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Take a tour of my sci-fi, hi-fi, airplane model studio

After doing some upgrades to my isolation booth and office, I made a short 2 minute video tour of my studio. I’ve created a space that speaks to my heart, full of things that as Maria Kondo would say “spark joy” for me. You’re welcome to take a look here:
My booth was a major eBay score. Two brothers in Maryland built it to pursue their singer/songwriter dreams, which sadly for them did not work out. When they posted the custom-made booth on eBay, they only had a handful of transactions that had feedback on them, which I think scared people off due to the perceived risk. I purchased it for less than $500, which INCLUDED delivery by Ford F-150 directly to my home AND assembly! To buy a new booth of similar quality would have cost easily 6-8 times this much. Lucky me.

My main go to mic is the Sennheiser 416, which is ubiquitous in Chicago and LA recording studios as a Radio/TV mic. I use it for nearly everything I record, though I also have a lovely Gefell M930 small diaphragm condenser mic, a nice Rode NTK tube mic with many upgrades, and a Kel HM-2D that has a nice gritty sound for it that really works well for when I need to sound tough – like my work for Indian Motorcycles.
My amp/DAC is a USBPre2, which sounds simply fantastic. It’s a major upgrade over my old Echo Mia sound card on my previous computer. No need for a mixer with this one, so my desktop is much less cluttered. My monitors are M-Audio BX-5s.
But let’s put aside the gear geekdom, because there are a number of elements of my studio that I have far more geek passion for. For example, I’m a huge fan of 50s and 60s sci-fi movies, which I grew up watching as a boy in the 70s. I have a bunch of movie poster reproductions placed in nice wood frames, like these:


Another passion of mine is stereo gear from the Golden Age of audio, the late 60s to the early 80s, and vinyl records. I have a nice collection of vintage gear, most of which has been painstakingly restored by my local tech God, Casper Yardley of Stereo Rehab. I have at least one amplifier or receiver from all of the major brands from that era: Marantz, Pioneer, Harmon Kardon, Yamaha, Kenwood, Sony, Fisher, Onkyo, Denon, Sherwood, HH Scott, Tandberg, JVC, and my personal favorite maker, Sansui. I also have a small portion of my carefully curated and cleaned vinyl collection here as well – mostly jazz, since it’s easier for me to be productive with instrumental music in the background. I’m listening to “Giant Steps” by John Coltrane as I type this.

Finally, my other uber=geek passion is building plastic airplane models. I built over 100 as a kid, then took up the hobby again in my 30s. I have an enormous collection of unbuilt kits (only ab out half of them are in my office!), plus a nice display of kits that I’ve actually managed to build. Not an easy thing to finish when you live with a wife and teen daughter whose company I enjoy very much. I find that the focus needed to paint the tiny details, or scratchbuild components to upgrade an older kit, or place tiny decals, etc., really takes me away from everyday stress and totally relaxes me. I mostly build old kits – some older than I am! – just like the ones I built as an 11 year old in 1974.




So thanks for visiting my very personal space where I record voiceovers for clients around the globe. I spend a lot of time here, so I’ve made it a place of joy.

AUTHOR: tomtest-wpadmin     CATEGORIES: Blog
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