thanks & PREs

Somewhere around 1985 I saw an ad in a San Francisco paper: "WANTED: wood-floor work in exchange for recording equipment." Wonder! Brief disbelief? Reader & Reading material (re?)UNITE. A drive to the hills of Berkeley, California to meet the infamous Dan Alexander. Before boxes of WINE stacked HIGH (a recent BARTER: booze to record BLUES band); a deal is made & a strange & mysterious friendship is formed. Many dirty hours later the goods arrive: 4 API pre-amps (what?) & 2 Neumann microphones. Plug the microphone into the pre-amp, send the pre-amp straight to the tape-deck (an Otari 50-50 8-track), NO EQ, NO mixing board!!
Over the years there would be many trips to Dan's house: microphones, compressors, a Studer 2-track, an EMT plate-reverb, the BIG REDS; all would be carted back to QUESTA. Hippies (as Dan called us) worked away at basements & staircases & doorways while Dan found us gears to "make my voice sound good!" (the plate), or something to mix down to other than a DAT, (the Studer b67). The studio filled up slowly. Every piece with a sweet story. Like that kid with the magic beans...

SARASWATI

the CON/SOUL:
QUAD EIGHT (original name: westar) (pre-mitsubishi); shipped in early eighties to
Abbey Road Studios. Sent back to factory for "cosmetic reasons." Served its time there as a 'test' console. Did some time on the East Coast then a stint at a recording school in Tijeras, NM. Located by console finder extraordinaire, Dan Alexander; brought to Questa, NM in pieces. A beautiful 'chitty-chitty-bang-bang' of SOUND. I spent 2 years wiring infrastructure, playing with power supplies, moping, e-mailing Eddie Ciletti & eventually cobbling enough signal path together to listen to "Ziggy Stardust" & the Staples Family. In GRATITUDE to the PROTECTOR of ART & SCIENCE I dubbed the desk: SARASWATI!!! 36 in-line channels (most of them functioning!) 31 differential mic-pres.
A certain 'exactness,' with ghosts would describe it best.
Art of FLYing is now in the mist of overdubs.