Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1541612
52 W I N T E R 2 0 2 6 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y Yeah. The rip leaves the room. I can also add to it. Because I had the vocal solo, when I did the IR responses, I recorded her vocal alone in the chamber so I could check the IR response to make sure it sounds like it should sound. When I start getting into the remixing, I can add a little of his chamber, and I can match them really closely. So that's the idea! I'll play you one that I have fully mixed. This one was a big hit, so I'll play you the original mix, just so you can get your ears kind of accustomed to it. [Plays "Song in Blue."] You hear how crunchy it is? You hear the guitars, three-part harmony, and every vocal is harmonized. He was just doing it because no one else could. Now, here is the rip and redo. A big improvement! What's cool is once we had broken them all down and were digging in and listening to the stuff, we started realizing that if you did take off all of the extra three-part harmony guitars and the vocals that have an Andrews Sisters vibe, it's very dated and mid-'50s [sounding]. You pull all that away now that we have multitracks and just play one guitar, one vocal, and you hear the song completely differently. You start thinking, "Wow, this is just a great song," and you're not being distracted by just how great the playing is. Right! The idea for all of this is we're going to put out a box set where you'll have maybe two records of the original mono mixes remastered and two records of the same songs with this new clean version of them with exactly the same mix! And then two records of what we call the first takes where it's just one of each, way scaled back. These are quite stunning because you really hear the songs differently. It doesn't sound so dated, it sounds just classic, you know? [Hits Play.] This sounds like a cool gig! Yeah! Once I had done one of these and we realized that it worked, then Michael, who runs the foundation, had an idea. All of this [history] was just in a museum in New Jersey sitting there. Nothing worked since it had been sitting decommissioned at Les's house for years. He had had a Quad Eight (console), he had an API, he had moved on through the years. So, Michael had the idea to pull it out of the museum, restore it, and mix everything on the console. That required 10 months of restoring with three guys full-time working on it. Wow! It was basically taken apart, cleaned, and put back exactly the same way. Every switch that was frozen, all the springs were hand re-tensioned. All the pots, no crackling, it really was a ground-up refresh. Afterward, everything was like brand new, the tape machines as well. Everything works perfectly now. The idea was, get it working, mix all the songs on the console, and then let people use it! Let people come rent the room and try to get some more known people in just to generate press for Les. That's great. We also do tons of educational stuff in here. We've had Carnegie Mellon, Syracuse University, Musicians Institute, the Los Angeles Recording School, all bringing classes of 15-20 students by. We teach them all about Les and what he did outside of the electric guitar and his music—all of this sort of innovation. [Looking at the console] Is that the transport here on the console? Yes, he's got transport control, which you really don't see until SSL does it 30 years later. The recording enables [for the recorder] are in the console, and that's because even though it's an 8-track, you can only do three at a time or you melt the erase head. So, they made it so you can't put more than three in record at a time. Interesting. The Les Paul Recording Studio's Tom Camuso explaining the layout of Les's fully refurbished console.