Yngwie: "Miami Nice: Inside Yngwie Malmsteen's State-of-the-Art Home Studio"
Duane Allred
"Miami Nice: Inside Yngwie Malmsteen's State-of-the-Art Home Studio"
By Joe Lalaina, GUITAR WORLD, January 1996.
Tucked away in a back corner of the second floor of Yngwie Malmsteen's
sprawling Miami home lies the Swedish guitarist's dream-come-true
studio, tagged Studio
308 in honor of his treasured black Ferrari.
"It's not a Ôhome' studio, but studio that happens to be in my home,"
says Yngwie, reclining in the air-conditioned comfort of the control
room. "This is a fully
functional, four-room pro studio with all the best equipment. There's
nothing this studio lacks."
Yngwie keeps his amps in the control room but has the speakers
downstairs in a soundproofed room next to the garage. "The input panel
on the garage wall can
accommodate 16 microphones. I can easily set up a drum kit and record
the drums in the garage, which has a concrete floor and a wooden roof.
It's very
live-sounding," notes Yngwie.
The guitarist planned to record his new album, Magnum Opus (Viceroy
Music), at Studio 308, but the construction dragged on for six
months--considerably longer
than anticipated--so he wound up doing the album down the road at
Miami's renowned Criteria Studios, birthplace of, among other
classics, Derek & The Dominos'
Layla. Yngwie was so eager to try his newly bought studio equipment
that he had it wheeled in to Criteria to use on the album's recording.
"The heart of Yngwie's studio is a Studer A-827 24-track analog
multitrack recorder," says Malmsteen's guitar tech Peter Rooth. "He
also has two Tascam DA-88
digital recorders. All mic inputs are routed via tube preamps and tube
compressors. The combination of using analog tape and tube outboard
gear gives a really fat
and warm sound to the recordings. The DA-88's are mainly used when
Yngwie does session work or when people send him stuff to do overdubs
on. He then
transfers it from the DA-88 to the Studer or adds the parts and locks
the two together."
Five patchbays with 96 points each (480 total) makes it easy for
Yngwie to route any gear or mic input any way he chooses. Outboard
gear includes two Focusrite
ISA 215 dual-channel mono mic-preamp equalizers, two Tube-tech
(Pultec-style) PE-1C equalizer compressors, two Summit Audio TLA 100
tube leveling
amplifiers, two Urei 1176-LN Limiters, a Drawmer DS404 quad gate and a
Yamaha GC2020B compressor/limiter. For effects, the studio has three
Lexicon
LXP-1's, an LXP-5, and a DigiTech GSP2101 preamp/processor. For
playback, Yngwie has Westlake Audio BBSM-8F monitors powered by a
Bryston 4B amp.
With the outboard gear in conjunction with the Studer multitrack
recorder, Yngwie is able to equal the performance of the world's
finest commercial recording
facilities.
Yngwie favors an analog guitar sound--nearly all of Magnum Opus was
recorded in analog; only a few minor parts were put onto a Tascam
DA-88--which is why
it was imperative that his studio have its own Studer. "The Studer is
the king of analog machines," says Yngwie, "and any world-class studio
has one. Sony and Otari
make an analog machine that is pretty good. But Seiko makes a good
watch--I wear a Rolex. And you could never duplicate the sound of the
Studer with a digital
machine. If you were to record jazz, or maybe even rap, digital is
handier and easier to work with. But guitar-based rock music sounds so
much better with the
Studer. No question."
Just getting the Studer into the second-floor studio was a Herculean
task. "I had to get up at seven in the morning to help supervise the
movers," explains Yngwie.
"It took three big, muscular guys--two underneath and one pulling on
it--to tug that sucker up the stairs. The Studer weighs about 600 lbs.
And it cost $600 just to
have it carried up one flight of stairs! Those guys just barely made
it. They were sweating bullets!
