Refinery Recording Studio is a premier facility, which boasts one of the best live spaces in Melbourne. It is located in Williamstown and is only 15 minutes from Melbourne CBD.

Microphones – Neumann, AKG, Shure, Audix, Sennheiser

Preamps – Inward Connections, Universal Audio, Avalon

Monitors – Focal, Dynaudio, KRK, Yamaha

Refinery Recording is the brainchild of Psuedo Echo keys man James Leigh. With the upper storey of his wife’s dance studio vacant, Leigh got started on his dream of owning a studio. It’s not as whimsical as it might sound though, as Leigh has assumed the role of A&R man in a business plan with a “main objective to develop acts that have hits,” said Leigh. “There are plenty of studios abroad that operate in an A&R capacity,” said engineer Alex Richardson. “But not too many in Australia that we can model ourselves off. There’s DNA Songs in Sydney who are a production team for Sony who write hits for artists from The Voice or Idol. Our position is to get behind the artist before that process happens.”

You can’t be too choosy when it comes to talented singer-songwriters though, and the talent show badge isn’t a stigma for Refinery. At the moment, they’re working with Ricky Muscat, an ex-idol contender. With Leigh trying everything from a James Morrison R‘n’B arrangement to something more akin to Taio Cruz in an effort to find Muscat’s sound.

The studio was designed by John Sayers (check out his contributions to our feature ‘The Acoustic Trap), and built by James Leigh and his father. It features a large control room to facilitate the bias towards production, a main live room, with connecting booths, with the unmistakeable design fingerprints of Sayers.

“The main studio itself is intentionally pretty live,” said Sayers. “Because we can always add more absorption if necessary, or bring in some gobos when required. But I wanted to keep the live feel because it’s a big studio and you could bring in string sections. Whereas the drum room comes down in reverb time compared to the main room, and the booth next to it comes down even further.

“The control room has got very heavy trapping at the back. I didn’t use hangers, I just used insulation off the wall to treat the low end of that room. If you look at the back wall, it looks cloth but there’s another wall behind that and another 5-600mm deep cavity behind that, which is treated. The first wall is also treated, so you have to go through two sections on the way in and out. The back wall is broken up by wall units, because they’re big and solid they can actually break up bottom end. Most people don’t realise that you could surf on the wavelength of your bottom end if it was real. You don’t want all that swishing around the back of the room.

“The high end is kept alive by the slot resonators on either side of the control room. That’s what we call a reflection-free zone. The aim of the angled walls on the side is originally Tom Hidley’s idea; that the sound coming from the speaker at the right shouldn’t enter your left ear from a reflection of the left wall. All you should hear is direct sound without the reflections.

“Also, one of the problems I’ve always found if you do fibreglass in a roof, even though you’ve got a cloth front on it, every morning there’s a fine dust over the console. Cloth doesn’t stop the fine dust of fibreglass coming down on you. So I lined the whole ceiling with plastic and then put the cloth panels on. And it stopped the dust but it made an immense difference to the top end of the room and I now line all my rooms in plastic!

“It makes such a difference to the sound. You can stand in a studio and look at a guitar amp, and it’s in your face even though it’s 10 feet away.”

Soon to arrive, and complement the swathe of Universal Audio gear, will be a custom desk from Tree Audio, the collaboration between Ian Gardiner from Boutique Audio and Steve Firlotte of Inward Connections. It should be landing soon, and Refinery couldn’t be more chuffed with the purchase. Although if you want a glowing recommendation of Firlotte’s work, just ask Eddie Kramer – he couldn’t say enough good about him.

Level 1/22a Tennyson St, Williamstown VIC

www.refrec.com.au

Contact: 0410 552 942 or jleigh@refrec.com.au

Wagga Wagga, New South Wales

Professional Pro Tools HD 3 studio with comfortable surrounding air conditioned and purpose built. Located in rural NSW town of Wagga Wagga.

www.davidwilsonrecording.com

0416 254 248

GPHQ is the in-house studio owned by Gigpiglet Recordings: the record label offshoot of Gareth Stuckey’s Gigpiglet Productions. While the Waterloo headquarters has been home for some seven years now, 2011 saw the company’s 10th anniversary, and a major refit to both the studio and offices.

The Studio is designed primarily as a ‘producer’s facility’ rather than a studio for hire. It’s the part time home of Brendan Gallagher (Karma County, Jimmy Little), Sean Carey (Thirsty Merc), Kramer (Ween, Butthole Surfers, Low, Galaxy 500) and Ben Holman-Richards (Porcelain), along with Gareth himself (currently recording Alex Lloyd). Studio manager, Steffan Johnson, also works on his own projects when there’s time.

