Taylor-Made Productions, located in metropolitan New Jersey,retrofitted its studio with a 48-input Amek Media 51 desk. Josh Thomasof Sonic Circus facilitated the sale of the new mixing console, withinstallation, modifications and commissioning provided by MichaelO’Hora of Molecular Electronics.
Pictured: TMP owner Glenn Taylor (with stopwatch) and voice-overartist Eric Conger get ready for the Media 51’s maiden session.
Through his company, Glenn Taylor, Taylor-Made Productions’ owner,chief engineer and composer, has produced major-label recordingartists, written national commercials, scored feature-lengthproductions and produced countless radio spots. He has also penned themusic for many documentary films and Fortune 500 corporate A/Vproductions, as well as done sound design for a variety of toy and gamemanufacturers.
On choosing the Amek board, Taylor said, “I had worked on Ameks inother studios and always enjoyed them. Plus, I owned a pair of 9098imic preamps, so I already knew how wonderfully transparent the RupertNeve EQs and preamps would sound on a desk like the Media 51. Thisconsole really fills a niche: Not many companies these days are makinga large-format analog console in that price range. To properly move upfrom the Media 51, you’d have to spend into the six digits, which issimply cost-prohibitive for many studios like mine.”
As the desk was being installed, Taylor had O’Hora harvest a numberof mods from the studio’s previous console and integrate them into thenew Amek. “We drilled a lot of holes,” Taylor said, “but after youbuild three studios in a 25-year span, you know what little ‘extras’you’d like to have available. Thanks to the brilliant work of Michael,my Amek is now equipped with latching talkback, telephone interfacetalkback, speaker switching for up to six sets of speakers, digitalstopwatch, latching slate and two surface-mounted headphone cues so Ican record myself acoustically here in the control room when working onmusic scoring projects.”
Taylor further color-coded his auxiliary knob caps (available fromSelco) to correspond to frequently used processors. He also had Thomasat Sonic Circus provide another modification: “The Media 51 featuresspace for 12 rows of patchbays as standard and I needed more. So Irequested that Josh order the custom-milling of three extra rows intothe blank section on the meterbridge above the patchbay area. I nowhave a total of 15 rows of Re’an patching at my disposal, which is ofparamount importance with all of the different formats I offer: 32/24tracks of 2-inch analog, 32 tracks of Pro Tools|HD, 24 tracks ofDA-88s, plus mic patching, direct outs and six racks of outboard gear.All but about half-a-row of patchbay space is now being used!”
Taylor is currently producing a new CD with his own band, The Kootz(www.thekootz.com), and is gearing up to once againwork with Tommy James and The Shondells in the coming weeks.
For more information on Taylor-Made Productions, visit www.taylormadeprod.com. For more on the board,visit Amek online at www.amek.com.
