Yep, it was the name of my pro recording studio.

Well, where it all began for me, naturally. Even though, it is not correct either. Prior to making the studio, I had been a guitar player for twenty or more years, had been in bands, played live, etc.

Where this adventure – I might say – has begun for me.

Have some pictures first.

Entrance (see the stairs on your right; the place was below street level, basically, a basement I had converted into studio). Then, my “guitar wall”. Some of those guitars are long gone. Nope, don’t miss any of those. The ones I kept are the ones I wanted. On your left, corridor to control room and recording room.

Control Room. Used to have a lot of analog equipment, much of it was vintage, too. See the article below when the studio opened, and – if you have time to waste – read what my philosophy was back then (ahead of times? Maybe).

Recording Room, View one.

Recording Room, View two.

Recording Room, View three. Note the vintage Marshall head on a 4×12 vintage Marshall slanted cabinet. That one I miss. Actually, the Metro now seems to be on that same exact vibe, so I’m good. That amp was one of Eric Johnson’s amplifiers at one time. I had to sell it to pay the rent (on top of that head there is another, smaller Marshall head: that was also a vintage 1974x head).

I guess you should have recognized that place, if you watched one of my older videos 🙂

This project – had to be an investment for me, as I was working in IT at the time – became the biggest failure I have ever had. It never made enough money even to just survive. The studio worked, people came in, but the Roman scene – where it was based – musically was (and is) depressing. I am referring to the professional musical scene. The studio had been conceived by me after the great rock studios of the 1970s. There wasn’t anything about that philosophy in the city where I still live. Funnily enough in fact, the studio received more attention from the US than where it was based (Rome, IT). After a few years struggling – I came to the point where I was selling guitars and studio gear to pay the rent, sold my cars… a lot of stuff is gone to support that dream. But nothing worked and eventually, I closed it down.

I actually, I offered it to a working musician. One of those pop Italian music makers (rolls eyes). I was there renting the place, so I didn’t have to sell anything. Took all my things and I left for good.

Does it saddens me? Oh no. Not by the smallest bit. When you know you have done every possible thing to make it work, your conscience rests in peace.

So one day in 2006 I was bored to hell sitting in that studio and I thought to myself, why don’t I play some (I always used to play in there naturally) and shoot a stupid video of me? So I did. And so it all began. Weird, no?

And below, the article that followed at the opening of the studio, on Mix Magazine, USA version. So basically, my project had interested a US magazine. No, I didn’t pay a dime to get featured there. It was mere interest in my project.

It All Starts With Guitar

Feb 1, 2003 12:00 PM, By Mike Clark

For those who can’t get past mandolins and Pavarotti, it may come as a surprise that Italy has a thriving, domestic rock scene. Granted, few artists — with the exception of Zucchero — have managed to build up an international following; this, in turn, may have stifled the domestic recording scene, as top Italian artists started a trend some years ago by recording and mastering their key projects abroad. A new facility, however, is hoping to reverse that trend by keeping homegrown talent at home and attracting an international clientele. The studio is the small, highly specialized Studio 58A, tucked away in Rome’s residential Prati zone.

Studio 58A, opened last September by Filippo Olivieri, a 34-year-old ex-software house manager and semi-pro guitarist, features an impressive combination of vintage instruments and hardware, and cutting-edge digital technology. Olivieri’s project was initially inspired by the tone and design of his vintage guitar collection. He’s been crazy about guitars and their sound since he was a kid, listening to late-’60s and early-’70s blues-rock players, and to this day, he’s convinced that some vintage equipment is still unmatched in character and quality by new instruments.

“When I was a little older and could afford it, I began buying guitars and amps, starting with those of my favorite players,” he explains. “When I had quite a few, I decided to do something with them. I want to provide the best guitar sound possible, and I’m aware that we’re focusing on a niche market to begin with. But it’s something so special that I’m happy to start here, enter this huge market a small step at a time and then see what else can be accomplished.”

The studio’s mission is to offer a comfortable, creative environment in which artists can achieve the best musical quality in guitar recording using highly selected vintage instruments and amplifiers, along with analog and digital recording and processing equipment. A studio assistant knows the equipment inside out, and a guitar technician can prepare specific instruments to suit artists (string gauge, action, pickup settings, etc.). The decision to open such a specialized facility was made after in-depth market research showed that guitars are not only coming back in rock music but in other genres, too.

“I decided to invest now and exploit this opportunity,” Olivieri says. “Building a place provided a variety of choices, including for the instruments, themselves, because, although pro guitarists obviously have their own, they’re usually interested in trying out others, which could inspire them in new ways. This is the very core of what I’m trying to do.”

Other vintage analog gear ranges from mics (Neumann U47 and U67, AKG C 12 and such) to keyboards, including a 1958 Hammond C3, with Leslie, Wurlitzer, Fender Rhodes and a ’72 Minimoog. Recording equipment includes a Studer A80 and analog mic preamps, EQs and compressors. The idea wasn’t to reproduce a vintage studio for the sake of it, but to use old gear in a modern context, merging it with the best of new technology wherever possible.