The control room is huge, with plenty of room for the 56-channel (112 input) DDA console, gratuitous outboard rack, giant vintage chesterfield couch, and room for the band to hang out. When it comes to outboard, all the colours you could want are present: five Neve pre/comp/EQ channel strips, four frighteningly boutique Peach Audio 196 preamps, three Empirical Labs Distressors, a Focusrite Producer Pack, two Universal Audio 6176s and an LA-610. There’s a Drawmer 1960, an Amek Pure Path, plus DBX, TLA, and BSS gear. The signal path is as clean as possible, with the input plates from each recording area going directly to a preamp patchbay, and from there to the ProTools HD system (i.e. not routing through the console – unless you want to). Returns to the console are then mixed down to a second ProTools HD system via a mix bus of Avalon 747 and Apogee conversion.

There are three recording spaces available; the drum room with floor-to-ceiling drapes, another large room featuring a Horugel piano, as well as a booth for vocals or small amps. Plus you’re only 30 seconds walk from the Dank Street restaurants.

Gigpiglet HQ: (02) 9698 9292 or www.gigpiglet.com.au

Francly Speaking Studios is a Pro Tools and Final Cut Studio based production studio that offers extensive knowledge and experience in audio/visual and music based projects. We can also source musicians for backing in any style project as well as produce your tracks/albums and other audio/video projects.

We offer Green Screen video production as well as studio photography for any project. No matter if your project is large or small we can accommodate you here at Francly Speaking Studios.

Francly Speaking Studios is a MAC/ProTools based studio that proudly offers Microphone models such as AT4050, the Neumann TLM103, the Senheiser MD421 and many other AKG, Shure, Audix, and other branded new and vintage microphones for recordings of any and all natures.

We have a large range of instruments on offer at the studio including a Gibson Les Paul Custom, Fender Custom Tele and 10 other guitars including brands such as Yamaha, Ibanez, Lowden, Spector, Cort, Takamine. We have Orange, Marshall, Line 6 and fender amps.

Our Drum and Cymbal range is more than adequate for any drummers style with drums by Pearl, DW, PDP, Orange County, and countless cymbals by Zildjian, Paiste and Sabian.

We have on request a Roland Fantom and Nord Stage Electric pianos on offer.

Francly Speaking Studios: 1300 137 113 or www.franclyspeaking.com

The Butler Mastering is a dedicated mastering facility based in Sydney’s ‘Little Italy’ – Norton Street, Leichhardt. Hundreds of happy clients, both international and locally, both signed and unsigned, in every music genre imaginable, have been delighted by the results and by the experience the facility delivers.

Pricing is fixed, and are inclusive of all extras whether unattended [e-Mastering] or attended mastering sessions, as well as stereo or stem mastering. Plus The Butler provides as standard, a master DDP, a master red-book listening disc and high resolution project archive, along with the normal red-book master CD.

The audiophile gear listing includes Lipinski L-707 Mastering Monitors with Lipinski ‘Power Stand’ dual bi-amplification, Rythmik Audio F12 audiophile subwoofers, Kimber speaker cabling, Dangerous Music mastering monitor, Crane Song HEDD 192, Crane Song STC-8, Dorrough ‘Loudness Monitor’ metering, Thermionic Culture Phoenix Master (limited edition Mullard version), Gyraf G14 passive valve mastering EQ, DAV SIPP – M/S and parallel processor, Millenia Media NSEQ-2 with Fred Forssell mod, API 2500 bus compressor, Digital Audio Denmark 2402 AD/DA, Otari MTR-10 1/4-inch reel-reel, Magix Sequoia DAW, RME HDSP AES-32, Z-SYS AES Digital Detangler, PSP Audio plug-in suite, Voxengo plug-in suite, Elysia Alpha compressor plug-in, Plextor CD burner, custom silent Quad CPU workstation, HP XW workstation, Peach Audio 240V balanced power supply, and RPG, ASC, GIK, Primacoustics and RealTraps acoustic treatment.

The Butler Mastering: 0403 435 686 or www.the-butler.com

Tender Trap Studios was built to cater to creative music production. It’s a place where musicians can be inspired and engineers can work creatively. Features of the studio include a great sounding drum room, an acoustically treated vocal booth and a classic New York upright piano.

Over the years, Tender Trap Studios has recorded a diverse range of CDs, voice overs and soundtracks. Some of the artists recently at Tender Trap include Tex Perkins, Rockwiz Orchestra, Brous, Pony Face and Brian Chase (Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs).