"So much work has been put into this studio," he continues. "In order
to get the rooms ready and utilized as proper recording facilities, a
whole corner of the house
had to be gutted. Closets and walls had to be knocked down, and buzz
saws and sledgehammers would knock me out of bed at eight o'clock. All
the air-conditioning
had to be rerouted and installed brand new, and the entire house had
to be rewired. The studio runs on a separate line of electricity from
the rest of the house. If I
were having a new bathroom installed, the constant noise would've
really pissed me off. But this studio is my life dream, so I just put
up with all the commotion."
Yngwie plans to record all future endeavors at Studio 308. "I've
recorded in studios all over the world," he explains. "Often, the
guitar solo on my demo sounded
better than on the album--because there was no pressure. In the
studio, there's a cloud hanging over you saying, ÔThis is it; this is
carved in stone.' When you're
long gone and dead, what you played that day is always going to be
there. So it has to be great. You have to knock your own socks off,
and that's not an easy thing
to do, so you have to be in a perfect mood. That's why I wanted my own
studio.
"I don't have to worry about the clock running or someone saying,
ÔIt's 3 o'clock in the morning, you have to call it a day now.' That
has happened to me before,
usually in the midst of a very creative, productive moment. Now I can
work any time I want and no one can tell me to leave--it's a wonderful
feeling. I can go
downstairs and play tennis and then work in the studio. If I don't
feel like recording, I might lie in the sun or swim in the pool. Half
the battle of making an album is
how you feel at the time. You've got to be inspired and have
freshness, energy and spontaneity. When you're on stage, that all
comes naturally. It's a lot harder
when you're recording. If you're not inspired, you will not be able to
play or write well."
Perhaps the mere presence of his new studio equipment took the
pressure off Yngwie at Criteria: Magnum Opus features warm, pristine
sounds as impressive as
anything he's ever recorded. "Magnum Opus is the epitome of everything
I've always tried to reach," says Yngwie. "I've maintained yet
improved upon my style.
The album was recorded in just six weeks, and all the solos are pretty
much first-take. I must give credit to [co-producer] Chris
Tsangarides. He made my guitar
sound like it should sound; it's like you're standing 10 feet in front
of a Marshall stack."
Yngwie recorded Magnum Opus with the same setup he always used in the
past, a scalloped-neck Fender Stratocaster through early-Seventies
Marshall Mk II
50-watt heads and Marshall 4x12 cabinets and Celestion speakers.
Tsangarides' microphone of choice was a Neumann U87. On previous
efforts Yngwie relied on
Shure SM57's, which he still uses on stage.
Yngwie puts nothing between the force of the sound and the tape. "I
record with no effects," he says. "When mixing I'll add
concert-hall-style reverb and nothing
else. If you do it directly on tape, you're stuck with it.
"Most guitarists rely on a really hot pickup, so the output from the
actual instrument is very powerful. That, to me, is the wrong way to
do it, because the guitar signal
has to be completely pure, with no distortion whatsoever. That's why I
use DiMarzio HS-3 pickups. They have a weaker output than most
pickups, but produce a
very distinct sound whether they're played in the bridge or neck
position. What I do is boost the signal with a preamp, which boosts
the signal without distorting it.
Once that signal goes into the Marshalls, the tubes in the amp will
create the distortion I'm after. There's no speaker distortion
whatsoever. If you were to have a
4x12 cabinet and a 100-watt amp on full, you'd get cone distortion--a
horrible, flabby sound. That's why I prefer a 50-watt head; it
distorts very smoothly and is
reproduced by the 4x12 without being pushed too hard.
"I have to compensate for the fact that my pickups are weaker by
having higher string action. Many guitarists use low action with a hot
pickup, which means the
strings vibrate less but are boosted by a hotter pickup. Their sound
is already distorted to begin with! It's a lot harder to play with my
approach, though I'm not
knocking anyone's style."
Yngwie may not be criticizing anyone with that comment, but it's a
different story if you ask him what he thinks of the guitarists who
have been gracing the pages of
Guitar World recently. "I don't think a magazine that supposedly
caters to Ôguitarists' should put people on the cover who can barely
play--no matter how many
albums they sell!" he exclaims. "I refuse to subject myself to what's
going on in the music world. I've always done my thing, and I have not
lost any fans. None of
them are now listening to Green Day!"