Home studios in the 1990s, Moon Studios

Home studios in the 1990s. To have a home studio in the 1990s was a huge never-ending effort. First you had to attain audio engineering know-how. And next you needed a lot of cash to buy a lot of recording gear.

Moon Studios 1

The first Moon Studio was based around a Tascam 244 porta studio. I also had a Atari 1040 computer with Cubase for midi. And the Atari computer was inspired by keyboardist Shawn Gordan? Oh yeah and we had a borrowed Alesis Hr16 drum machine from John Wackerman. For outboard gear, I had a Roland SDE 1000 digital delay unit and a Yamaha SPX 90. I had a pair of Sony condenser mics and a few super cheap (I cant even remember the brand) mics. I also borrowed some mics and synths from Chuck Wackerman via John Wackerman.

Moon Studios version 1 was basically a recording studio I used to make my own music, and music with my friend Phil Maturano. And I actually recorded Adam Sandler‘s first demo in this home studio back in the 1990’s.

Moon studios 2

Moon Studios 2 had a Akai MG14D analog multitrack machine. And the mixing counsel was a old StudioMaster obtained from John Wackerman. In fact John got it from his older brother Chad Wackerman. And Chad who supposedly traded it with Steve Vai for some drum stuff.

Our mic arsenal was a bunch of Sure 57’s salvaged from a Slingerland drumset (Randy May Mics) I purchased from Chad Wackerman. Which was the drumset from the Allan Holdsworth recording “Road Games“. And I bought some mics from Patrick Moraz when he closed his studio Time Machine. Which was and old 414 that had been modified, as well as five 421’s. And a pair of cheap sony condesnors I bought from Brookhurst music (when I taught drums there).

Our outboard gear was very scarce. We had a few Alesis stereo compressors. For delays we had 2 Roland SDE 1000’s. And for multi effects we had 2 Yamaha SPX 90’s. I also owned a user guide for the spx 90’s which had some settings from most of the top bands of the day. We also had a Lexicon LXP-5 for reverb.

The mastering process

Most of the mastering was done my Lee Bales from Covello Studios in Burbank. At the time Lee was using sound designer on a Mac se-30 with some waves plug ins.

Audio Duplication

Most of our cassettes and a few CD projects were duplicated at Rainbo Records from DAT masters.