Tender Trap has been designed with freelance engineers in mind. Past freelance engineers include Roger Bergodaz, Nick Huggins, Casey Rice, Lachlan Carrick and Greg O’Shea.

The studio layout ensures a band can be tracked live if they choose, with clear sight-lines and total sound separation – running 16 inputs via Apogee Symphony converters. Preamps include Universal Audio, Vintech, Avalon, and Great River. Mics include the Bock 251, Neumann, Beyer and Sennheiser. Other gear includes the Cranesong Hedd 192, API EQs and Empirical Labs Distressors. Software includes Protools 9, Logic Pro 9, Ableton 7, Reason 5, McDSP and Spectrasonics.

Other features of the studio include air-con, heating, 24-hour operation with no noise restrictions, ample parking, kitchen, and a location just 10 minutes from the city.

Tender Trap Studios: 0423 128 655 or www.tendertrapstudios.com.au

Adelaide Recording Studios is an industry standard ITB (in-the-box) project studio hand-built in 2007 by producer and audio engineer, Darren Mullan.

The studio was designed to cater to the specific needs of Darren Mullan’s clientele and is solely operated by Darren, who specialises in vocal recording, voiceovers, instrumental overdubbing, audio editing and mixing.

The studio includes an iMac 27-inch i3 3.2GHz machine with scads of RAM and drive space, Logic Pro, an SSL Nucleus control station, with additional I/O via a PreSonus Firebox augmented with a PreSonus BlueTube DP. Monitoring is via Krix KDX and Auratone 5C Super Sound Cube monitors. Mics include a Rode K2 and an NTV.

Instruments include a Kawai BL-12 Upright Piano, Wurlitzer 200A, Fender Telecaster Plus, : Martinez Mandolin, a Mahalo Ukulele and plenty of percussion.

Adelaide Recording Studios: 0411 047 770 or info@darrenmullan.com

Mixmasters has been around for, well, if you ask Mick Wordley, pretty much forever. Built in an old joinery warehouse, mainly from mud brick, reclaimed timber and bits and pieces of junk, the studio has been home to many producers, engineers and artists from all over the planet, for innumerable years. The collection of vintage instruments, audio curiosities and paraphernalia is bordering on embarrassing – its a music studio lovers Xanadu. Mixmasters will even put you up for your recording duration with on-site accommodation. Mixmasters is for “making records only”.

Just to put you in the picture, here’s a rather relentless gear listing; SSL 4048 E-series console, Neve 542 16-channel tracking console, ATC SCM-50s, ATC SCM-20s, ATC SCM-16s, Dual Tannoy big guys, Genelec 1029s, Pelonis Tannoys, Studer 827 two-inch recorder, Radar V Nyquist recorder, ProTools HD with ADA Nyquist converters, ATR 102 1/2-inch recorder, UA 2192 stereo converters, Neve 1064 x8, Neve BA-183 x6,Neve 3314 broadcast x2, ADM vintage pres x2, Telefunken V-76 x3, AEA ribbon preamps x6, RCA vintage preamps x4, Sytek MP-4 x4, Chandler Germaniums, Avalon 2022, Avalon 737 x2, Trident 80B, Quad 8 vintage x2, Pultec EQP-1As x2, Pultec MEQ, Pultec Filters, ELI Fatso, UA LA-2A, Retro 176, Urie LA-4 x2, API 550B, API Graphic EQ, Avalon 2055 EQ, GML 8200 EQ, Chandler Curve Bender, Chandler Zener Limiter, Chandler TG-1, Chandler Little Devil 500 EQ x2, Chandler Little Devil comp x2, Little Labs Voice of God x2, Dramer gates, Vertigo Quad comp, Vertigo Satellite mastering hub, UBK Clariphonic, Loop Trotter Monster comp, UREI 1176 x2, UA LA-3A x3, Distressors x4, DBX 160X x2, RNC x2.

Then there’s; Roland 555 tape delay, Watkins Copy Cat, Echoplex, Lexicon 480-L, AKG BX-20 spring reverb, EMT 140 stereo plate reverb, TC 2290 delay, Lexicon PCM-42, Lexicon dual delay, MXR doubler/flanger, Ursa Major Space Station, and too many vintage pedals to list.

