Top 5: Stuart Epps

Clive Franks, a good friend of mine, and a renowned live engineer suggested the Cool Edit system to me. It’s an incredibly simplistic and digital. It’s more like a digital multi track to be honest, but I’ve been using it for maybe 20 years now. I find it totally adequate and brilliant — and I find I can still do some of the things I used to in the old days. 

I don’t use a lot of equipment; I use my experience and knowledge in getting sounds together. I work with a lot of artists from all over the world. They’ll send me their WAV files and, to be honest, I’m sometimes horrified at the terrible quality of some of their recordings. And I have to tell them that their recording is worse than when I was recording on a Revox system in 1965.

We’ve come a long way since then, as far as sound quality goes, but I’m happy with that because then I can then get them a better sound with Cool Edit. I love it to bits. The things I can do with it are almost limitless. Though having limitless capabilities is not always the best thing, sometimes you need some sort of parameter that can tell you when to stop recording.

It’s pretty MUCH the only microphone I use. They call this a ‘C12A’ and it’s actually the same shape as a C12, but the difference with this one is that it came from The Rolling Stones mobile unit from 1970. It has a power supply, which is what makes it different to the normal 414, but this one’s also had David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Paul Rogers and an unbelievable amount of people singing in it. It’s a smoother microphone than a normal 414. Whenever I’ve used the 414, I found it to be quite harsh and very bright sounding, whereas this one isn’t like that. Maybe it’s because of all the people sneezing into it over the years, I don’t know. One way or another, it’s got a beautiful sound and whoever sings in it sounds great, and it also works well on acoustic guitar and other acoustic instruments too.

I am showing my age here, but I was there when synthesisers were invented. Prior to this we were using acoustic pianos, electric pianos, Hammond C3s, Hammond B3s, the Clavinet and electric piano. I eventually bought myself this Clavinova and though it’s fairly simple, it’s got some great acoustic sounds. It has a pretty good piano sound, and I even use it for drums because it’s got good bass and snare drum sounds. Having been through all the years of standing around a synthesiser for hours trying to find a sound, I now come from the school of using the minimum amount of equipment for its maximum potential because anything more will drive you mad.