Article on Vic Keary - founder and designer of Thermionic Culture.
Originally published in Studio Sound Oct 1993.

THE CHISWICK TUBE

Patrick Stapley visits Chiswick Reach Studio in London and discovers a shrine to valve recording - and the man who worships there.

Vic Keary makes no apologies for belonging to the old school: " It's not that I'm anti new technology, far from it", he says, " I simply believe the old stuff sounds a lot better. The old stuff' Keary refers to is a collection of vintage valve equipment- some dating back as far as the 1940's - which he has recently into a small west London studio. It is ironic, if not somewhat eccentric, that as the rest of the world strives toward the all digital signal path, Keary and a few like him are busy resurrecting the tube and piecing together all vale studios. However, judging from the response so far, it is an anachronism that works and put bluntly, pulls the punters in.

Keary built his first studio in the mid 1950's above a cow-shed in Hampshire, which was fine unless you recorded during milking time. His professional career began at Lansdowne studio, which he joined at the beginning of the 1960's just as the legendary Joe Meek left to start his own studio. Keary stayed at Lansdowne for two and a half years, gaining valuable experience as both a recording engineer and maintenance man. He then worked for a short period at Rush Electronics, leaving to set up a studio in London's west end called Maximum Sound, and for this he built a console based around the EMI REDD range. Due to lease problems, Maximum Sound was forced to move to new premises in South London's Old Kent road where it expanded from 2 track, to 3 track and finally to 4 track, at which point the studio was bought by Manfred Mann and renamed the Workhouse.

Keary's next venture took him from South to North London where he opened Chalk Farm Studios in 1968, installing his valve desk and 8 track tape machine. The studio quickly became a favourite with reggae artists such as Dandy Livingston ( then Trojan's chief producer ) who made many of his records there including Bob and Marcia's single Young, Gifted and Black
" I still think that record sounds good", reflects Keary, " considering the only outboard gear we had at the time was a single spring reverb. There were no delay facilities, and we created the distinctive delay on the strings by mixing together the sync and replay heads from the 8 track. "

With the arrival of 16 track in 1971, Keary sold his original console to a studio in Blackpool and built himself a larger version ( still all valve ). Chalk Farm ran for a total of 14 years offering both studio and cutting facilities, but as Reggae's popularity began to wane, so too did bookings, and finally in 1982 the studio closed leaving behind it a disillusioned and disenchanted Keary.
" It was the start of drum machines and everyone becoming very technical about things," he recalls. " I have to admit that a lot of the fun went out of music for me then - I'd always enjoyed recording music with feel and the buzz you get from people playing together live".

Through the rest of the 1980's, Keary pursued a number of freelance activities including studio maintenance, antique dealing, disc cutting, removals, and location recording. But it was not until the beginning of the 1990's that he once again became involved in setting up a recording studio.

" It all came about due to a burglary. I'd got to know this chap in Commercial Road, who'd built a studio mainly for his own use. One night he was broken into and all the equipment was literally stripped out. To cut a long story short, I agreed to install some of my gear ( not the console ) providing the facility was run commercially. I must say that its surprised me just how strong the demand for the old gear was, and a lot of people said to me you really ought to take this a stage further and put together an old vale studio".

Inspired by the reaction and threatened with further lease problems, Keary once again gathered his equipment and moved on, this time to a converted brewery just of the river in Chiswick. West London. The building had been home to various studios in the past, most recently Parsifal, but the space Keary chose has previously been occupied by a small 16 track called The Works. To keep a link with Commercial Road, the new studio retained the same initials and was christened Chiswick Reach.
The facility has an 18x12ft control room, and 18ft square studio area with concrete drum riser, and a workshop-office which is destined to become an additional recording room or lounge. So far nothing major has been done either structurally or cosmetically to the original space, other than carpeting the control room floor and walls, and hanging reflective hardboard panels in the studio to create a slightly more live acoustic. The studio was originally designed by a commercial soundproofing company, and has a certain utilitarian feel about it - perforated aluminium sheeting covers a thick layer of mineral wool on both walls and ceiling, giving the impression of a cold storage room.

" The room is incredibly dead, and has amazing separation. People simply don't believe you can get any separation in a room this size, but I've just finished recording an album with Blues Band ( a six piece ) and the separation on that is remarkable. On that album we started off with the room quite live but it was all wrong for their kind of Chicago blues style. Instead we went for that Chess sound, which is essentially very dead with reverb added, and so removed all the reflective panels which produced a much more authentic sound."

To equip the studio, Keary brought together all the bits and pieces he had collected over the years, including the valve console (
28-input; 8 bus; 16-monitor ) from Chalk Farm which he had spent considerable time refurbishing.
" I spent much longer than I'd originally anticipated completely overhauling the console and improving on the original design" comments Keary. "I also fitted some original EMI valve line amps that I'd acquired which sound incredibly smooth and take an awful lot of level.

One of Keary's prize possessions is Joe Meek's 'Black Box'. " It was actually made for Joe by Racal Electronics in the 1960's. In those days Racal were a tiny outfit based in a small workshop in Camberley, and Joe approached them to make him some equipment. He basically gave them the design for an Altec compressor, which they copied for him, and also an equaliser, which was based around a Pultec but with extra flexibility. Only one of these EQ's were ever made and we have it here - it's an excellent and quite unique piece of gear. It introduced a little bit of phase shift and second harmonic distortion, but this is one of the things that give it a very characteristic sound which is especially good on vocals. I know that Joe regularly used it to lift vocals rather than turning up the level - he would boost at 3kHz which pushes the voice right up front in the track.

