Otto visits Power Station – New England

[ofajen]

I was in Boston this week for the NCSL conference and took the train down to New London, CT to visit a friend, Charles, who works at Sonalysts. One facility there is Power Station – New England. It’s a studio designed by Tony Bongiovi. Sonalysts is a strange place. Created by former Navy submarine personnel, they do classified work as a DOD consultant, operate the Power Station studio, run video editing suites (classified and non-classified) and have film stages and road tour rehearsal facilities. Charles, like many there, has top secret clearance (or higher, I really don’t know those levels) and works both on the classified projects (which I couldn’t take pictures of) and on studio work. Charles does a fair amount of the IT work and much of the studio maintenance.

This page is the official page of Power Station – New England. I didn’t have a wide enough lens to get a picture like this that shows the domed ceiling and the floor, so my pictures just show smaller views.

http://www.sonalysts.com/tour_rehearsals/powerstation.html

Here's the Neve VR console. Charles tells me each of the 72 channels has over 200 electrolytic caps, so they probably will replace it at some point, to reduce maintenance time and effort.

For all the cool stuff there, one thing I noticed is that my humble studio has a much better monitoring environment, with my Attack Wall and big monitors. They have several decent sounding speakers, including the ProAcs and B&Ws, but they are all small, ported things and they sit right on the big console and there are a lot of close reflections.


Racks of stuff in the wall behind the console. The one thing I really envied was the brand new, 8 channel Millennia Media preamp.

Shots of the main tracking room, including a shot of the dome...

Looking back into the control room from the tracking room...

Yeah, they've got mikes... all the usual stuff: U47s, U67s, U87s, C12s, C24s, etc., etc....

The view from behind the rack wall. I didn't get a close up of the Neve power supplies, but it fills a 6 foot tall rack.

When I get time, I'll upload pix of the 15,000 sq. ft. film stage/tour rehearsal studio.

Cheers,

Otto

 

[Obi-Wan zenabI]

Very cool.

Less than an hour away from me, too.

I went into Right Track Studios in Manhattan a few years ago. I expected Darth Vader and The Emperor to be sitting at the controls, rec (it has that death star look) ording a herd of brontosaurus in the immense main tracking room (it's that big).

Looks like you could get a stegosaurus into Power Station, though...

Oh, and they can give that Neve to me when they're done with it. I can put up with a few wonky channels.

 

[Rod Gervais]

Otto,

did you make it into the adjacent space (the other side of the steel pair of doors in the tech room that you're facing when you walk in) and get a shot of the pair of 8' reverb units?

I know the site well - both the recording studio and the 15,000 s.f. stage were my projects...... I perfected Tony's design........ and headed up the design team (as well as performed project management) for the huge studio.

We designed that room to handle the rigging for Janet Jackson's show (70 tons of gear loaded over a 2,000 s.f. stage) 40' clear in the air........ and can handle that load anywhere in the 15,000 s.f. - with 2 feet of snow on the roof...........

I don't know about today - but then - 95 to 96 Janet's sow was the largest (heaviest at 70 tons) road show in the world.........

As far as the speaker go - once they finish having the Big Reds "modernized" hey should be all set - the hanging speaker can be adjusted both in and out as well as front to back to get rid of problems with reflections....... they just have to make use of them.

I never could figure out why they like to set those nearfields right on top of their Neve - but they love em there for some reason...... go figger.......

Out f they gear my love probably runs towards the pair of 2" Studer tape decks.

They may not be able to change out the Neve - remember - they are a franchise - under license to Tony - and a lot of things are mandated by the contract (most of the people there wouldn't realize that) - besides - they bought that board for over 200 grand less than it's market price (Neve just happened to loose a deal right after manufacturing that piece of gear for a customer - and didn't want it sitting on their shelves) - for that kind of money you can do a lot of upkeep on your board.

By the way - did you check out their mint B-3 with it's equally mint leslie? They saw an ad and ended up picking that up from some little old lady whose hubby bought it brand new, and kept it in their home under cover when not in use (never left the house until they took it) - they got it for 800 bucks - she just wanted it gone after her hubby passed away.

Why can't I ever find deals like that?


Anyway - I'm glad you enjoyed it -

Sincerely,

Rod

 

[Rod Gervais]

Looks like you could get a stegosaurus into Power Station, though...