“We’ve hooked up old outboard units with new ones,” Olivieri says. “They’re all wired with either Pro Tools or Logic Audio and their relative hardware controllers, such as Pro Control for Pro Tools, which is our sole ‘console-like’ choice to date. Again, all this with the idea of providing as many options as possible, such as playing any real instruments and/or software ones, with processing and recording on either 2-inch tape or hard disk — getting the best of both worlds.”

During the planning stages, Olivieri wanted to design an environment that would make artists want to stay, working in the most efficient, productive yet comfortable way. The challenge of designing a facility to international standards in just 70 square meters was accepted by Dino D’Ambrosio Associates, one of Italy’s top firms. Dino D’Ambrosio explains: “Our first survey showed that the main walls couldn’t be modified to any great extent, as the building dates back to the early 1900s. As was often the case in those days, structural perimeter walls are in coursed rubble. This, however, was also a positive factor, as they’re high-mass and extremely thick, so it didn’t necessitate particularly complicated work, as the rooms’ isolation was already very good.”

Floating floors and ceilings were necessary, and reinforced concrete floating on a resilient base and specially pre-bonded lead, polyester and perlite-fiber sandwich were used, respectively, and floated in such a way to ensure that there were absolutely no acoustical bridges. Great care was also taken with the doors, which were designed to ensure the utmost visibility and livability. The cavity formed by the spacer bar in the double-glazed units is filled with sulphur hexafluoride for improved acoustic performance, and each pane comprises interlayers of polyvinyl butyral film between three sheets of annealed glass. Following in-depth talks with the client regarding the facility’s acoustic target, priority was given to maintaining instruments’ typical sounds, an indispensable aspect because, apart from acoustic instruments, it would have been a crime to flatten the amplified guitars’ widely different sonic features with insufficiently discriminating acoustics.

D’Ambrosio continues: “The design involves a combination of diffuser panels, which don’t affect the acoustic nodes, and single- and multiple-cavity Helmholtz resonators to give the room a linear response. Room correction was completed by a ceiling in which slots of Tecnodens were installed.” This is thermally bonded, inorganic wadding developed to replace asbestos on railway carriages; it behaves exactly like organic material with the same density but is fireproof, nontoxic and recyclable. It also eliminates health and acoustic problems associated with Fiberglas and mineral wool, which deteriorate through time and emit airborne particles that are a health risk and cause variations in acoustic response due to changes in density. The slots are positioned for quarter-wave absorption and form a correction zone that enabled “live” flooring such as cherry parquet to be used.

The end result is a particularly lively acoustic color for the dimensions of the room, with accurate reproduction of the original sonic details and excellent response to acoustic pressure. The latter was of key importance, as some vintage amps give their best at very high volumes.

Control room linearization was optimized by means of slots/bass traps installed in the ceiling and a multiple-cavity resonator in the node behind the engineer’s chair.

“I build a lot of large studios with plenty of space for recording and control rooms,” D’Ambrosio concludes. “We achieved great linearity and sonic precision even for 5.1 work, as is heard when the facility does justice to a vintage Gibson wailing through a Vox AC3O!”

D’Ambrosio also spec’d the industry-standard hardware for this type of project — things the studio had to have — such as the Studer A80, chosen as ideal to record guitar bass and drums. Olivieri selected preamps, EQs and compressors that are able to give the most characteristic sounds, looking at vintage outboard equipment and bringing in brands such as Pultec, UREI and more on the constantly expanding equipment list. Looking for specific items that he wanted, such as Neumann U67 and 47 mics, he contacted Boston consultancy/sales firm Sonic Circus.

“David Lyons was extremely helpful, and I was able to take all of the stuff he suggested, which was about 80 percent vintage and 20 percent new gear,” Olivieri says. “We opted for the old stuff because it’s so ‘musical,’ no matter what its function. For example, the RCA BA6A limiter/compressor has a very characteristic tone and was built without cutting corners or scrimping on components, as was the Fairchild 660 — the most expensive, heaviest compressor ever built — using the best components available and cramming almost 20 tubes into one mono unit! Worth a mention among the ‘newbies’ is Summit Audio’s Rupert Neve-designed MPE200 preamp/equalizer. Being digitally controlled, but with an analog core for sound processing, makes it ideal for integration in a fully automated recording system.”

Olivieri makes it clear that his pursuit of vintage character wasn’t borne of necessity or a snobbish desire to collect fancy, expensive stuff. “I still look out for ‘virtual instruments,’” he says. “If we find them professional, user-friendly and reliable, we’ll get them, as clients sometimes need to run off a quick recording, and these things optimize your time frame, even if quality is a compromise. But if it’s what the client wants, we can deliver that, too!”

Click HERE to go to Mix Online where the original article is still posted 🙂