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Thanks to his job, engineer/producer/mixer Mark Linett has the opportunity to witness some amazing musical moments. Over the course of a career, he's worked closely with such seminal artists as The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Paul Simon, Brian Wilson, Love, and, most recently, the New Cars.
Linett and the New Cars - Elliot Easton and Greg Hawkes from the original band in addition to Todd Rundgren, drummer Prairie Prince and singer/bassist Kasim Sulton - set up shop at Sound Stage in Burbank, California for three days of rehearsal in front of an invite-only live audience in January. "They are going out on tour so we did a live recording to hear how things were coming together, as well as to record a live album," Linett explains.
The New Cars performed a handful of hit Cars songs, including "Just What I Needed," "Best Friend's Girl" and "Drive," as well as three new songs titled 
"Not Tonight," "Warm" and "More." An 18-song release from the performances penned, "It's Alive," is due to be released in early May.
During the recording process he turned to a rack full of API 312s that were modified to be slot mounted along with the original version of the 312s that use the 2520s in a remote system. "It's not the most mobile of racks, but it's worth the hassle of hauling around a rack that weights about 175 lbs.," he says with a laugh. "We have about 48 of the 312s in the rack. I just like the way they sound. It's what I've always used."
In addition to the New Cars gigs, Linett has recently used his API flavored system on remote dates for the Isley Brothers, Hawthorne Heights, Nada Surf and a bunch of Brian Wilson projects that include the "Live At The Roxy Theatre" album, the "Pet Sounds Live" DVD and CD and the "SMiLE" DVD and CD. He also mixed Wilson's "SMiLE," "Gettin' In Over My Head" and "What I Really Want For Christmas," the singer's most recent Christmas album, at his some studio.
While many of the projects that Linett works on start outside, most come back to his home studio that is based around, what he describes as, an upgraded API 2488 console that started life as a very simple 24-input stock black console." Over the years, Linett and the console's previous owners have adapted it to add more inputs and additional echo returns.
"The last big change I made came when I commissioned entirely new input modules for the board, which would give me everything that I wanted," he says. "So, now I have 12 echo sends and three stereo busses that are all switch-able." The board now features 44 550A discrete three-band EQs, four 560 discrete ten-band graphic EQs and a handful of 525 discrete compressors.
Building a studio around the API console was important, Linett explains, "because I am not a believer of mixing in the box. Even as I've graduated from no Pro Tools, to having a Pro Tools system for ancillary work, to a full-blown Pro Tools HD system, I still treat it as a tape recorder and I use the console for mixing.
"So, even some of these bigger projects where I have up to 62 channels of Pro Tools playing back, we'll sum a few things down, but I'll still bring it up on the API as individual channels and mix that way," he continues. "I've never heard a digital summing system in a box that seems to work quite right. Maybe I'm old school, but I like to think of Pro Tools as a big fancy ultimate tape machine that will do all the things that a tape recorder can't."
API remains the leader in analog recording gear, such as the famed Legacy console, the TEC award-winning 7600 channel strip, and the acclaimed 2500 stereo bus compressor.
www.apiaudio.com
