My first home studio sounds like something made by Fisher Price, now there’s a thought for a good kids’ gift. However in this article, Expert’s founder Russ Hughes tells us what his first home studio consisted of. Read it and weep!
The Home Studio
It was the early 1980s, setting aside that in previous years my friends and I had used things like my sister's portable stereo cassette player to record the band. In some cases, we used two, so we could bounce from one and record on the other. However, everything changed when I saw an advertisement for the Tascam 244 Portastudio. Up until then any ‘real’ recording, even demos, were made at local studios. I recall one locally was built inside a large static caravan, I can’t recall what the gear was, but I don’t think it was more than 8 tracks on half inch tape.
When I first saw the Tascam 244, preceded by the TEAC 144, I had to have one. So I begged Dad to ‘lend’ me the money. I use speech marks for the word lend, not because I had no intention of paying him back, but because I never did make most of the payments.
Once I had the Tascam 244, then it was time to create my own Abbey Road in the loft bedroom I inhabited in my parents home. It was a large space, so perfect for me to have my studio at one end of the room and the bed and other furniture at the other.
Get Ready To Be Impressed
Now I’m having to cast my mind back some time, so I’ll do my best but as far as I can recall the set-up was:
Tascam 244 Portastudio - wonderful
AKG D90S microphone - woeful 🤢
Aria Pro electric guitar - OK, had a million dip switches which seemed to make no difference
Ovation Custom Legend acoustic guitar - legend by name only 🤔
Yamaha DX7 - still fantastic now ❤️
Roland TR909 Drum machine - Sold it for £50! 😳
Some kind of echo - I think it was either Boss or Accessit
Boss CE-2 Chorus pedal - sold that - mad at myself!
MXR Dynacomp pedal - loved it.
Sony stereo hi-fi amp - second hand
Realistic Minimus 7 speakers, later upgraded to some Kef elliptical things - world class monitoring 😂
Aiwa cassette deck for mixing down, considering it was
a cassette it still did a great job.Sennheiser yellow foam headphones
Power Set-up
As you can see, this was a power set-up! The funny things is that if you add the cost of all that together and include inflation, it probably still cost more than a Mac Studio and Pro Tools today.
Things interchanged over time. One of the best things during this period was that I worked in a big music store, so I was able to loan equipment to use in my home studio. There wasn’t much I didn’t try over this period, it included all sorts of synths, samplers, sequencers and drum machines of varying types. I’d often write songs at speed knowing that I had to take a piece of equipment back. I recall one weekend writing and recording furiously with one of my friends using a Kawai drum machine, just so we could use the sounds before it went back to the store.
Perhaps I’m looking back with a huge dose of nostalgia, but I somehow feel that when I started out that this was one of the most prolific periods of writing and recording for me. Granted I was young, pumped full of raging hormones and constantly ‘in love’ or heartbroken, but I can't help thinking I did some of my best work on some of my worst gear.
How about you? What was your first set-up and do you feel the same as me about the work you produced using it?