Premier Rock Forum

john and his kid jj know what they are doing and are still very receptive to client input. i have given them plenty of input and have never attended a session there.

if you have specific things you want to have done, tell 'em. they'll do 'em.

but make sure you don't have your head up your ass. i once asked john to transfer something flat to vinyl, b/c i didn't, i don't know, want it 'monkeyed with' or something. sounded bad. he redid it and charged me _nothing_ for his extra labor, despite the fact that it was my naivete that necessitated the do-over.

that got me on board the golden bandwagon, and that was 12yrs ago or so.

we've had masters done at abbey road which sound great to me, but they cost a lot more to make. and i have never listened to a master done by john/jj and thought 'geez, if only i'd spent the extra 1500 to have it done at abbey road....'

vinyl pressing: united is cheap but qual varies from mediocre to bad. bill smith was more expensive but good qual and was easy to work with. rti is a good place. erika, have had some bad experiences there. flaky, or at least they were ten years ago. ditto rainbo, but it was only one 7".

2 NYC options:

-Paul Gold at brooklynphono.com (look under mastering). a nice guy who does a good job (i think) and will teach you a lot about the process (and compromises) of cutting. he does all the DFA stuff (i know, not the greatest example..)

-Europadisk. i've never been there, but they have a DMM lathe and are able to do a straight analog cut. the engineer's name is steve bernson (i think) and i'm sure they can do a great job.

then again, i've never heard a bad Golden record.. well, bad because of the cutting..

Has anyone here mastered or pressed with Brooklynphono? I'd like to hear what people have to say about them.


To follow up, we went with Roger Seibel at SAE for mastering. We decided not to use John Golden because a lot of albums done recently didn't have the life-like nature of the older ones. Maybe that had nothing to do with mastering, but that was how the decision was made.

Roger Seibel did a great job. Songs that sounded nothing alike were made to flow together as an album. The fullness of the bass is unlike that of any record I have heard. The guitar has all of the grit, distortion, and detail on the loud songs, and the acoustic guitar sounds beautiful. The singing was brought-out with previously hidden detail, and voices mixed too low somehow got louder and understandable. In short, Roger Seibel did a great job. My only complaints are:

1. The album is rather quiet for 15 and 17 minute sides, which is probably due to the lack of compression during recording and the heavy bass, which we requested be cut with full dynamic range

2. The cymbals on the inside grooves are distorted on my turntable, maybe because of the stereo and not the record.

3. One song did not fit in with the rest on the test acetate. The song had impressive dynamics, with bass clarity that I had never heard before from a turntable. Unfortunately, it stuck out like a sore thumb. The song was also much louder than the other songs. Luckily, this was just the acetate, and on the final record, the song fits with the rest and sounds very good.

The whole thing was $610, plus 140 for the acetate, which i highly recommend.

-Noah

I would advise against using Erika for pressing.

We used them for a 7" and found them to be unprofessional. 3 weeks after scheduled delivery, we still did not have them. I called and they acknowledged that they were late and it was their fault so they said they would send them 2nd day air mail and then charged us for it. On top of that, the overrun was the absolute maximum it could be. Rank.

-t