Obi,

you can fit a 65 piece orchestra in there (comfortably) when the walls are all opened up......... It's really a pretty great space.........

Rod

 

[ofajen]

Otto,

did you make it into the adjacent space (the other side of the steel pair of doors in the tech room that you're facing when you walk in) and get a shot of the pair of 8' reverb units?

I did look in at the reverb units but apparently took no photos.

As far as the speaker go - once they finish having the Big Reds "modernized" hey should be all set - the hanging speaker can be adjusted both in and out as well as front to back to get rid of problems with reflections....... they just have to make use of them.

I never could figure out why they like to set those nearfields right on top of their Neve - but they love em there for some reason...... go figger.......

Charles mentioned the Big Reds. But all they had at the time was four pairs of nearfields, two on the console and two out of the way on the floor.

Out f they gear my love probably runs towards the pair of 2" Studer tape decks.

Boy, they are huge! Much wider than any of my 3Ms! Charles has his Studer 2-track there, too. I think the 2" machines pretty much sit idle, though.

By the way - did you check out their mint B-3 with it's equally mint leslie? They saw an ad and ended up picking that up from some little old lady whose hubby bought it brand new, and kept it in their home under cover when not in use (never left the house until they took it) - they got it for 800 bucks - she just wanted it gone after her hubby passed away.

I saw the B-3 and the Yamaha grand piano, but we didn't have time to play them. I was only there one afternoon and evening at the studio, and part of that time we left to go hiking down by the ocean. We also went and got new strings for his gold top Les Paul so we could play it through his latest toy, an Epiphone Valve Junior head amp. We played it through a pair of Lopoline cabs, one with old Jensen P12Rs and one with some other drivers and then through a Marshall 4x12 cabinet. It's a pretty cool little amp for the money.

I'll post a few more pix later.

Cheers,

Otto

 

[XLR]

Beautiful studio. Thanks Otto.

 

[mshilarious]

The acoustics must be tremendous . . . but . . . couldn't they vary the finish just a little? I mean, a blonde finish on the floor, maybe some darker trim, something? I'd feel like I was recording inside a giant hollowed out tree trunk

 

[ofajen]

Why can't I ever find deals like that?

Geez, you wanna talk deals? Charles is always telling me about these MIT flea market deals where he picks cool stuff up super cheap. And there there are auctions at various U.S. government facilities nearby where he occasionally picks up some strange, ancient piece of tube gear someone was going to trash that ends up being this killer piece of studio gear with a unique sound.

I was glad to share the pictures. The studio is a pretty impressive place. The wood tone is not that oppressive when you are actually in the room. We had a good time cranking up the little guitar amp in there.

It was very generous of him to take a whole day off and give me a tour of all the facilities and introduce me to his buddies. While I was there, he also gave me an old Third Edition of the Radiotron Designers Handbook and an old pair of 4 1/2" Simpson dB meters (older than the VU standard, it seems). Probably more goodies from MIT flea markets.

Cheers,

Otto

 

[Obi-Wan zenabI]

Heck, my hammond A was free...

Excepting what I'm going to have to pay goffprof to get it up and running...

Just noticed some B&W's on top of the board. Makes me feel cool to have my dumpster-dive DM-6's in my setup!

 

[ofajen]

A few more followup pictures.

Here are three shots of the 15,000 square foot sound stage for film and for tour rehearsal. Also note the basketball goal and motorcycle.

Here's a shot of the Epiphone amp and the Lopoline cabinets we played through. They are in a room that joins up with the main tracking room and can be closed off. The hollow-body electric on the right is a Toyota!

Here's the piano and organ in another adjoining room next to the tracking room.

Cheers,

Otto

 

[XLR]

That's quite a patch cord on the rack gear next to the Toyota guitar. Must be the little-known LA2A-HV.

 

[Rod Gervais]

Here's a shot of the Epiphone amp and the Lopoline cabinets we played through. They are in a room that joins up with the main tracking room and can be closed off. The hollow-body electric on the right is a Toyota!

That's the rhythm room - note the plywood floors - so that drummers can screw or nail down their bass drum spurs if they want -

Here's the piano and organ in another adjoining room next to the tracking room.

That's the "string room" - fantastic sound for piano - violins, etc.

Rod

 

[mrhotapples]

It's all so astounding. Thanks for the pictures.