News

New Jersey Studio Taylor-Made with Media 51

Caldwell, NJ (October 15, 2003)--Taylor-Made Productions, located in metropolitan New Jersey, has retrofitted its studio with a 48-input Amek Media 51 desk. Josh Thomas of Sonic Circus facilitated the sale of the new mixing console, with installation, modifications and commissioning provided by Michael O'Hora of Molecular Electronics.

Through his company, Glenn Taylor, TMP's owner, chief engineer and composer, has produced major-label recording artists, written national commercials, scored feature-length productions and produced countless radio spots. He has also penned the music for many documentary films and Fortune 500 corporate A/V productions, as well as done sound design for a variety of toy and game manufacturers.

When it became apparent that his former console of 16 years had finally run its course, Taylor immediately figured that an Amek board would be a candidate for his studio. "I had worked on Ameks in other studios and always enjoyed them," he says. "Plus, I owned a pair of 9098i mic preamps, so I already knew how wonderfully transparent the Rupert Neve EQs and preamps would sound on a desk like the Media 51.

"This console really fills a niche; not many companies these days are making a large-format analog console in that price range. To properly move up from the Media 51, you'd have to spend into the six digits, which is simply cost-prohibitive for many studios like mine."

As the desk was being installed, Taylor had O'Hora harvest a number of mods from the studio's previous console and integrate them into the new Amek. "We drilled a lot of holes," Taylor admits. "But after you build three studios in a 25-year span, you know what little 'extras' you'd like to have available. Thanks to the brilliant work of Michael, my Amek is now equipped with latching talkback, telephone interface talkback, speaker switching for up to six sets of speakers, digital stopwatch, latching slate, and two surface-mounted headphone cues so I can record myself acoustically here in the control room when working on music-scoring projects."

Taylor further color-coded his auxiliary knob caps (available from Selco) to correspond to frequently used processors. He also had Thomas at Sonic Circus provide another clever modification: "The Media 51 features space for 12 rows of patchbays as standard, and I needed more. So I requested that Josh order the custom milling of three extra rows into the blank section on the meter bridge above the patchbay area. I now have a total of 15 rows of Rean patching at my disposal, which is of paramount importance with all of the different formats I offer--32/24 tracks of 2-inch analog, 32 tracks of Digidesign Pro Tools HD, 24 tracks of DA-88s, plus mic patching, direct outs and six racks of outboard gear. All but about half a row of patchbay space is now being used."

Since going online with the new desk in late July, Taylor has recorded numerous radio spots as well as some artists. He's now in the process of producing a new CD with his own band, the Kootz (www.thekootz.com), and is gearing up to once again work with Tommy James and the Shondells in the coming weeks.

Taylor-Made Productions
www.taylormadeprod.com

Amek USA/Harman Pro North America
www.amek.com