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Peek Inside Hunter Hayes’ Home Studio with this Video Tour

Country star/producer Hunter Hayes has built a well-appointed home studio for himself in the hills above Los Angeles. Let's go gear-spotting as he gives a cool video tour of his creative recording space.

Hunter Hayes in his home recording space.
[/media-credit] Hunter Hayes in his home recording space.

Country star, singer/songwriter and producer Hunter Hayes may have first made his name in Nashville, but now he’s recently moved to the Topanga Canyon area of Los Angeles. Up in the hills above L.A., he’s built a personal recording set-up that truly puts the ‘home’ in ‘home studio’—the facility may be starting to take over his house! When Hayes gave People magazine a video tour of the space, we immediately started trainspotting the gear in his cool setup and came away duly impressed.

A good portion of Hayes’ house is occupied by high-end recording equipment, favorite guitar amps and more, while a space on a separate floor has been set up as a drum room. Throw in some racks of guitars and awards on the wall—including one for his Guinness World Record for the most concerts played in multiple cities in 24 hours—and it all becomes a well-appointed workspace as appealing as the hilltop views it looks out over.

The video starts out in Hayes’ drum room, which finds a drum set captured via a variety of mics, with both a traditional Shure Beta52A and an Aston Origin on the kick, while elsewhere on the kit, you can pick out Shure KSM313/NE dual-voice ribbon microphones with their distinctive red grilles.

Along with some favorite guitars, there’s a pair of Waldorf synthesizers—a Blofeld desktop synth and a Pulse 2 analog synth—and an M-Audio Code 49 USB MIDI controller. There’s also a trio of studio monitors; lined up together are ADAM Audio A7Xs, ProAc SM100s and a Genelec pair of undetermined origin (we’ll guess that they’re 1032Bs).

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The video then moves upstairs, and after a guided tour through some sweet guitar amps, a vintage piano and more, Hayes welcomes the viewer into his recording space. Bookended by some tidy JamRacks production furniture is a workstation desktop where you can spot a Solid State Logic UF8 Advanced DAW Controller, Arturia KeyStep keyboard and Solid State Logic SiX 6-Channel SuperAnalogue Desktop Mini Mixer.

To the left of the desk is a rack outfitted with a Solid State Logic X-Desk Summing Mixer at the top, while a SSL Fusion processor resides beneath it, followed by a Universal Audio Apollo X16 16-Channel Thunderbolt Audio Interface. The rack on the right side, meanwhile, includes multiple Universal Audio 4-710d Four-Channel Tone-Blending Mic Preamps, and UnderTone Audio MPDI-4 Four-Channel Mic Preamps and MPEQ-1 Microphone Preamp/EQ/DIs.

Also visible around the room are ATC SCM25A Pro studio monitors, some Audio-Technica ATH-M50x headphones, synths from Yamaha and Mellotron, and other good stuff.

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Throughout the clip, Hayes’ enthusiasm for recording shines through, particularly at the end when he gets almost giddy explaining why putting digital audio through analog outboard gear is crucial to getting his sound. If you want to take a break and daydream about your next home studio, click ‘play’ on the video and enjoy.

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