NO DOUBT MATT COSTA'S PRODUCER ENGINEER

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FAMOUS GUITARIST TOM DUMONT LOVES HIS DAKING GEAR

ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA: Tom Dumont has experienced success in the pop music world that only a small percentage of musicians can realize.

Since 1988, Dumont has been a guitarist and principal songwriter for the unique pop/rock band No Doubt. As such, he participated in penning and performing some of the past decade's biggest Billboard successes.Now Dumont, having evolved into a multi-instrumentalist as well as a producer/engineer, is touring as a bass player with Matt Costa, a young singer/songwriter supporting Jack Johnson for 35 amphitheater dates throughout America and Canada this summer. Oh, and yes, Dumont also happens to be the producer and engineer for Costa's debut full-length CD entitled "Songs We Sing." There's no doubt that Dumont prefers to stay busy.

"Last year, No Doubt released a bunch of stuff and toured the U.S. for 20 shows in the summer," Dumont recalls. "We put out a greatest hits CD, a rarities CD, and a live concert DVD." It was up until then that the musical activities of No Doubt always filled Dumont's plate. Soon after, Dumont expanded the realm of his career by producing and recording Costa, whose indie-credible and legitimately buzzed-about music is drawing fans like flies to flypaper.

Even in the early days, Dumont was the band's unofficial recording studio enthusiast. "I've always been the guy interested in the studio side of things," he explains. "As we started to work on our breakthrough album "Tragic Kingdom," our record label bought us a small studio setup for demo purposes. We soundproofed the garage and bought a Fostex half-inch 16-track machine and a little Tascam 16-input mixer. We spent hours in the garage recording demos. I really enjoyed all aspects of the recording process and especially enjoyed hearing a song take shape in recorded form."

Ten million albums sold and a couple of years later, Dumont came off the road and became enamoured with hard disc recording. "Since then I have built up a cool little home studio with just enough nice gear to make good recordings," he modestly offers. "Our last studio record "Rock Steady" was originally demo'd in my home studio and many of those recordings were in the final mixes. That's something I'm proud of."

Dumont's studio is built around a Digidesign Pro Tools|HD workstation and features an "old but nice" RAMSA mixing board used for monitoring purposes. While there are plenty of less expensive microphones and gear that, according to Dumont, "can sound great for certain things if used correctly," the integral recording signal paths of vocals and guitars almost always feature a Manley Reference Microphone and Dumont's beloved Daking Mic Pre/EQ and FET Compressor II.

Upon a suggestion from a friend - a knowledgeable "studio gear head" - Dumont tried his first Daking gear. "Usually all the best stuff is spread through word of mouth." In this case, his friend's word was right on the money. "It's difficult for me to be descriptive about the Daking gear without resorting to the usual clichés," warns Dumont. "Cheaper stuff can be made to sound warm and crisp. The Daking stuff is warm and crisp, but with a certain smoothness and character that sounds like great old records to me.

Housed in a sturdy steel chassis, the Daking Mic-Pre/EQ is a mono microphone pre-amplifier featuring all-discrete transistor circuitry, transformer-balanced inputs and outputs, and Class A amplifiers. Each EQ band offers five stepped frequencies and continuously variable boost and cut. All relay switching is provided via gold bi-furcated contacts, and mute and bypass controls are remote-controllable. Switchable phantom power as well as a 20dB pad is available.

Updated from the original Daking FET Compressor, the mono FET Compressor II includes a new internal switch to allow active gain makeup through console applications as well as bypass ability in line level rig applications. The Class A compressor also features discrete transistor circuitry, transformer-balanced inputs and output, switch selectable and repeatable parameters, seven release time constraints, and a three function Vu meter. A link feature for use with stereo units is also included.

"The Daking Mic-Pre/EQ gives a very appealing edge to the music," Dumont explains. "When I dial in a frequency, I can really hear it interacting with the sound at hand. It reacts just as I want it to, and it's smooth while still having a ballsy rock edge to it. With the compressor, I really like that I can easily use the bypass to check what it's doing to the sound and love having the flexibility of the makeup gain knob at the end of the line."

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