Top 5: Bonnie Knight
Bonnie Knight is an ARIA Award-winning producer, engineer and mixer based in Melbourne, known for their work with Amyl & The Sniffers, Angie McMahon and Mallrat. Here, they discuss five essential studio tools that they can't work without!
21 November 2023
GENELECS 8010A
These keep me sane. I have a pair of the baby ones at home too and will sometimes bring them on tour etc. I’m just so used to them at this point that even if I get some super high budget speakers, I will always keep these on the go. The SAM room tuning is cool too but I don’t have it engaged in this studio but there was a brief period earlier this year where I was working solely from home in my shoebox office and it was a godsend.
FENDER MUSTANG BASS
I’ve had this since I was a teenager and am yet to find a better bass in the world (for most things). It’s sort of a crowd favourite in our studio building and travels room to room, getting used on pretty much everything that comes out of here. I’ve had it for so long that I’d never thought about how much it is worth and then recently I decided to look it up and I think it might be single most valuable item in the studio.
SONY C38B MIC
I bought this after doing the Amyl & The Sniffers record because we used it on most of the guitars and I fell in love. Awesome, versatile mic and has such a cute little case too! Works really well on some people’s vocals (mine included) and actually I am yet to find something it doesn’t work on. When I bought it, I thought I should buy more than one because they’re only going to go up in price (alas I only found one and they’ve gone up about 50% in the last couple of years alone).
YAMAHA REX50
I bought this, super cheap, on a whim from someone on Facebook Marketplace and it’s so awesome. Really cool digital distortion that I use on lots of stuff and some weird reverbs and delays that just don’t sound like any plugin. I have a bit of a penchant for miscellaneous FX units in general.
AVID S1 CONTROL SURFACE
Coming from Live Sound I really missed having the control of faders in my studio so I bought this and love it! So much quicker and more tactile for fades and effects sends etc.
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