Mics include; Neumann U-47 / VF-14 x2, Neumann U-48 / VF-14 x2, Neumann U-47 FET x2, Neumann KM 54 x2, Neumann KM 84 x2, Neumann SM-69 x2, Neumann RS-190, Neumann U-67 x3, Neumann U-89, AKG C-12A x2, AKG D-12, AKG 451 x6, AKG ‘THe Tube’, Shure SM-7, Shure generics (57s and 58s), Shure Beta 57, Shure Beta 58s, Josephson E-22 x4, Josephson C-42 x4, Josephson C-700, Josephson C-715 x2, Mercenary 69 x2, Beesneez T-1, Beesneez Lulu fets x2, Beesneez Jade, Beesneez Arabella, Calrec Soundfield, Coles 4038 x3, AEA R-88, AEA R-92 x4, AEA 440 x2, AEA 840, AEA R-84 x2, Royer R-124-V, Royer R-122-V, Royer 121 x2, Sennheiser MKH-20, Sennheiser 421 x3, Heil PR-40, Heil PR-30, RCA R-77 x3, RCA 74 Junior, and an STC ball mic.

But wait, there’s more… Yamaha 1982 CF-82 9-foot grand piano, Hammond 1939 BC organ, Leslie 115, Leslie 145, Rhodes piano, Wurlitzer piano, Fender P bass (old), De Gruchy dreadnaught, Gibson 1962 Country and Western, Gibson J-200, Gibson 72 Gold Top LP, Fender strats, Fender baritone, Fender 67 Tele, Beltona tri-cone steel, Dobro 1932, Maton electric, Dan Electro U-2, Martin 1930 Tiple, De Gruchy mandolin, Supro lap-steel, along with other assorted old lap-steels. There’s an in-tune Indian Harmonium, and an out-of-tune pump organ.

Amp-wise there’s a Fender Bluesman, Fender Champ, Vox AC-30, Vox AC-15, Vox 90W climax/cab, Vox Pathfinder, Goldentone Bassman, Goldentone Small Trem, Rose Music 5W, Rose Music 20W, Fi Sonic 20W, Peavey Bluesman 50, Peavey 15W, and a good ol’Vadis 20W.

Phew!

To avail yourself of this priceless conglomeration of audio toys, contact Mick Wordley via the information below:

Mixmasters: (08) 8278 8506 or www.mixmasters.com.au

Enmore Audio is a three-room facility based in the heart of Sydney’s inner west; one of most prolific and creative musical enclaves in Australia. The studio was designed by John Sayers and built by Darren Williams from the ground up to cater to the needs of solo artists.

Mics include niceties such as the Neumann M147, Royer 121, an Oktava MK102 pair, Neumann KMS 105, Shure SM58, and three SM57s. Outboard includes two UA 6176, teo GrooveTubes Brick preamps, DBX 160A, HHB CDR, and TC electronic Voice.

Monitoring is via Mackie HR824s and audio conversion is courtesy of a Digidesign 002 and a Black Lion modified 003. Instruments include a Yamaha U3 (in tune), Rhodes, Hammond, 52 Telecaster, JW Uke, Banjo, Ludwig drum-kit and awesome cymbals, Baby Taylor, Koas Pad, Nord Stage, Micro Korg, Yamaha Nylon String, Motif Rack, and two track recorders include a Revox A77 and Otari MTR-10.

Enmore Audio: (02) 9519 9922 or jump to the website.

Opened in 1998, Rancom St Studios in Botany, NSW was the result of a long search by owner/producer Garth Porter and engineer Ted Howard to create a studio space with big open rooms, easy access and ample parking and no aircraft noise! The added bonus was a stable for Garthʼs unrivalled collection of vintage guitar amps and assorted vintage studio equipment.

Rancom St. features a large control room with plenty of natural light. The main recording space offers incredibly high ceilings and three isolation rooms – ideal for entire album projects – from tracking through to mixing and mastering.

A unique difference between Rancom St. and most other studios is the ability to combine analogue and digital multitracking. The MCI JH16 24-track can be phase-locked to ProTools via a Digidesign Sync IO. Tracks can be recorded on two-inch tape then dumped in sync to ProTools for overdubs.

During mixing, the 24-track is switched back on with ProTools chasing for the best of both old and new. Leo Sayerʼs album, Donʼt Wait Until Tomorrow, and Regular Johnʼs The Peaceful Atom is a Bomb are examples of this methodology.

‘Straight to ’Tools’ is also a viable option with the variety of A/D convertors on offer, including conversion units from Prism, Apogee, Digidesign and RME.

Garth is an unashamed gearaholic, and the gear listing reflects his fine taste in vintage equipment. A quick look around the control room reveals preamps such as the revered Telefunken V-series units (V72, V76, V276 – 17 of them in all), along with all the usual compression suspects – originals of course. Plus there’s ample vintage Neumann and AKG microphone action to choose from, with everything meeting at the MCI JH 600 40-channel console.

Rancom St Studios: (02) 9695 1059 or www.rancomstudios.com