Toe Rag Studios
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The Toe Rag recording studio is located in Hackney, London, UK, and is owned and run by producer Liam Watson. The studio was originally set up in 1991 by Watson and his business partner of the time, one Josh Collins in the nearby Shoreditch area but forced to move in 1997 when local gentrification pushed up rents and overheads. The studio relocated to its current location in a former print shop in 1998. The recording format is 8-track on 1" tape (Studer A80), and there is a wide range of vintage musical equipment available, dating back to the 1950s. The studio has no computers and no digital sound processing equipment; emphasis is very much on traditional analogue recording methods (natural echo chambers; reverb plates; tape echo). The live room has been carefully designed to maximise its acoustic properties.
Since The White Stripes recorded their breakthrough album "Elephant" at Toe Rag, in 2002, the studio has enjoyed greater fame and popularity, although it has long been favoured by artist/writer/musician Billy Childish as a preferred recording location for his musical projects.
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[edit] Equipment
Toe Rag is unusual in that it specialises in recording in the traditional, old-fashioned way. Apart from one DAT tape machine and one CD machine, there is no digital sound equipment at the studio at all. There is no ProTools and in fact there are no computers. Instead, the engineers use tried and trusted techniques that date back many years and that were once commonplace at all recording studios.
Some of the machinery in use at Toe Rag Studio also dates back several decades, as far as the 1950s in some cases, although the equipment is predominantly from the 1960s and 1970s. The tape decks are the classic Studer A80 model. The recording format in use is 8-track on one-inch tape, considered state of the art in 1970, and since the closure of London's Pathway Studio, in 2000, Toe Rag is quite likely to be the only commercial studio in London still offering this format.
There are no leisure facilities at the studio other than a kettle and a sofa: the emphasis is very much on speed and efficiently capturing the moment as opposed to long periods of studio-bound procrastination. The Toe Rag staff have recently taken over an adjacent workshop to use as a storeroom for a collection of vintage recording equipment and instruments. And there is now a busy client list of mainly guitar-based bands who visit from all over the world, eager to get an authentic retro feel to their recordings.
[edit] Recording Artists
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[edit] New Additions
The range of classic recording equipment has been recently expanded with some superb early 1960s amplifiers. The studio was shut down and rewired in Summer 2005 to incorporate an original EMI "Redd-17" mixing desk, a classic piece of equipment dating from the 1960s heyday of London's Abbey Road Studios.
[edit] The Only One Left
Toe Rag Studios were used in the Channel 4 programme 20th Century Greats - Lennon/McCartney, presented by composer Howard Goodall, because it is supposedly the only studio left, in the UK at least, that could pass as a genuine 1960s studio.
[edit] External links
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