends, so it’s, you know, it seems
57:1057 minutes, 10 secondsvery plausible that he would call and say, “Hey, we’re doing this. I need some help.” Sure.
57:1457 minutes, 14 secondsSo, it’s very similar to how how he did his.
57:1857 minutes, 18 secondsWell, it’s funny because people also don’t know how how brilliant Groucho was. Yeah.
57:2357 minutes, 23 secondsYou know, I mean, that’s another genius. Yeah.
57:2657 minutes, 26 secondsYeah. So, um, and the the significance of this is this is what he does the first overdub on. And he does it by
57:3457 minutes, 34 secondsrecording to the record, taking it off, putting it on a record player, playing it back, playing along with it, and recording both back to the thing, and doing it over and over and over.
57:4457 minutes, 44 secondsIncredible.
57:4557 minutes, 45 secondsYeah. And just to get um doing that process now that I’ve used this a bunch. Mhm.
57:5057 minutes, 50 secondsIt’s really hard to get this to sound great. The fact that he could the first thing he does is Lover is like like
57:5857 minutes, 58 secondseverything else he does. If that’s the only thing he ever did, not even playing Lover, just recording it as an engineer
58:0658 minutes, 6 secondsto get it to sound that good with this equipment is so incredibly hard. So like literally everything he did he did at
58:1358 minutes, 13 secondslike a superhuman level that I still it’s hard to you grasp how how he he could get everything to sound so good.
58:2058 minutes, 20 secondsIncredible. So, so then a year after he gets this, he gets the sound on sound machine. Well, well, he gets just a mono
58:2858 minutes, 28 secondsampex machine from Bing Crosby. So, Bing gives him this um because Bing was the North American distributor of Ampex.
58:3758 minutes, 37 secondsYes.
58:3858 minutes, 38 secondsUm so, he gives it to Les. Less hears this and goes, “Oh my god, this sounds so much better than the lathe, but I’ve
58:4558 minutes, 45 secondsonly got one.” And at the time, this would have been about $18,000 in like current money. So, it’s extremely
58:5258 minutes, 52 secondsexpensive. He’s only got one. And he’s going, “How do I do my trick with this thing?” So, what he comes up with is, so
59:0059 minutesevery tape machine has an erase head, a record head, and a playback head. You have to erase tape because it’s magnetic. If you don’t erase it, nothing will stick to it. Mhm.
59:0959 minutes, 9 secondsSo, what Les comes up with is he drills a hole in it and gets another playback head and puts that first. So, the the
59:1959 minutes, 19 secondsidea is this. He records once normally, rewinds it. Then on the second pass, he
59:2559 minutes, 25 secondswires the the playback head to a mixer where he can plug in a microphone or another guitar, whatever he wants to
59:3259 minutes, 32 secondsadd, and then wires the output of the mixer directly to the record head. So on the second pass, literally a millisecond
59:4059 minutes, 40 secondsbefore it erases everything, he plays along with it and reprints it back to the same piece of tape. Dear God.
59:4759 minutes, 47 secondsSo that’s why I say this is the holy grail. This is where the whole idea of I can make a machine to do this comes from.
59:5459 minutes, 54 secondsHe’s bas Yeah, he’s basically recording the whole thing again live.
59:5759 minutes, 57 secondsHe’s he’s recording it all but adding back to the same piece of tape. And that’s why this is destructive. So it’s a
1:00:051 hour, 5 secondsdestructive process in the sense if he doesn’t like the performance or if he makes a mistake, you got to do it all over again and start from scratch.
1:00:121 hour, 12 secondsStart from scratch. So wow. What he does is he gets all of the first hits like how Eye of the Moon makes a little bit of money, buys another tape machine, and
1:00:211 hour, 21 secondsthen goes back to the process he was doing with the lathe where he goes tape to tape. And that’s the bulk of of his catalog. That’s crazy.
1:00:281 hour, 28 secondsAnd that’s what I’m restoring this the you know, what gave me the ability to restore. if less didn’t leave us all these assets, we we wouldn’t be able to do it.
1:00:381 hour, 38 secondsSo again, I think he was thinking way ahead and going, “Don’t ever record over anything. You never know, you [clears throat] know.” Yeah.
1:00:451 hour, 45 secondsSo that’s a year later. And then in 57, we get back to to the Octopus.
1:00:521 hour, 52 secondsAnd this machine was a his three track.
1:00:541 hour, 54 secondsHe got this in 57 as well. And the reason for this actually ampex put out three tracks before the the octopus uh
1:01:031 hour, 1 minute, 3 secondswas was um made, but no sync head. You had to record there was no ability to go back and go,
1:01:111 hour, 1 minute, 11 secondsI’m going to record the track one and track two. You had to record everything live to all three tracks. It just gave you a little more flexibility on playback to adjust levels.
1:01:211 hour, 1 minute, 21 secondsOkay. So, um like I worked on a lot of um uh old cataloges for like Sam Cook
1:01:291 hour, 1 minute, 29 secondsand the Stones and they were recording to three track live and then they had a little ability to like, you know, Sam Cook would put the
1:01:371 hour, 1 minute, 37 secondsorchestra all to one, you know, the uh background vocals to one and his vocal to another. Yeah, they do it live, but
1:01:451 hour, 1 minute, 45 secondson playback you can go, let’s turn Sam a little louder or the orchestra a little louder. I’ I’ve run in I’ve run into a few of those old threetrack tapes from
1:01:531 hour, 1 minute, 53 secondslike uh the old cropper sessions and stuff like that, you know, and so I know I mean Yeah. But at that point, as you say, it still wasn’t overdubbing. It was
1:02:001 hour, 2 minutesjust a little bit of flexibility in the mix. Yeah.
