Mike recorded everything at home on a Tascam 424 MKIII 4-track.  He can chime in here if he wants to and go into his gear list or his fondness for Rustica Pizzas (Basil pesto / sun-dried tomato white pies) that fueled the sessions over here.  Anyway, we started transferring at 24-bit 96K and mixing last summer.  I think at some point he wanted to re-record some vocals that he wasn’t happy with (originally recorded with an SM58), and I was having a difficult time getting some of the vocals that he recorded at home to sit in the mix.  The mixes are pretty rich for 4-tracks; lots of delay and reverb direct to tape.  We made the decision to redo all of the vocals back in September or October in order to have them cut through the instruments.  In the past two weeks we finished them up after a few sessions this Fall and a break for the holidays.  I think that it took five or six sessions, tops.  Mike and I are a lot happier with the way that things sound between now and last Fall.

Tonight was especially cool since I was able to use my 1977 Maestro Echoplex as tape delay for Mike’s vocals on “Withered Arms”. (The Echoplex was a gift this Fall from Dave Palaitis of Lifetime, a life-long friend.)  It is amazing that something that sounds so noisy at times (and that at times deceives you into thinking that a hamster runs around on a track inside of it) can actually sound so good.  I have to get this thing into the shop so that I can use it for more and more vocals, even those that are up front in the mix.  It is a little scratchy and noisy right now.  However, I’m totally in love with this thing.  Thanks again, Dave!  We recorded the vocal track and then used the Radial X-Amp reamp to get it to the Echoplex.  Then the EP-3’s output was fed to the PM-1000’s DI.

We’ll finish some mixing tweaks in the next week and then master Save The Soundtracks.