WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NEW YORK: During his busy career as an engineer-producer, songwriter, arranger and studio musician, Seth Glassman has had the opportunity to use some of the best signal processing equipment available. Regardless of whether it is expensive or not, or if it is solid-state or classic tube, what is important is that it must be useful, says Glassman. And experience has taught him that the most useful items in his well-equipped personal studio are made by Geoffrey Daking & Co. "I have two of the original Daking mic-pre/EQs and two of the original compressor-limiters," reports Glassman, who, as a session bass player, first met Geoffrey Daking many years ago when he was working as a recording engineer. "I have a lot of equipment in my studio. Some of it is very specialized and much of it is very expensive, but Geoff's stuff is just better, and I use it much more often. The Daking equipment is just more useful and sounds great." Glassman says that he finds himself returning again and again to the Daking microphone preamplifiers when working in his studio. "I am compulsive enough when I'm producing that I try pretty much everything that I own on each artist that I work with. When I'm checking microphones with the artist I use Daking preamps, because more often than not it's the preamp I'm going to wind up with. Then, I'll check all my preamps with the microphone that we've picked to make sure it's the best sounding with the singer. Almost inevitably it's the Daking." Although many items of equipment in his control room were relatively costly, notes Glassman, "Much of it is not terribly useful. I have this mantra these days: I want stuff that's useful. If it's expensive I'll buy it, and if it's not, that's great. But I want it to be useful. If I had to be stuck on a desert island the Daking would be the mic pre I would take, no question." Elaborating on why the Daking units have become his go-to mic preamps, he continues, "Sometimes, in the heat of things, when there's a limited amount of time and people's focus is fragile, you don't always have the luxury of comparing different pieces of equipment. It's got to be good immediately, so you have to make up your mind pretty quickly." "The Daking compressor-limiters are equally practical," adds Glassman, "and are also very versatile. They can be transparent. You can put some very light compression on the stereo bus on something that's very sensitive and get the effect that you want. Or, you can use them almost as an effect and squash something amazingly hard and still make it usable." As a bass and guitar player, songwriter, engineer-producer and arranger, Seth Glassman has worked live and in the studio with a truly impressive list of artists, including James Brown, Paul McCartney, Cher, Diana Ross, Aaron Neville, Brian McKnight, Hall and Oates, Cyndi Lauper, Kenny Rogers, Carole King, Jennifer Warnes, and many, many others. A musician with plenty of experience working the Great White Way in Manhattan, Glassman recently wrote and recorded several songs with Broadway star Darlene Love. |
Las Vegas Pro Audio 7320 Smoke Ranch Road Suite G Las Vegas, NV 89128 Phone: 702.307.2700 fax: 702.314.2764 sales@lasvegasproaudio.com    |