BOB POPP: In my life, I've started out as a guitar player then went to engineer and I've been lucky enough to have hooked up with some really, really talented engineers in my time and I've been in some really, really nice studios. And having had access to things that are millions and millions of dollars, I found that when I was going to do my studio, I wasn't going to have anything that was crazy boutique. I wasn't going to go buy a Neve board. I wasn't going to buy an SSL board, first off because I didn't have the money, second off because I really don't have that clientele.

I work with people that rehearse in this building. I work with my friends. I'm a live sound engineer and that's where I make most of my money. This is a great way for me to express myself as an engineer and document it; unlike a great show, everybody walks away and the show's over. So, I went with presumer gear. As I said before, everything in here is at least $1,500 or under except for the mixing board.

Dbx makes some great, great expensive stuff that's, you know, in the $2,000 range and they make some stuff that's in the $1,000 range and they make some stuff that's in the $200 range. All of it sounds great. The worst performance cannot be enhanced by a $3,000 preamp or microphone. If you suck, you suck. Nothing's going to make you better. There is no way to polish a turd.

GRETCHEN HASSE: Thank you.

BOB POPP: This is our amp room, and we have a lot of 2" tape. So, this is our gear and extra gear room. We have everything from Ward-Beck EQs to 2" tape of legendary Chicago bands that came out of Chicago tracks and what not to West cabinets that were used with bands like Grand Funk Railroad and such, and Seymour Duncan bass head, an old acoustic. This is what we pull out when somebody comes in with a less-than-favorable amplifier or they've never used a tube amplifier before. You know, we want to hip him to what a good sound is, you know, to keep him on cue basically with their progression here, because when they leave here they're a little more educated or --

GRETCHEN HASSE: What's an example maybe of something that you had used that was really a total improvement or I don't know?

BOB POPP: I had a 15-year-old guitar player come in, incredible guitar player, and he had a Peavey amplifier, and it was a new one with the AB blend, and he didn't know how to set it up so I had some experience with Peavey amplifiers and I really enjoyed playing with it. We took about an hour and got the best sounds we possibly could. And when he walked out of here, he quit using his distortion pedal and everything else because he realized that he had an amp that had three channels on it, and all three of them were just really, really tight and really, really good. So, he walked out of here knowing.

A lot of other times is when bass players come in here and they use their small little amps, you know, and I tell them we're going to get a better sound out of, you know, a big SVT because we have a big room. Let's see that you use, you know, like an Ampeg SVT cabinet, the big 810 or whatever, and then next thing you know, when I see them at a show, they've got a big, huge refrigerator behind them because it's shaking their butt. They realized that's what bass guitars are all about.

As far as bumping heads with artists, it's all about psychology. It's all about reading how that person's going to react and watching how they react during setup and the interview because we like to interview bands before we record them. We just don't have them come in. We talk to them. We see what their objective is. We want to see what their budget is of course. We want to know how many people are in the band, what their setup is, and most of the time it's not a problem. But when somebody can't pull a part off, you try to make a really nice suggestion and say, you know, "Could you maybe try it this way?" or when somebody is saying, "One more time. One more time. One more time," and they really don't have it in them, that can start an argument very easily. Usually I let -- I pit another band member to do it instead of me having to deal with it. It works a lot better because, you know, that's the family. Me, I'm just, you know, the parish priest or something.