BRIAN ZESKE: [SOUNDS LIKE] ...so with guitar, I just remember Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, The Weezer -- um, the weezer -- Weezer, yeah and stuff like that. When I was in high school and those were very powerful, lush recordings and I was really into Steve Albini's recordings. Growing up, it's just they blew my mind. They were extremely ambient, very lush, very real, very documentary like, and I tried to -- I take that approach on a lot of my productions. He's not a big -- He's not into productions so much but his engineering's incredible and I try to learn as much as I could from his engineering.

Let me plug in what I like. The API's are sweet. They're really clean bu they're very warm and still robust and a lot of headroom. You can’t really heat them up but that's why I like them. They're really transparent, really nice transient response, kick and snare always -- Well, not always, depending on the project of course, but they're like the rock & roll preamps.

Pacificas, those are nice. They're '70s Motown sort of dark but transient, tons of gain. They're nice. They're a different flavor.

The 610's are like my faves. There are two pres, '60s Universal Audio like with the Beach Boys Pet Sounds. Really basic, primitive EQ, it's just shelf EQ at 10, 7, 4.5, 170 -- or 100, 200, and 70 Hz. It's all you need. So those were for some great records that were made on those type of pres and that's the limitations they have and they still turned out great. The 1176 pre -- Well, the 6176 channel strip that has a 610 and an 1176. It's just more 610 action with a nice compressor. It's great vocal compressor.

Chandler is like the product of choice. I love his gear. Wade is awesome. He makes some great gear. My favorite piece, it changed my life when I got this with the TG1 compressor. It gives you the sound that The Beatles had, that '60s sort of aggressive drum sound or super warm, dry sound like on the Floyd records or whatever. And the Curve Bender, Abbey Road EQ like 1968. I actually went to London a month ago and worked on the desk that The Beatles mastered Abbey Road and Pink Floyd mastered Dark Side of the Moon on, and they actually have the console and the original compressors of these units, so it's pretty cool, and they sound good. And the germanium preamp is a really nice sounding preamp, a very organic sounding solid-state pre. Lots of headroom if you want it to have it, or you can thicken it and darken it. It's got a lot of different colors.

The Manley Variable Mu, it's a very, very colorful, very smooth, buttery compressor, very, very expensive but very awesome.

The Distressors are like outboard plugins. I think that's why they're very popular. They're digitally controlled analog path, not much to them other than -- well there is a lot to them. I don't use them that much because they don’t have a lot of flavor. They're so generic but that's why they're awesome. When I do need something with a lot of control and a lot of fine-tuning, I can -- yl they're Swiss Army knife-type compressors.

I got an API 2500 series bus compressor, they're loud, and some DBX compresors. Those are nice standards from the '80s like kick and snare, you know. They still sound great. There's -- if something sounds good going through those, it'll work I guess.

Transient Designer by a German company called SPL. They're a very cutting edge company. They make some incredible products, and these, this product here, it's called the Transient Designer. You can actually shape the transient instruments, adding more attack or taking it away, adding more sustain or taking it away, so if the kick drum, for example, a handy approach for these is kick drum's boomy, drummer comes in, doesn't know how to tune his set, you can take that boominess that [IMITATES THE SOUND OF LONG BOOMINESS] and [IMITATES THE SOUND OF A SHORT BASS BURST] make it tight and dry and time it to sort of fi the of the song so it's more musical.

This is a vintage 1178. I acquired that from another engineer who's studio is going out of business but I think he wishes he didn't get rid of it because it's a great sounding compressor, especially on bass, not so much on drums.

This is a vintage Altec 436C. I think that unit there is from 1958. It doesn't sound good on much of anything except for violin, and if it does sound good, it's going to sound incredible, but yeah it doesn't work too well on anything but that's why The Beatles, this is what Paul -- this is the kind of compressor Paul McCartney used on the bass, The Beatles' Abbey Road, they love those but they were modded heavily by EMI. They're fantastic engineering there but I have yet to mod mine and I don't know if I want to but I do want that usability but I don't want to sort of taint it.

Yeah, and then I've got some analog delay, some 1980s PCM-60 sort of reverb that's really standard so the '90s, early '90s and '80s it's cool. It's agreat sounding reverb. It sounds like a digital plate. Analog delay, I guess an API EQ down here, and that's my sound. This is all I use. I avoid plugins. I use the plugins when I need precision and accuracy, but when I want to get tone and I want something to be fat and colored and have life, I use this and combinations of this and that and manipulate these in further with Pro Tools if I have to. It's fun.

I also have a plate reverb in the back. It's pretty sweet. That is epic. It's an Echoplex Plate 2, 1970s, late '70s but it's what Bruce Swedien used on the Thriller records, so when you hear Vincent Price laugh that's an Echo plate. Pretty cool. Yeah.