Best of Both Worlds
What do you get when you combine some serious expertise with a Neve 8068 and ProTools?
By Frank Moldstad
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Sabella Studios owner Jim Sabella (left) with engineer Lorenzo Famiglietti at the Neve 8068. Over the years, Jim Sabella has assembled some of the most desirable vintage recording equipment available, including a Neve 8068 board with Flying Faders, outboard gear from the likes of Universal Audio, Pultec, and RCA, and some revered guitar amps and mics. Based in the Long Island town of Roslyn, NY, Sabella Studios is especially known for producing fat, rich guitar sounds, which can be heard on CDs by such rising new bands as Marcy Playground, Sound, Kill By Inches and Nine Days. But while Sabella is on a constant quest for more vintage analog gear, his next big acquisition may surprise some people: an expanded ProTools rig. Right now, the studio has ProTools LE, and Sabella is weighing either Digi 001 or ProTools MixPlus, leaning toward the latter. Not that he would ever think of ditching the Neve and a 24-track Studer reel-to-reel. "Even the guys I see at AES every year say, 'Don't ever sell that console.' Everybody says, 'Oh well, it's all virtual now.' And then I ask, 'But why are you selling these Neve modules? And they go, 'Because they're great.' I say, 'But that's what I have!" The studio is in the enviable position of bridging the analog and digital worlds with the best of both. "Nothing is better than Flying Fader automation," he says. "You have that, and you have ProTools." Drummer Billy Auger in the studio. But, if he goes for ProTools MixPlus, it will be possible to do whole projects through ProTools, although that probably won't happen too often. He says the plan of attack goes like this: "Basic tracks on the Studer, all the guitars. I love doing vocal tracks on analog, too, by the way. So, I don't like going to ProTools for that. But if we need a lot of background vocals, extra organ tracks, or percussion tracks -- all in ProTools. We just feed them to ProTools and we put 'em on the board. Right now, I'm at 48 tracks. But meanwhile, if we go to ProTools MixPlus, I'll have a zillion tracks." To Sabella's ears, the Neve/Studer combination gives him a fuller, richer sound -- with much more character than he could get with all-digital recording. And that's one of the things that sets him apart, "along with having a great team to work with and keeping a good vibe in the studio," he says. "Everybody is beginning to sound the same because of the same console, the POD, everybody has ProTools LE or TDM," he says. "A computer is a computer, ProTools software is the same, the number one copy is the same as the 58,000th one they make, whereas with the Neve, the old Marshalls and microphones, they don't all sound the same. One of the equipment racks. "So I'm giving these guys a little bit of character, and I'm trying to get all this stuff together. I'm old school, but I'm also new school. I'll throw a vocal into ProTools easily, and edit some takes together, or a guitar solo, or for that matter, a drum take that's perfect except for one glitch or something." Sabella also knows that ProTools is a lure to get some of the hot producers from nearby New York City to come to Long Island. "I have some good friends in the city who say that most of those rooms are all closing down because the producers are doing the work on ProTools. But they don't have a Neve 8068 right next to the ProTools. And they don't have a stack of Marshalls or Fenders. I can't charge more money because of that, but the clients go, 'Oh, wow, he has this and that.' And I'm 20 minutes out of Manhattan, so it isn't so bad." And what the clients see when they get there is impressive, especially considering that from the outside it's a house, although no one lives in it. Sabella Studios was designed by Frank Comantale, the same person who built the legendary Hit Factory years ago. As Sabella explains, "Everything's been converted over. We took the garage, we took the den, and now we've taken the living room." The Control Room measures 14 x 16, while the Studio dimensions are 17 x 22. There's an abundance of pine wood, and no parallel walls. "It's totally constructed like the Hit Factory in a sense," says Sabella. "It has the real floating floor -- in fact, which is crazy, the playing room and the control room have two separate foundations." It was a fortunate meeting that led to Frank Comantale designing the studio. "Believe it or not, I knew him because he was in a band with people that I eventually joined back in the day. Frank and the guys were all from Ozone Park. They were recording at RCA actually, when I met them. And I told one of the guys I was into recording and I wanted to build a room. I would say I was one of the first 'project studios'." Sabella has a reputation for nurturing, supporting and encouraging his diverse client list, sharing a vast musical expertise that few in the world can offer. A classically trained guitarist who studied with Grand Master Rodrigo Riera, Sabella attended the University of Venezuela, Mannes College of Music and the prestigious Julliard School of Music in Manhattan. In the mid-70s, he was a session guitar player in various studios and clubs, and in the the early 80s was signed to RCA Records and MCA Records as an artist. (You can hear his classical guitar playing on MP3.com here). As a producer, Sabella keeps his eyes open for promising new talent to develop and shop to record labels, using his industry connections. Nine Days, for instance, recently signed a deal with Sony/550 Music. He is now working with a talented new band called Sound, whom The Island Ear called 'Most Likely to Get Signed." Newsday gave the band top marks for their three song demo "Dharma Kaya," and their single "Sorry" is getting airplay on Long Island radio station WLIR. The band's live shows in Manhattan club have been drawing crowds and generating interest among music executives. Sound is currently back in the studio where Sabella producing three tunes for a new demo, which will be shopped at the labels. Members of Marcy Playground in Sabella Studios' control room. When he's producing young bands, Sabella offers suggestions that will help them refine their