Meters are Overrated

Good day out at Beechpark yesterday - Got setup and doing takes by about 2.30
The Stoat boys ended up doing 3 to 5 takes of each of the three songs.
We'd talked about our options for approaching this recording. The boys had used the 'Lego method' on their last album (as in overdubbing things bit by bit), so they wanted to go a different direction this time around. Through recording themselves in their rehearsal room, they've ended up most comfortable with that scenario, so we set them all up in the main room at Beechpark with low gobos between the amps and the kit.
The resulting bleed is grand and manageable, and we got the live takes done pretty quick with that setup - I think we were overdubbing before 5.30.
Pretty decent drum sound, I think. A bit of a ringy snare situation, which we damped right down for one song where it suited. I'd done a snare preamp shootout the day before, which the Daking had come out of quite well. I think the higher apparent loudness I was hearing was from some nice saturation that you can get into with this pre - a little gets you some nice snappy bite , and winding it up some more gets into fun full on distortion.

Drum setup :

Snare - Beta57 >> Daking pre >> Daking compressor
Snare - B&K 4006 >> GML
Kick in - RE20 >> Vintech
Kick Out E49 >> Vintech
OHs - Coles >> Neve 1084 (little bit of high shelf at 10khz)
Room - M160s >> ISA115 >> Chandler limiter
421/441 on toms, 414s on hat/ride (which I still don't think I'll use).

RE20 on bass and a mix or 122s and M88/Beta 57 on guitars.

Moved on then to some guitar dubs, doubling some parts and adding others.
Cormac did some piano, then we did vocals.
Tried them in the control room with John listening back over the monitors. Not bad.
Those were done with an SM7 into an LA2a, which suited his voice pretty well. Compared it to the Elux 251, which was a bit too clean and beefy. Both were into the 1084s.
We got a few takes done of two songs, but around 11.30 John's voice gave up on him, so we're going to finish vocals later on in the week.

Next up is Hounds on Tuesday in Beechpark, which is gonna rock.