Top 5: Mark Needham

I only got this amplifier for Chris Isaak’s song ‘Wicked Game’. The one I had is from when designer Tim de Paravicini was still building them in his garage. I just loved the sound of it out of the gate. I was very nervous about over compressing and going into Pro Tools or tape at that point when I first got it – you can’t uncompress it very easily, but it’s just so smooth. With ‘Wicked Game’, I was adjusting the threshold setting between the verse and the chorus live while I was recording vocals in the control room. I was adjusting the input to the 660 and the input to the preamp, and it worked great. I love the compressor and I have two of them now. I have one in my Los Angeles tracking room and one in my Nashville tracking room. It’s one of my favourite vocal compressors to record with. I’ve had to do some maintenance on it over the years and getting the tubes is really difficult, but it just has such a great sound.

This was a special build console made by Neve for George Harrison in the late ’60s with Neve 1066 preamps. I think there were a few thousand of them made altogether that went in consoles. The 1066 has a very warm fat bottom end and different EQ points as compared to the 1073s. I have them set up as a side car in my tracking room in my Nashville studio and I use them for kick, snare and bass, and pass vocals through it sometimes as well. I switch between a few different pres for the vocal, but the 1066 is very warm and transparent sounding. It’s a little more unique sounding than my 1073s or the 1081s and there are a lot of those out there. It just has that kind of old, late ’60s Neve sound, which is very cool.

Right after 2005, I started doing an integration between some analogue chains and Pro Tools. And when I was mixing, I was summing back to some analogue gear. But using the Slate Raven touchscreen console freed me up to have multiple projects, and not to have to worry about resetting things for recalls. So, I’ve switched to just being in Pro Tools, and utilising the Raven whole screen in both of my rooms in LA and Nashville. I’m also not a big fan of screens between my speakers. And Slate came out with 48-inch Slate touchscreens and they’re angled similar to a regular console, so there’s nothing really between the speakers. You can see all the inputs and all the tracks at once. 

I like to be able to see my Mix window and Edit windows separately. I don’t like switching back and forth. This process now with the Raven saves me a lot of time. And having the touchscreens is great. In the past, when I was using a fader, my wrist was always laying on the controls and my fingers were constantly moving, but now I really love the Raven for a lot of other reason too, such as, I can just draw the filter sweep on the screen!