This is the SSL Compressor that was used on talk back mics in
70s SSL mixers. It has become a classic compressor for drums.
From Mix Magazine:
"Hugh Padgham had met Collins while engineering Peter Gabriel , which Steve
Lillywhite produced. And it was working in Townhouse Studios' Studio 2, record-
ing Gabriel's .Intruder,. that Padgham first stumbled on a new drum sound that
was based around the capabilities of the studio's brand-new SSL console . one
of the first made . which had compressors and noise gates on every channel.
.Up until then, that had not been seen before and was deemed to be either
unnecessary or an extravagance,. Padgham recalls. .But this was the first console
where you didn't have to say to the assistant, .Can you plug in a compressor
please or a noise gate?. You pressed a button and there it was. It allowed us to
be more immediate.
.It was also one of the first consoles to have reverse talkback,. Padgham
continues. .On a normal console, you have a button to press to talk to the
musicians in the headphones, but you did not have a button to press for us to
listen to the musicians. To do that, you'd plug a microphone into a spare
channel on the desk and listen to your musicians through that. But the SSL had
a reverse talkback button and there was a microphone hanging up in the studio
already, a dedicated input into the reverse mic input on the console. And on
this microphone, they had the most unbelievably heavy compressor, so you could
hear somebody who was over in the corner.
.One day, Phil was playing the drums and I had the reverse talkback on because
he was speaking, and then he started playing the drums. The most unbelievable
sound came out because of the heavy compressor. I said, .My God, this is the
most amazing sound! Steve, listen to this.. But the way the reverse talkback was
setup, you couldn't record it. So I had the desk modified that night. I got one
of the maintenance guys to take the desk apart and get a split output of this
compressor and feed it into a patch point on the jack field so I could then patch
it into a channel on the board. From there, we were able to route that to the
tape recorder..
Six months later, Padgham found himself working with Collins as co-producer on
Face Value and .In the Air Tonight,. with its Roland drum machine foundation,
recorded on a 1-inch 8-track analog recorder made by a company called Brennell.
.We transferred my 8-track demos to 16-track,. Collins says, .which is all we had
at the time. My eight tracks comprised stereo Prophet, stereo Rhodes, my voice,
vocoder and a drum machine. I sang it again because the quality of what I had
recorded really wasn't as good as we needed, but on all of the tracks, I kept all
the instruments, and that's been my method of recording ever since. I always use
my demos as the masters: Whatever I do at home ends up being the blueprint for
the song..
.We then recorded the drums, which we decided would have a great big crashing drum
sound at the end, the idea being that the song would be moody and quiet and the
last thing you would expect would be the big drum thing,. adds Padgham. .When I was
mixing the record, it was difficult to find the right dynamic. When the front of
the song was quiet enough so the end was loud, the front was generally not loud
enough. Plus, we were mixing onto analog tape and we didn't want too much tape hiss.
Also, there were no CDs then and it had to go onto vinyl, so there were all these
restrictions that you don't have nowadays. So it was very difficult to get the
dynamic right..
The famous drum fill, Collins contends, could have been anything. What is on the
record is what came out at the moment. .When people talk about the .Phil Collins
drum sound,. that is actually a huge variety of drum sounds,. Collins says. .We
never left the setup; we always broke it down and started again so we could end up
somewhere different. The Townhouse Studio actually wasn't that live. It was quite
tall, but not really a big room . probably smaller than most people's bedroom.
The Genesis studio we designed had a much livelier, bigger room, glass and refle-
ctive surface. So when you listen to .In the Air Tonight,. it is not really that
live, it's big. The snare drum and tom toms kind of bark, but it is made from a lot
of compression with ambient mics as far away from the drums as possible, and those
are noise-gated..
The drums were recorded with two Neumann U87s compressed with UREI 1176s, 12 or 15
feet from the drums, the reverse talkback room mic [called a Ball and Biscuit, made
by a company called STC] with the heavy-duty compressor and a U47 close on the bass
drum and a Shure SM57 close on the snare drum. .But 90 percent of the sound was the
live room mics and then I'd add a touch of close bass drum and close snare drum to
give it a little more snap,. Padgham says."
This is the software version of that compressor, and it really nails the classic 80s
Phil Collins sound. It's actually really fun to play with.
Download File Size:1.14 MB
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