SAMMAMISH, WASHINGTON – FEBRUARY 2011 Located east of Seattle’s bustle in the cozy suburb of Sammamish, Washington, is Shockwave Studio, LLC poised to become the future site of some fantastic recordings. Local audio guru Hans Kuester has recently finished a radically invasive remodeling of his house, catapulting it from an ordinary residence to a fully-formed professional studio – without first lobbing it into the project studio realm. In anticipation of an early spring launch, boxes of high-end gear have been landing at Kuester’s doorstep with newspaper-like regularity. One of the key arrivals is Chameleon Labs 7602 mic-preamp/equalizers that promise to play a critical role in the all-important front-end at Shockwave.
Shockwave Studio LLC sits on a beautiful acre of land set among three hundred acres of idyllic Washington forest with full views of Lake Sammamish. Apart from natural beauty and the peace that grows with distance from the city, Shockwave also boasts amenities such as a swim spa, hot tub, trampoline, a putting green, and a squash court. “It’s a fun place to hang out,” admitted Kuester. But musicians and engineers will be distracted from all that by the features inside the studio.
The four rooms in the studio were designed by Haverstick Designs with doors weighing in at 450 pounds apiece. The live room is capable of generously accommodating a full band, with careful consideration given to every aspect of the acoustics. An on-site video editing suite includes a high end HD 3D movie theatre provides all of the resources needed for TV, film, or other visual media post-production.
Audio and video is distributed simultaneously to the control room and the theatre from the video edit room in real-time. All the equipment is housed in a soundproof machine room allowing for noise-free recording in all of the four rooms. A 40-fader Digidesign D-Command provides comprehensive control of a fully loaded Pro Tools HD system. Parallel Genelec stereo and 7.1 monitoring systems deliver accurate output for a range of project requirements.
Situated in a rack of sonically gilded analog audio processors, both vintage and new, are the eight Chameleon Labs 7602 mic-preamp/equalizers, which were recommended to Kuester by Seattle-based dealer Pacific Pro Audio. Like all Chameleon Labs products, the 7602 is painstakingly researched to not merely emulate the classic, class-A, all-discrete gear of the 1960s and 1970s, but rather to be the modern incarnation of that gear. The 7602 uses an all-discrete circuit path with components sourced to match those produced in the early 1970s. Its functions include DI input, phantom power, phase reversal, output level, and an equalizer section composed of three shelving or peaking bands and a high-pass filter.
“These are not your average preamps,” enthused Kuester. “Despite their affordable price, they perform at the highest of the high-end. They are warm and detailed, with a robust bottom-end. Overall, the 7602 sounds clean and articulate.” While Shockwave has been in the throws of creation, Kuester still found time to record some tracks with the Chameleon Labs 7602s. They were everything one would hope for in a preamp costing ten times as much.