1:02:031 hour, 2 minutes, 3 secondsAnd so this machine they gave him with with the octopus, of course, less put sync heads into this.
1:02:091 hour, 2 minutes, 9 secondsOf course he did. So, in case he wanted to, but really what this was for was um no one could hear anything he was recording unless you went into his house
1:02:171 hour, 2 minutes, 17 secondscuz no one had a multitrack 1-in tape machine.
1:02:201 hour, 2 minutes, 20 secondsSo, this was sort of the translator of how he could get the music out of the house. [laughter] So, that’s why we have this here. Wow.
1:02:271 hour, 2 minutes, 27 secondsSo, incredible. And then, of course, we have his his original guitar here.
1:02:321 hour, 2 minutes, 32 secondsYeah. I mean, this is the one he played for like the last 20 years. I mean, he had hundreds and hundreds of guitars. He ground off the stop so you could make
1:02:391 hour, 2 minutes, 39 secondsthe the whammy go all the way around. I don’t know what [laughter] he was doing.
1:02:431 hour, 2 minutes, 43 secondsUm he also, if you look, the bridge is completely shaved out of one piece of metal. There’s no adjustment for intonation or anything. It’s just he
1:02:511 hour, 2 minutes, 51 secondscarved it. Um Wow.
1:02:531 hour, 2 minutes, 53 secondsHe hand wound the the pickups. He I think he had a XLR uh put on the top for
1:03:011 hour, 3 minutes, 1 seconda gooseeneck microphone that he then patched over. I believe that was the volume for it, but I haven’t opened it up to really see what he was doing there
1:03:101 hour, 3 minutes, 10 secondsbecause he, as you can see, there’s like chicken head pots and red knobs and, you know, white out on them and Sharpie marks and [laughter]
1:03:181 hour, 3 minutes, 18 secondshe also snapped the neck off and glued it back. Um, wow.
1:03:221 hour, 3 minutes, 22 secondsBut the incredible thing is, so he passed this in 2009. These are still the same strings he had on it. Mhm.
1:03:281 hour, 3 minutes, 28 secondsUm it was brought to um we have an office in New York and that’s where it just sat in the office the whole time. A few months back we brought it out here.
1:03:371 hour, 3 minutes, 37 secondsWe drove it across country, got it here, opened it up. Um opened it up. Uh I
1:03:451 hour, 3 minutes, 45 secondsplayed it and it was perfect. The intonation is perfect. [laughter] There’s no buzzing. The act it plays
1:03:521 hour, 3 minutes, 52 secondsperfect thankfully because there’s no way to adjust it. But again, if that’s the only thing he ever did,
1:03:591 hour, 3 minutes, 59 secondsamazing. But it’s just one of a billion things that that he just saw and was like, “Ah, I can do this better.” Wow.
1:04:071 hour, 4 minutes, 7 secondsSo, it’s super cool guitar.
1:04:091 hour, 4 minutes, 9 secondsAnd then, of course, in here, we have a selection of his Yep. Um, instruments.
1:04:141 hour, 4 minutes, 14 secondsAll of them were his except for the one, the second one to the left. That’s the new Mary Ford model. Gibson just finally put out her first um
1:04:221 hour, 4 minutes, 22 secondsher first signature model. Nice of them to finally acknowledge her. Okay.
1:04:251 hour, 4 minutes, 25 secondsYep. And then the black one and the gold top are also brand new ones that Gibson gave us.
1:04:311 hour, 4 minutes, 31 secondsUm but the the guitar in the far end, that’s a a 41 epohone.
1:04:361 hour, 4 minutes, 36 secondsUh the the uh gold one in the center, that’s the signature model. I think it’s a 75. The uh one that he signed um is
1:04:461 hour, 4 minutes, 46 secondsthe recording model. And it’s not that he was a narcissist and he signed his own guitars. But um how we got a lot of
1:04:531 hour, 4 minutes, 53 secondsthose guitars were he would give them to his best friend um who now works with the foundation and he gave him so many guitars that
1:05:021 hour, 5 minutes, 2 secondswhen we did the the the the studio here. He was like he said you know I’m never going to sell these guitars. I have so many. Let
1:05:101 hour, 5 minutes, 10 secondsme give a few back and you can let students and any visitors who come anyone can play them and enjoy them.
1:05:151 hour, 5 minutes, 15 secondsFantastic. So, and then when Les gave it to him, he signed it. And that one’s signed Lester Pulfus, his full name, which is kind of cool. I love it.
1:05:221 hour, 5 minutes, 22 secondsAnd the end guitar is the jumbo. And those are super rare. I think there’s somewhere between 30 and 100 of them that that were ever made. Uh, it’s
1:05:301 hour, 5 minutes, 30 secondscalled the Les Paul Jumbo, and I think there’s only a few made because it’s an acoustic guitar with a low impedance pickup. And Les is probably the only guy
1:05:381 hour, 5 minutes, 38 secondsin the world looking for an acoustic [laughter] guitar with a low impedance pickup.
1:05:421 hour, 5 minutes, 42 secondsFair point. Yeah. Yeah, super rare, but again, great playing guitar. That signature model is incredible, too. It’s just a really great playing guitar.
1:05:501 hour, 5 minutes, 50 secondsOkay, so, but again, everyone can use them. That’s his microphone. Um, RCA 44. So,
1:05:581 hour, 5 minutes, 58 secondsand you know, again, everything’s here to be used.
1:06:021 hour, 6 minutes, 2 secondsTom Kamuzo, thank you for being my guest and thank you for this amazing tour. No, thanks for coming and listening.
1:06:101 hour, 6 minutes, 10 secondsBut pleasure. Great having you. Likewise, man.
1:06:151 hour, 6 minutes, 15 secondsHey, I’m Daniel Keller. Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button and join us each week for Insights and Sound.

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