Marshall Studio Gear & Techniques back in the day

[kikumotoallstars]

Hi Marshall,

Firstly I'd like to say thanks for the music. Your tracks have always had an effortless and innate sense of rhythm and melody. It's also not fully understood how much impact you have had on modern music as we know it today. Most wouldn't realize you practically invented acid house and when everyone followed, you turned away and virtually invented another genre, deep house. A true innovator in every sense.

I have a couple of techy questions regarding gear on the early recordings;

On a couple of the Virgo tracks (Free Yourself & My Space) you used a really nice phaser / flanger on those 707 hats, can you recall the effect / unit used?

Can you recall the consoles used on the early records? I read a interview in Music Technology circa 1989 how you didn't like the SSL consoles and prefered the Neves.

What about compression? Was it the usual suspects, Urei 1176 & dbx 160?

Do you have any plans to produce any new tracks with the Roland 707, 808, 909's? The 707 was the most underrated of them all I think and they're still quite cheap to buy at the moment...

Many Thx,

Cam

[inthere]

Free Yourself I used an Eventide 949 on the hi hat. "My Space" I used a friends guitar pedal phaser on the hat, it was recorded at home. Most of the early records like "Free Yourself" and "Move Your Body", Seven Ways To Jack", "Acid Tracks" were recorded and mixed on a 16 channel tascam mixer and 8 track tascam half inch machine. The 1st Ten City album was recorded and mixed on a Soundcraft board and Studer 2 inch. All the backgrounds and live instruments were sampled with a Casio FZ-1 (yeah, I know!) I hovered over the engineer and fought compression on everything, I hated the 160's, but I tolerated the drawmers. No 1176's in sight.

I moved up to SSL for the Pet Shop Boys, Dina Carroll, and Big Fun, and also some Kym Mazelle stuff and hated it. I quickly switched to Neves for the Tom Tom Club, the 2nd Ten City album, Richard Rogers, Open Our Eyes, etc.