Another antique is a Sean Davies valve limiter made in the 1960's for IBC studios where Keary claims it was used on early Who tracks such as My Generation. Slightly out of place is a Fairchild Conax treble limiter, originally used for disc cutting but now functioning as a studio de-esser. Keary is also working on his own design for valve compressors.

" When I was working for Rush Electronics in 1964, I designed some valve compressors two of which we sold to Pete Townsend - he still uses them, and they're working perfectly with the original valves. I've used that basic design but added some more modern components, but I've kept it all valve. I hope to go into commercial production with it later this year. With all this original equipment, availability of the valves themselves becomes of considerable importance. "

" It's never usually a problem," claims Keary. "There's a company just up the road that imports a lot from places like Eastern Germany, Russia and even Serbia where they're still being produced in large quantities. The only time it's difficult, and this is very rare - is when you have a microphone like a Neumann U47 where the valves have been obsolete for years. However, it is possible to convert the mic to work with a different valve and adapt the power supply."

" Valve life depends entirely on the valve - for example I've got a couple of mics that have been pretty well used on a daily basis since 1968 and still have the original valve. Some of the valves in the desk should be replaced every 18 months or so, but an input valve like an EF86 will go on for years - I've actually got some in the desk that are 20 years old and still going strong. I periodically test all the valves in the console and replace them as necessary."

The selection of vintage mics at Chiswick Reach include a Neumann valve KM54 and two original U67's, a couple of Fi-Cord FC1200's ( made by Calrec ), an RCA1001 ribbon which came from the London Palladium and was used there during the war, two STC 4038's, plus a couple of STC 4021 ball and biscuits, and an old Tannoy ribbon. There are also a collection of more modern microphones from AKG, Shure, Beyer, etc, and at the top of the studio shopping list is the Microtech Geffel 92S valve microphones.

Other valve gear includes four Levers Rich graphic EQ's, Associated Electronics Engineering graphic, and an EMT plate. The studio also offers a range of non-valve equipment such as Drawmer DS201 gates, KT DN332 graphic, Bel BD80, Eventide 949 Harmoniser, two Alesis Microverbs, the esoteric Ursa Major Space Station, Digitech DSP128, Cyclosonic Panner, Gain Brains, Keepex, and so on. Monitoring is via JBL 4502's powered by a Crown DC300A amps and nearfield JBL controls are powered by a Leak TL25 Plus. Also available is an Atari ST with Cubase, and a Fostex 4030 synchronizer for linking together multitrack machines.

Tape machines include a 3M M79 24v track and a Brenell Mini 8, both made in the 1970's, and a Levers Rich E242 valve 2 track machine circa 1967, Keary usually works at 15ips and uses high-level tape.

" I like to run my machines at 15ips because you get a better bottom end at that speed. I use 3M 966 high output tape on both multitrack and 2 track machines. you can really load it without any problems and I find that I don't need to use noise reduction."
" I've also got a DAT machine, but I don't particularly like it. We've done numerous comparisons between the Levers Rich and DAT and the valve machine wins every time. I mixed a recent album to both machines and at the end I got the band to do a blind comparison - to their surprise they all preferred the Levers Rich and found the DAT very brittle. They also couldn't believe the machine was running at 15ips because it was so quiet. As long as you record with plenty of level, noise is never a problem - the machine itself is very quiet and the valves give out tremendous signal level without any distortion going to tape."

Connected to the Levers Rich machine is an ancient varispeed box which has been nicknamed The Blue Meany'."There were a few of these made to varispeed the machines with synchronous motors In fact this one was made for The Rolling Stones and installed at Olympic Studios where it was used on albums like Satanic Majesty's Request . When I bought it, I was unaware that there was a slight design fault - it ran at an incredibly high voltage ( up to 800v ) which has a tendency to leak to the outer case, and if you touch it, you can get one hell of a belt. The problem is that you can't earth it because that shorts the whole thing out and blows transformers. We treat it with the greatest of respect, and try to keep our fingers firmly on the plastic control knob".

" I've also got a Cady 1 track machine which was made by a guy called Steve Wadey about twenty years ago. It's a peculiar design in that the record electronics are valve, while the reply and motor amps are transistor and sound bloody awful. I'm in the process of replacing all the transistor circuitry with valves means that it will soon be possible to record here without touching a transistor anywhere between the microphones and tape."

The studio also offers a 100 year old Bechstein piano ( not valve ), a Hammond M102 organ with a Leslie, and a Sound City 120 valve amp with a 4x12 cabinet.

So apart from producing an authentic vintage sound, and cocking a snook at digital, what does Keary regard to be the benefits of the all valve studio?

" In a nutshell, it sounds more realistic," comes Keary's confident reply. " There's a weird thing that happens working with valve equipment that I've never experienced with any other set-up. The first time it happened to me as at Lansdowne - I was in the control room when somebody spoke to m, I actually turned around to answer them only to discover they were actually in the studio. The sound was so real that it fooled me. Exactly the same thing happened here shortly after we'd opened; I literally felt that the person talking was sitting next to me - it's an unnerving experience, but a great indication of how natural and true valves sound."

At rates set at about £250 a day, Chiswick Reach has been very busy - in fact so busy that Keary has just taken on a full time engineer maintenance man* who, just like the boss, is totally crazy about valves.

*The maintenance man turned out to be Nick Terry who now works for Thermionic Culture and is a well respected recording engineer.