sound, ideas they're free to take or leave. But if they're smart, they'll take them. "We try to help these bands out, Lorenzo [engineer Lorenzo Famiglietti] and myself, and all the guys here, we work with them. We don't just come in and press the record button or press play on the ProTools. If the arrangement isn't quite right, I suggest it. If they want it. Because, believe me, dealing with musicians, is definitely like being a psychiatrist." Some bands, of course, are more open to input than others. Sabella says he feels out the musicians to determine their desire for help -- and their willingness to accept it. It's a delicate process that every engineer faces. "A lot of times, we try to get the whole studio in a vibe. Some guys come in with a chip on their shoulder, but I have a better time with the younger guys because they're open, they're new. We work with Nine Days, very cool guys. They're inexperienced, but I will say this much: When we first worked with them, they were a little stubborn, but they took some ideas and went with it. When they came back from working on the road for a year and a half, they were a new band. Nothing can be better than that for a band.They are a great band now -- I saw it in their eyes and even in the way they talk to you. "Marcy Playground, the same way. They had some definite ideas, and we helped them. What I do for those bands is I introduce them to new things and new sounds. If they wanna take it, they take it, and a little bit at a time, it sinks in. The young bands, who are very eager, they love it, because they never saw a vintage amp or a console like mine with all these Pultecs on the wall." If a young guitarist doesn't really have his sound together, Sabella will walk him through various techniques, sculpting the sound as they go. He'll show him how to detune certain strings and use a heavier gauge, play certain chords down near the bridge, and record others on a separate track. "So now you're orchestrating your part -- the low, low, lows are just by themselves just really heavy, chunka chunka chunka. And then the high notes are on a different track, so they don't interfere with each other. That's how you get a heavy guitar sound!" he says. "I had a band called Kill by Inches here, and those guys have a really heavy, heavy guitar sound. And they use fat strings: 12, 13 gauge and up on the high E string, 58 or 61 gauge on the low E string. Plus, they take a seven-string guitar, and use those strings on a six-string guitar. Cool idea. You have to take the nut and file it down and all. But then they detune, and sometimes they detune it to D or even C. That band in particular is really tuned to their music. They really know what they're doing." Sabella will often record three tracks for the same guitar through separate paths and mix them together. He might use three different amps simultaneously, or a Pod, a Marshall and an Ampeg amp. Or mix a little direct sound with it all. "And then we take that sound, with the room and all going around it, and double it," he says. "If the guy is really cool, it's going to sound incredible." Some of the studio's vintage guitar amps. For vocals, Sabella favors the sound of Pultec EQs and Nuemann U-47 mics. "There's a certain quality. A lot of people always say, 'You know, your vocal quality sounds really nice. Really clear, or warm, or really cutting.' Sometimes, we'll even take the preamps and go a little bit higher than you have to, just because they want that saturation sound." To get the bass guitar sound, a favorite technique of Sabella's is to mix a direct feed from the board with the signal from an Ampeg B-15 amp. Sometimes, for players who want a little more distortion, he might also use a Demeter amp, crank it up a little bit, and add some distortion. "Or, there's this new thing I got, called a Valvetone pedal, which is selling on EBay for about $125, but it only sold for like $40 when it came out. It's by far my favorite little pedal. I'm not really a big pedal guy, but it's my favorite pedal as far as distortion goes. Very cool on bass. "We go direct, we use amps, we use it all. There's no one way of doing anything. It's like, what mike do you use for a kick drum? Well, we have certain standard ones, of course, but there's no one way of doing it." But as a serious musician himself, Sabella is obligated to add that the most important element is the talent and technique of the players. "To me, the secret is a guy who can tune the drums and play them, and of course, a good drum set. A good guitar rig." "It starts from the fingers, he adds. "I mean, we have Tommy Burns [Billy Joel] here, Eddie Martinez [Robert Palmer, Tina Turner], great guitar players, a drummer named Ben Gramm, who's Lou Gramm from Foreigner's brother. I'll tell you a story: This client came in and said, I wanna play drums. Three hours later, he said, 'It doesn't sound right, nothing's right.' And then another four hours later, 'Do you know any drummers?' I said, 'I'll call someone up.' In one hour, Ben Gramm came in from Manhattan. Fifteen minutes later, the song was done. After he heard it the first time. And everybody got up out of their chairs and said, 'How come the drums sound so great all of a sudden?' Because the guy can play great." Ultimately, the best recordings are made through collaboration, where talented musicians, engineers and producers can set aside egos, listen to each other and work toward a common goal. "It's a team, Sabella says. "I learned it myself when I used to play in the Hit Factory in the '70s. The first time I plugged in the guitar in the studio, I said 'Whoa!' When the engineer in the control room and the musician are on the same wavelength, that glass window goes down, and there's no stopping you. If he doesn't like you, you're dead. You're dead! And that's what it is. If a producer comes in, wants to work in a room, and he makes the vibe uncomfortable, you're only creating havoc for yourself, and your music will never be what it could. And there's always something to learn. "Even Frank Sinatra said, 'The day I think I know everything, I know nothing.' I don't say I know everything, I'm not Mutt Lange, and Mutt Lange doesn't know everything, either. There's always something to learn. It always comes back to the music," he says.